GD POLITICS

By now, the story of how Graham Platner was recruited to run for Senate is well known. Two Democratic Socialist-aligned operatives, Daniel Moraff and Leanne Fan, set out to find a like-minded candidate to challenge Susan Collins in Maine.As Platner told Jon Stewart, at the end of July 2025, “some people came to [his] house” who “had been in Maine for a few months working with the AFL-CIO a bunch of labor unions.” They were looking, as he put it, for “a kind of a working-class person on kind of working-class economic policies.”Over the next few weeks, the recruiters convinced Platner to run, telling him he could secure Bernie Sanders’s endorsement. He announced his candidacy in mid-August and landed that endorsement by Labor Day. Moraff later told The Wall Street Journal that they had not conducted a traditional background check on Platner.The candidate recruitment process usually unfolds behind the scenes. But given the spectacular way this campaign unraveled, it has become a central part of the Platner postmortem and of the recriminations now unfolding within the Democratic Party.It has also thrown a spotlight on a much bigger question: How should Democrats try to win back working-class voters? Recruiting candidates like Graham Platner is one approach. But is it the right one?To explore that question, I turned to Joan C. Williams, author of Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back. Joan is a Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California Law San Francisco and one of the country’s leading thinkers on class and American politics.We discuss what Democrats still misunderstand about working-class voters, why working-class values matter more than working-class aesthetics, and what politicians like Andy Beshear and John Ossoff are doing differently. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.Back in December, I invited Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution onto the podcast to talk about the developing conflict between the United States and Venezuela. At the time, we were discussing the possibility of being at war with Venezuela by the midterms, and I asked Michael whether it could become the next Iraq. He said no. And he was right.It turns out I just got the country wrong.Seven months later, we find ourselves in a quagmire in Iran. Of course, it’s an exaggeration to compare it to Iraq at this point. There’s been no ground invasion, and five months is not nine years. But we are in another war of choice in the Middle East that has not gone as intended.After a 12-week ceasefire, during which the fighting never entirely stopped, Iran’s attacks on commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz prompted the United States to launch what is now a 12-day campaign of strikes. In the latest escalation, Iranian attacks on U.S. bases have killed four American service members and injured more than 100.So where does the war go from here? What has the United States actually accomplished? And what would success even look like at this point?To answer those questions, I invited Michael O’Hanlon back onto the podcast. He is the Phil Knight Chair in Defense and Strategy at the Brookings Institution and the author of To Dare Mighty Things: U.S. Defense Strategy Since the Revolution.

Democrats’ messy internal politics are on full display as we enter the final stretch of primary season.The marquee event is Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary. Over the weekend, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez campaigned across the state with Abdul El-Sayed. Haley Stevens, meanwhile, argued that Sanders was nowhere to be found when she was working with President Obama on the auto bailout, and enters the final weeks of the campaign with a 12-to-1 advantage in television spending.In Maine, former state Senate president Troy Jackson became the presumptive Democratic nominee to replace Graham Platner on the Senate ballot. A longtime Sanders supporter, Jackson was widely seen as the clearest heir to the movement Platner built before leaving the race.And on Tuesday, Arizona voters will decide a hotly contested Democratic primary in the 1st Congressional District, one of the most competitive House seats in the country.On today’s episode, we break down all three contests. We also make sense of President Trump’s primetime address on election security and examine how the White House is trying to shape both the administration of the midterms and public confidence in the results.Joining me are Mary Radcliffe, head of research at FiftyPlusOne, and Nathaniel Rakich, managing editor of Votebeat. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.A hot new model has entered the villa! (Shout-out to Love Island fans.)On today’s episode, Geoffrey Skelley of Decision Desk HQ joins me to walk through DDHQ’s new 2026 midterm forecast model, why it gives Democrats the advantage in the House, and why election forecasters disagree so sharply about the size of that advantage.We also check in on two big upcoming primaries. In Michigan, new and conflicting polling has injected fresh uncertainty into the Democratic Senate primary between Haley Stevens and Abdul El-Sayed. In Arizona, Rep. Andy Biggs appears to be cruising toward the Republican nomination for governor and a general-election matchup against the not-particularly-popular Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs.Then we turn to two unusual Senate contests in which both parties are scrambling to replace candidates on the ballot this fall. In South Carolina, Republicans are preparing for a new primary following the sudden death of Sen. Lindsey Graham. In Maine, Democrats will choose a replacement nominee at a party convention after Graham Platner withdrew from the race.Skelley joins me to examine both contests and what history tells us about the prospects for replacement candidates.

Some of the episodes that have gotten the strongest response since launching GD POLITICS have been about politics outside the United States — the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, and Ireland.I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe it’s because international politics is an underserved beat in American media. Maybe people are exhausted by a decade of Trump-dominated news, but still enjoy following politics, making a trip abroad a welcome change of pace. Or maybe my own curiosity comes through in those conversations. I’ve found that when I’m genuinely excited to learn about something, it usually makes for a better show. Or perhaps, more cynically, it’s nice to hear that other countries’ politics are messed up too. We in America are not alone.Whatever the reason, it’s something that I want to keep doing, and it’s what we’re doing today, because there’s been some big election news across the pond lately.Last week, French right-wing populist Marine Le Pen was cleared to run for president in next year’s election after a court shortened her five-year ban on running for office for misusing European Union funds. The same day, she announced her candidacy.In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced his resignation as prime minister late last month. Nominations are currently open to replace him as Labour leader, and only one candidate has emerged: former mayor of Manchester Andy Burnham.If he remains uncontested, he could be declared leader of the party as soon as this Friday and become prime minister the following Monday. This is all happening just two years after Labour won the third-largest majority in the party’s history.With me to make sense of it all, and to meander into conversations about the World Cup, NATO, and air conditioning, is our European correspondent, Lenny Bronner. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.We’ve gotten some dramatic updates since the last time we discussed the state of the 2026 midterms. Chief among them is, of course, that Graham Platner announced he’ll drop out of the Maine Senate race after he was accused of rape. He denies the allegations.The Maine Democratic Party now has until July 27 to replace him on the ballot. It plans on hosting a convention of about 600 delegates made up of local party officials from around the state. The party’s executive director suggested candidates may need to collect signatures from voters in order to be eligible at the convention.On today’s episode, election forecasters Lakshya Jain of The Argument and Zachary Donnini of VoteHub join me to discuss how Platner’s departure will shake up the fight for control of the Senate. Both of their forecasts suggest it will improve Democrats’ odds in Maine, but that may not be enough to make them favorites to control the chamber.Maine also isn’t the only must-win Senate seat for Democrats that’s recently been in flux. In Michigan, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow dropped out of the Democratic primary last Sunday, leaving a two-person race between establishment-backed Haley Stevens and progressive-backed Abdul El-Sayed. They faced off in a debate this week and will face off on the ballot next month.We discuss the dynamics of that race and the ideological divides within the party more broadly. We also ask what lessons Democrats — both progressives and the establishment — can learn from what just happened in Maine.

I hope everyone is recovering nicely from their July 4th hangover. At 250 — hell, at 35 — those things aren’t single-day affairs anymore.Today’s episode is a conversation I had with Adrian Wooldridge about his new book, “The Revolutionary Center: The Lost Genius of Liberalism.” Adrian is the global business columnist at Bloomberg and was previously the political editor at The Economist.To be honest, I had intended to air this conversation in the run-up to our semiquincentennial. After all, the Declaration of Independence may well be the most famous liberal document ever written.But as the calendar worked out, our last episode before the Fourth was a paid episode, and I thought this conversation was a worthwhile listen for the wider GD universe. (Although, of course, if you appreciate this podcast, I encourage you to become a paid subscriber👇️) So I’m publishing it now, for folks to chew on as we return from the weekend’s celebrations.The word “liberal” gets thrown around a lot. It’s used to poke fun at the left (”resistance libs”) or chastise the right (”neolibs”), and in American politics today, it’s not clear what it even means.Adrian clearly defines liberalism and lays out a forceful case for why it’s a worthwhile worldview today, despite some of its failures.We talk about who can be a liberal, according to Adrian, both socialists and nationalists, but not populists. We discuss where the ideas came from and how they developed over the centuries, and how liberalism addresses the challenges of today. It was an enlightening (pun intended) conversation, and I hope you appreciate it too. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.Happy 250th birthday, America! To mark the occasion, Gabe Fleisher of Wake Up To Politics joined me to run a full diagnostic on the republic as it wraps up its 250th year.First up: good data, bad data, or not data? Americans are about as interested in commemorating the country’s 250th birthday as they were in commemorating the bicentennial 50 years ago. But underneath that stable topline is a much more divided country. In 1976, Democrats and Republicans were roughly equally interested in the celebration. Today, Republicans are 33 points likelier than Democrats to say they want to commemorate the occasion.Then, a look back at a blockbuster Supreme Court term. The justices closed out the term by overturning two precedents: greenlighting presidential removal of independent agency officials in Trump v. Slaughter and lifting limits on party-candidate coordinated spending. They also rejected Trump’s reinterpretation of birthright citizenship. Gabe, who was in the courtroom when NPR briefly “retired” Justice Alito, explains why this is a conservative court but not a MAGA court.Congress, meanwhile, is on pace to be the least productive in modern history, and yet it just passed the first major housing package in 30 years with veto-proof majorities. Will Trump accept yes for an answer? And will the housing bill become law regardless?Finally, the latest New York Times polls show Senate races in North Carolina, Maine, Texas, Ohio, Iowa, and Alaska all within the margin of error, even as majorities in nearly every one of those states call the Democratic Party too extreme. And a new Pew typology survey finds that beneath our 50-50 stalemate, Americans hold supermajority positions on issue after issue. We’re emotionally polarized (see the feelings about our semiquincentennial above). Ideologically? Not so much.I hope everyone has a nice Independence Day. We’ll see you in year 251!

Shortly before we started taping today’s episode, the Supreme Court handed down decisions in a couple of cases we’ve been watching.In Watson v. RNC, the court ruled that ballots postmarked by Election Day can still be counted after Election Day in states where that is legal. Nathaniel Rakich of Votebeat explains why the ruling preserves the status quo in more than a dozen states and why Donald Trump is unlikely to stop attacking late-arriving mail ballots anytime soon.We also discuss another pair of decisions involving independent agencies. The court allowed Trump to fire Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, but said Federal Reserve member Lisa Cook could remain in her job while she challenges her firing. That suggests the court may be willing to expand presidential control over many independent regulators while treating the Fed as a special case.Then we turn to the Trump administration’s deal with Iran. Mary Radcliffe of FiftyPlusOne walks us through the polling on the agreement, which shows that Americans generally support efforts to end the war, but are much less sure that the deal will actually work. That leads us into a broader conversation about the national political environment, whether the generic ballot has really tightened, and what a new New York Times poll of the Maine Senate race tells us about the race between Graham Platner and Susan Collins.Finally, in Good Data, Bad Data or Not Data, we look at a Washington Post analysis arguing that prediction markets are well calibrated. The verdict: not so fast. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.As we suggested might happen on Monday’s episode, this week’s primaries in New York City launched a narrative war over the Democratic Party: Is Mamdani now a Democratic kingmaker? Is the socialist left the future of the party? And are we witnessing a Democratic version of the Tea Party?On today’s episode, Mary Radcliffe of FiftyPlusOne and Nathaniel Rakich of Votebeat join me to debate that last question.First, we try to define what the Tea Party actually was. Was it an ideological movement aimed at enacting conservative policy on taxes, spending, and health care? Was it simply an anti-establishment backlash? And was the election of Donald Trump the nail in the coffin for the Tea Party or its crowning achievement?Then we ask whether anything similar is happening now on the left. Nathaniel makes the case that Democrats are seeing the beginnings of a Tea Party-style insurgency. Mary is more skeptical, pointing out that the socialist left remains a relatively small faction of the party.We also talk about where the comparison may be strongest. The Tea Party’s power was not just that it won primaries. It was that it changed what Republican politicians felt they had to say and do. On the Democratic side, the clearest example may be Israel and Palestine, where candidates backed by pro-Israel groups are facing increasing scrutiny in Democratic primaries.Give it a listen and let us know in the comments where you come down!

New York City is not America. It is denser, younger, more renter-heavy and more ideologically left than the country as a whole.But that does not mean its politics are irrelevant to the national Democratic Party. In fact, this week’s congressional primaries in New York may offer a preview of several fights Democrats are likely to have between now and 2028.On today’s episode of the GD POLITICS podcast, politics writer Michael Lange joins me to make the case that Tuesday’s primaries are, in some ways, a dress rehearsal for the next Democratic presidential primary.We talk about the battle between socialists and progressives in New York’s 7th Congressional District, where a retiring Nydia Velázquez has opened up one of the youngest and bluest seats in the country. We also discuss the challenge to Rep. Adriano Espaillat in New York’s 13th District, where questions of race, ideology, Israel-Palestine and incumbency are all colliding.Then we turn to the race to replace Jerry Nadler in New York’s 12th District, one of the best-educated and most politically engaged places in the country, where the politics of artificial intelligence have become central. And we look at Dan Goldman’s primary challenge from Brad Lander in New York’s 10th District, where AIPAC, local political roots and the post-Mamdani left all loom large.Finally, we head north of the city to New York’s 17th Congressional District, one of the most important battleground seats in the country, where Democrats are deciding what kind of candidate they want to put up against Republican Rep. Mike Lawler.The big question running through all of this: Are these races revealing where the Democratic Party is headed, or are they mostly telling us about the strange and specific politics of New York? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.Today’s episode is a long-overdue listener mailbag, which means we’re getting into some of the great questions that have been piling up in the paid-subscriber chat.For example, how do likely voter models actually work? Do people really move abroad because of politics, or is that mostly just something people say after an election doesn’t go their way? Could a senator switching parties ever change control of Congress? Are prediction markets headed for a steady stream of insider-trading scandals? And at what point does an unpopular president start losing control of his own party in Congress?There are also some more election-specific questions: whether Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo is one of the most endangered incumbents in the country, what makes Rob Sand a viable Democratic candidate in Iowa, how much the latest round of redistricting could shift the House map toward Republicans, and what history’s highest-turnout midterm might tell us about the political moment we’re living through now.Plus, we answer a question about recently ousted Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who, by the way, co-authored the legislation that made Juneteenth a federal holiday. A listener wanted to know whether he’ll seek retribution in his final months before retirement.This episode is also a bit different from usual: it’s just me, solo, doing my best talk-radio impression and answering as many of your questions as I can before my voice gives out.Thanks, as always, to everyone who submitted questions in the paid-subscriber chat. We didn’t get to all of them, which means we’ll have to do this again soon!

We are four and a half months out from Election Day 2026, which means forecast season is officially beginning.On today’s episode of the GD POLITICS podcast, I spoke with two election forecasters whose models are beginning to shape how we understand the midterms: Lakshya Jain, head of political data at The Argument and CEO of Split Ticket, and Zachary Donnini, head of data science at VoteHub.VoteHub’s midterm forecast is officially live, but Split Ticket’s is set to publish later this week, meaning listeners are getting an exclusive preview of the work Lakshya has been doing.The forecasts agree on the big picture: Democrats are favored to win the House, while the Senate is close to a toss-up, with Republicans holding a slight edge. But under the hood, the models diverge in meaningful ways.VoteHub gives Democrats a 72 percent chance of winning the House, while The Argument/Split Ticket puts the odds at 90 percent. The biggest reason is how the two models treat the national political environment. VoteHub’s model is built around a Democratic advantage of about seven points on the generic ballot. The Argument/Split Ticket model, relying in part on its own likely-voter polling, sees something closer to a nine-point Democratic environment.The two also differ on whether to incorporate prediction markets. VoteHub does, though Zach emphasized that Kalshi markets are weighted lightly in low-volume House races and more heavily in higher-volume Senate races. His argument is that prediction markets can sometimes pick up information before polls do, especially from late-breaking scandals or meaningful early-vote data.Lakshya is more skeptical. He sees value in prediction markets, but worries about feedback loops and overreactions.The Senate picture is even more interesting. The two forecasts are almost identical at the chamber level: VoteHub gives Republicans a 55 percent chance of retaining the Senate, while The Argument/Split Ticket puts it at 53 percent.But the race-level forecasts differ substantially. In Georgia, VoteHub gives Sen. Jon Ossoff an 87 percent chance of winning reelection. The Argument/Split Ticket puts him at 98 percent. Lakshya argues that Georgia is simply not red enough, especially in a Democratic-leaning national environment, to justify treating Ossoff as vulnerable. Zach agrees Ossoff is favored, but his model is more cautious because it adjusts for the possibility that competitive states in 2024 were artificially bluer than their underlying partisanship.Other divergences tell us a lot about how forecasting works. In Michigan, Lakshya said he thinks VoteHub’s forecast is probably better than his own, because early polling suggests Democrats may not be as strong there as his fundamentals-heavy model currently implies. In Florida, Zach said Lakshya’s model may be capturing something VoteHub is not: the continued Republican strength among Florida’s older and Hispanic voters.That was the spirit of the whole conversation. Lakshya and Zach are not dueling forecasters, but friends with different ideas about what inputs to use in a model. And that may be the most useful takeaway. Forecasts are not magic. They are structured arguments about what matters, what data should count and how uncertain we should be.In 2026, those arguments point to a Democratic edge in the House, a highly competitive Senate and a midterm that could determine whether Trump spends the final two years of his presidency constrained by Congress or empowered by it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.On today’s podcast, Nate Silver joins me to talk about the Maine Senate race, the political fallout of the war in Iran, and much more. Nate had some spicy takes, as you’ll hear.The Maine primary is now completed, and with 80 percent of the expected vote tallied, Platner received 72 percent of the vote. Although Janet Mills had already dropped out of the race, her name remained on the ballot and she received 20 percent. Call it a protest vote.On paper, Maine should be one of Democrats’ best Senate pickup opportunities this cycle. It’s a blue-leaning state in a Democratic-leaning national environment. But after a series of personal controversies, Platner’s campaign has become something more complicated: a test of how much candidate quality and character matter in an era of strong partisanship.Nate makes the case that, for the good of the Democratic Party, Platner should drop out. I play devil’s advocate and ask whether Democrats are likely to rally around him anyway once he becomes inevitable.We also discuss the political risk of a quagmire after the United States’ renewed strikes on Iran in retaliation for a downed Apache helicopter. If the war drags on, and inflation continues to rise, it could shape the midterms more than any one candidate’s scandals.Then we turn to California, where the slow vote count in the Los Angeles mayoral race has once again raised questions about election administration in the country’s largest state. Nate argues that taking this long to count votes is itself a problem, especially when distrust in elections is already so easy to exploit.Lastly, since this is a conversation with Nate, we end with a forecast model. Nate walks through what went into his World Cup forecast: things like national GDP and the total market value of a team’s players, and how similar it is to building a presidential forecast model. We also talk about what building the model taught him about the promise and limits of AI.

While I was in Dublin recently, I sat down with Hugh Linehan of The Irish Times’ Inside Politics podcast to talk about Irish and American politics. We start with a question that gets asked frequently about Ireland: Why hasn’t right-wing populism taken off there?Across much of Europe and the English-speaking world, the populist right has become a major political force. Donald Trump reshaped the Republican Party in the United States. Brexit transformed British politics. Marine Le Pen’s party has become a central player in France. Far-right or right-populist parties have broken through in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, and elsewhere.Ireland, so far, has been different.There are anti-immigration activists, small right-wing parties and some independent politicians trying to occupy that space. But Ireland has not had the kind of durable, mass right-populist breakthrough that has become familiar elsewhere.Hugh and I talk through some of the possible reasons why. Ireland is not living through the same kind of decline narrative that has fueled populism in other countries. In many ways, the country is more prosperous and globally successful than it has ever been. Its experience with immigration is also more recent and distinct from countries like the United States, Britain, and France. And Sinn Féin may occupy some of the political terrain that, in other countries, has been claimed by the populist right: nationalist, anti-establishment, rooted in working-class and rural communities — but on the left.From there, we get into the bigger Irish story: the country’s remarkable economic rise, its dependence on a small number of large American companies for corporate tax revenue, the strange politics of neutrality and defense, and what it means for a small country to rely so heavily on the kindness, or at least the continued cooperation, of larger powers.Then Hugh turns the tables and asks me about the United States: gerrymandering, the Voting Rights Act, the two-party system, primaries, Trump, and where the root of America’s political dysfunction lies.It was a fun and wide-ranging conversation about two very different countries that share some important history. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.Democrats entered the 2026 cycle with a difficult Senate map and a familiar hope: maybe Maine would be the race that helped them claw their way toward a majority.But after this week, that picture is getting more complicated. Iowa, a state Donald Trump won by double digits, is suddenly demanding more attention. And Maine, a state Kamala Harris carried comfortably, is looking messier than Democrats would like.On this installment of the podcast, I’m joined by Mary Radcliffe of 50+1 and Jacob Rubashkin of Inside Elections to react to the June 2 primaries in Iowa, California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, and South Dakota.In Iowa, Democrats got their preferred Senate nominee. Josh Turek, a state representative and Paralympic gold medalist, beat Zach Wahls by a wide margin. Turek will now face Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson in what could become one of the most important Senate races of the cycle.The state has moved sharply right in recent years, but Democrats have reason to think the political environment could put it back on the map. Rob Sand, the Democratic nominee for governor, has led in the limited polling we have. And on the Republican side of the governor’s race, the GOP primary produced a surprise: Trump-backed Rep. Randy Feenstra lost narrowly to MAHA-aligned businessman Zach Lahn, who was a major investor in — depending on your level of generosity — either a medical technology company or a sex-toy company.We also check in on California, where slow vote-counting means several major races are still unresolved; Montana, where Democrats are trying to navigate an independent Senate bid; New Jersey, where a key House race is taking shape amid Rep. Tom Kean Jr.’s continued absence from public view; and South Dakota, where Republicans are headed to a historically unusual gubernatorial runoff.Lastly, we circle back to Maine, where Graham Platner’s steady drip of controversies has some Democrats asking whether Iowa might now be a cleaner, more promising part of the Senate map.

On today’s podcast, I’m back from vacation and joined by Mary Radcliffe of 50+1 and Jacob Rubashkin of Inside Elections to catch up on everything I missed while I was away.We start in Maine, where Graham Platner’s Senate campaign is disputing the number of women he sexted with — a dozen or half a dozen? Platner has already weathered a series of damaging stories about his past, and so far, Democratic primary voters do not seem especially moved. But it’s unclear how the broader electorate will react to the steady drip of scandal.Then we turn to Texas, where Ken Paxton is officially the Republican nominee for Senate against Democrat James Talarico. Paxton comes with his own baggage and a much weaker fundraising operation, though a hotly contested primary against John Cornyn may be suppressing his current polling against Talarico. We’re waiting for the dust to settle.We also discuss the DNC’s unfinished 2024 autopsy report, which was both incomplete and revealing. The report omitted some of the biggest questions about the 2024 campaign: Joe Biden’s age, the debate, the way Kamala Harris became the nominee, Gaza, and the broader failures of Biden’s presidency. So, does the Democratic Party actually want to understand what went wrong?Then we preview Tuesday’s primaries for California governor and L.A. mayor, both of which have three candidates polling in the twenties. Given the state’s top-two system, it’s unclear who will advance to the general election: one Democrat and one Republican, or two Democrats? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.Jerome Powell’s tenure at the Federal Reserve is over. His eight-year run included the COVID crash, emergency monetary rescue, the return of serious inflation, the fastest rate hikes in decades and a long political fight over the Fed’s independence.With Fed leadership in transition, it’s a good time to ask a much bigger question: Who really controls the U.S. dollar? And how almighty is it?Brendan Greeley’s new book, The Almighty Dollar: 500 Years of the World’s Most Powerful Money, argues that the dollar is older and less American than most Americans realize. The United States didn’t really invent it. And, in some important ways, it has never fully controlled it.That may sound heady. But these are live questions right now. The U.S. is dealing with renewed inflation pressure, global frustration with American power, the rise of alternative currencies, and a China that would very much like a world less dependent on U.S. money.Brendan joins the podcast to talk about the past, present and future of the dollar: why so many dollars are created outside the United States, how America’s ability to borrow almost without limit has shaped our politics, and whether dollar dominance is actually good for the country.

To some eyes, the Supreme Court faces a legitimacy crisis. Favorable views of the court are hovering around historic lows. Just 40-some percent of Americans have a positive view of the institution, down from 60 percent or more in 2020. And views by party are, predictably, sharply divided, with Democratic approval in the 20s.As the country has become more polarized, and the court has become more decidedly dominated by Republican appointees, there is an increasing sense that a branch that describes itself as above politics is, in fact, plenty political — and aligned with Republicans.This has led to suggestions, largely on the left, but not exclusively, for changing the court: packing it with more members, instituting term limits, or establishing an enforceable code of ethics.But today’s guest argues that folks should slow their roll. She argues that the court isn’t as partisan as it’s made out to be, and that it’s in fact the only branch of government that the Founders would have any hope of recognizing today.Sarah Isgur makes the case in her new book, Last Branch Standing: A Potentially Surprising, Occasionally Witty Journey Inside Today’s Supreme Court. She joins the podcast to argue that the court is less partisan, more functional and more constitutionally recognizable than its critics allow. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.We’ve got a jam-packed election update episode for you today.In Tuesday night’s primaries, Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie lost to Trump-backed challenger Ed Gallrein. Massie did much better than other Republicans who have crossed Trump, but he still went down by 10 points.Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms won the Democratic primary for Georgia governor outright, while Republicans will head to runoffs in both the governor’s race and the race to take on Sen. Jon Ossoff this fall.Looking ahead to next week, Trump has finally endorsed in the Texas Senate runoff, backing Ken Paxton after seemingly being ready to endorse Sen. John Cornyn months ago. The betting markets now have a general election against James Talarico looking like a pure toss-up. We talk about why Trump settled on Paxton, despite the conventional wisdom that he would be a weaker general election candidate, and how loyalty matters inside the GOP as Trump loses ground with the broader electorate.We also dig into some of the June 2 primaries. We see you, California! And Iowa, and New Jersey, and let’s not forget Montana. Lastly, we check in on where the redistricting wars stand after the Supreme Court’s decision in Callais.With me to do it all is Jacob Rubashkin, deputy editor of Inside Elections.

As I was sorting through polls last Friday, preparing for Monday’s podcast recording, I started thinking, “Hmm, Trump’s approval is looking bad. Like, a new level of bad. It’s probably time to talk about it.” Across the polling averages, Trump seemed to be nearing, or already at, the worst numbers of his second term.And like clockwork, in case we needed any further confirmation, The New York Times released its latest Trump approval poll on Monday morning. The headline: “Just 37 percent of Americans approve of his performance as president… his lowest approval rating in any Times/Siena survey in either term.”Nate Cohn went on to write that, “while recent presidencies have often been unpopular and polarizing, no president’s approval rating has been under 38 percent [in the average] for more than a few days in the last 17 years.”So today we talk about that, and a whole lot more.Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy lost his primary on Saturday after Trump endorsed against him. With Cassidy’s departure, only three of the 17 Republicans who backed Trump’s second impeachment might remain after 2026. And two of them, Susan Collins and David Valadao, are fighting for their political lives.We also preview Tuesday night’s primaries in Georgia, Kentucky and Pennsylvania. In Georgia, Republicans are choosing a challenger to Sen. Jon Ossoff, while both parties are picking their nominees for governor. In Kentucky, it’s another test of Trump loyalty inside the GOP.And finally, for the wonks, we’ve got a dispatch from this year’s big polling conference: the American Association for Public Opinion Research. Joining me after attending the conference are Mary Radcliffe, head of research at FiftyPlusOne, and Nathaniel Rakich, managing editor at Votebeat. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comA quick note: If you’re not already a paid subscriber, now’s a great time to sign up. Annual subscriptions are currently 20 percent off, which comes out to just $5 a month for twice as many episodes, access to live shows like this one, and more. Come join the crew!The GD POLITICS podcast returned to the Comedy Cellar this week with Nate Silver and Clare Malone for another sold-out night of political analysis, games, audience questions, and jokes that were, as always, purely incidental.We started with “Hot Take Hat,” pulling buzzy topics at random and giving them the treatment they deserved — from Labour’s meltdown in the U.K. and the global incumbency curse, to Hantavirus panic, Trump’s Iran war, inflation, and the apparently urgent matter of the White House ballroom.Then we turned to the 2026 midterms, where the redistricting wars have taken another turn. After rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court and the Virginia Supreme Court, what once looked like a possible Democratic counteroffensive is now likely to net out in Republicans’ favor. We talked about how much the new maps could shift the House playing field, the politics of gerrymandering and the Voting Rights Act, and the eternal question: Do voters care about any of this, or just the price of gas?Finally, we debuted a new game: “True or False: Crosstab Diving Edition.” Clare, Nate, and the audience guessed their way through some of the quirkiest and most revealing findings buried inside recent polls — including whether Democrats think an average 8-year-old boy could beat Donald Trump in a fight, which age and gender groups have swung hardest against Trump, and what Americans really think about AI, marijuana, and bisexuality.Catch the full episode for hot takes, warped maps, cursed crosstabs, and a reminder that American politics remains, somehow, both very serious and worthy of laughter.

Heads up: We’ve got a live show at the Comedy Cellar in New York City with Nate Silver and Clare Malone coming up on May 13. We’ll talk about the midterms and the Trump administration, play some games, and take questions from the audience. Grab a ticket, grab a beer, and come join us!Just about every institution in America has taken a reputational beating this century. And still, the speed and severity with which Americans have turned on the public health establishment remain striking.In March 2020, when COVID began disrupting American life in earnest, 85 percent of Americans said they trusted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as an information source. Today, six years later, that figure is 47 percent. Republicans were the first to lose faith, dropping to around 40 percent during Biden’s tenure, but Democrats have largely caught up during Trump’s second term.For public health folks, this is an existential threat. If they can’t be trusted, their information can’t persuade, and public health itself becomes more of an academic exercise than an effort to save lives. The current hantavirus outbreak is a stark reminder of the stakes.It’s easy to blame bad-faith actors for the bind public health now finds itself in. But it’s also hard to have lived through the past six years without a sense that experts have helped bring some of this on themselves. In fact, they’re increasingly acknowledging as much and setting out to course correct.Sandro Galea, dean of the School of Public Health at Washington University in St. Louis, and Salma Abdalla, a professor at WashU’s School of Public Health, have launched a yearlong project called Purple Public Health, which aims to rebuild credibility with Americans of all stripes. (Sandro came on the podcast last year to talk about MAHA, so he may sound familiar.)I’m excited to have them on today’s podcast to talk about their work — not just because it matters on its own terms, but also because there’s probably something for all of us to learn about earning credibility in a polarized world. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.When we first started talking about prediction markets in the early days of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, back in 2016, they were something of a novelty and a joke.My then-colleague Clare Malone once quipped, “Who’s even putting money on these markets … Scottish teenagers?” From then on, we referred to online bettors as Scottish teens.Back then, the prediction markets that got the most attention were Betfair, based in the U.K., and PredictIt, based in New Zealand. Both took off in terms of volume and media attention during Brexit and Trump’s first election. But after 2016, PredictIt got bogged down in regulatory drama, and Betfair was largely inaccessible to Americans. In their place, Kalshi and Polymarket became the main characters in the American prediction market story.Today, prediction markets are no longer much of a novelty or a joke.Recently, an active-duty U.S. Army soldier was charged with using classified information for personal gain after he made more than $400,000 betting on Maduro’s ouster on Polymarket. He was allegedly involved in planning and executing Maduro’s capture.Betting trends point to potentially similar insider knowledge being used in Iran War prediction markets in February and March of this year. And Israeli prosecutors filed indictments against an Israel Defense Forces reservist and a civilian for allegedly using classified military intelligence to bet on Polymarket in the run-up to strikes on Iran last summer.The list goes on. Kalshi suspended three American political candidates for insider trading after an internal probe found they had bet on their own campaigns. Weather instruments at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris appear to have been tampered with in order to rapidly increase the temperature — perhaps with a lighter or hair dryer — and cash in on a weather prediction contract.As things stand, prediction markets seem likely to keep growing in popularity and media attention. On Polymarket, more than half a billion dollars has already been wagered on the outcome of the 2028 presidential election. One estimate suggests that total volume across prediction markets could reach $1 trillion annually by 2030.Meanwhile, lawmakers in Washington and the states are increasingly talking about cracking down on the markets, and state attorneys general have been filing lawsuits.So today, we’re diving into the messy world of prediction markets: their history, how they work, the arguments for and against them, how they’re regulated, and what their future holds.Joining me is Jacob Studwell, growth and engagement officer at PredictIt — home of the Scottish teens.

Heads up: We’ve got a live show at the Comedy Cellar in New York City with Nate Silver and Clare Malone coming up on May 13. We’ll talk about the midterms and the Trump administration, play some games, and take questions from the audience. Grab a ticket, grab a beer, and come join us!The Senate map is coming into focus. Maine Gov. Janet Mills dropped out of the Democratic primary last week, leaving former Marine and oyster farmer Graham Platner as the presumptive Democratic nominee against Sen. Susan Collins.Mills was trailing Platner by 30 points on average before she dropped out. Meanwhile, Platner — despite no shortage of early scandals, including the infamous Nazi tattoo and online writings that ranged from calling rural whites racist and stupid to asking why Black people don’t tip — was raking in cash and rallying voters. It was a poor showing for Mills herself, but also for the establishment that drafted her to run in the first place.On today’s podcast, Sahil Kapur of NBC News joins me to discuss what the truncated Maine primary tells us about the Democratic Party right now: the “Biden trauma tax,” the value of “authenticity,” and whether Democrats are experiencing something like their own Tea Party moment.We also survey the rest of the Senate map, from North Carolina and Alaska to Ohio and Texas, and ask which races are actually most likely to flip. Then we turn to Washington, where the longest partial government shutdown in history has ended and Trump’s war in Iran is testing the War Powers Act. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

Heads up: We’ve got a live show at the Comedy Cellar in New York City with Nate Silver and Clare Malone coming up on May 13. We’ll talk about the midterms and the Trump administration, play some games, and take questions from the audience. Grab a ticket, grab a beer, and come join us!The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday in Louisiana v. Callais, striking down Louisiana’s congressional map and significantly raising the bar for challenges under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.The decision was not the full doomsday scenario that some voting rights advocates feared. The Court did not strike down the Voting Rights Act altogether, nor did it say that race can never be considered in redistricting. But the 6-3 conservative majority did make it harder to prove that a map illegally dilutes minority voting power, especially in an era when race and party are so closely correlated.So where does the fight over gerrymandering go from here?Nathaniel Rakich of VoteBeat joined me to break down what the Court actually decided, how the ruling could affect the 2026 and 2028 House maps, and why the next phase of the redistricting wars may hinge less on the courts and more on federal legislation, constitutional amendments, or some future anti-politics reform movement. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

Heads up: We’ve got a live show at the Comedy Cellar in New York City with Nate Silver and Clare Malone coming up on May 13. We’ll talk about the midterms and the Trump administration, play some games, and take questions from the audience. Grab a ticket, grab a beer, and come join us!Tuesday marks one year since the Liberals won Canada’s federal election, securing Mark Carney as prime minister despite a Conservative victory looking like a foregone conclusion just months earlier.A year later, Carney’s popularity and power have only grown. His approval rating sits at about 60 percent, and after winning three by-elections earlier this month, the Liberals now govern with a majority in Parliament.The combination of Carney’s tack to the center and a backlash against American economic threats has transformed Canadian politics. Minor parties have been sidelined, new parts of the electorate have been absorbed into the Liberal coalition, and Canadians appear to be giving Carney the benefit of the doubt despite challenging economic circumstances.The biggest question for Liberals now is how long Canadians’ economic patience will last — and how long Trump’s influence will, too. Philippe Fournier of 338Canada and Éric Grenier of The Writ joined me to discuss it all. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.Virginia voters approved a gerrymander of their congressional map by a slim margin on Tuesday. As we discussed on Monday, the new map could elect 10 Democrats and just one Republican this fall, replacing the current delegation of six Democrats and five Republicans.It’s a dramatic turn in the mid-decade redistricting saga that began with Texas’s Republican gerrymander last summer. As things stand, Democrats could end up as the net beneficiaries of an effort initiated by President Trump.We dig into those results at the top of today’s podcast, then turn to the listener mailbag. We’ve been getting lots of great questions in the paid subscriber chat on Substack at gdpolitics.com. (A reminder to paid subscribers to take advantage of that!). I’ll start a new thread there so you can drop in questions whenever you like.Today’s questions cover the California governor’s race, whether candidate attractiveness affects election outcomes, that poll suggesting the Democratic Party is less popular than ICE and the GOP, whether MAGA identification has declined, and what to watch in the midterms — especially the Senate. We even get into the Nebraska race, which one listener argues deserves more attention.Joining me are Mary Radcliffe, head of research at FiftyPlusOne, and Lenny Bronner, senior data scientist at The Washington Post.

Heads up: We’ve got a live show at the Comedy Cellar in New York City with Nate Silver and Clare Malone coming up on May 13. We’ll talk about the midterms and the Trump administration, play some games, and take questions from the audience. Grab a ticket, grab a beer, and come join us!Virginians are heading to the polls on Tuesday to decide whether to redraw the state’s congressional map, part of Democrats’ response to Republicans’ push for mid-decade redistricting.If the measure passes, Virginia could go from a delegation of six Democrats and five Republicans to one with 10 Democrats and just one Republican. But that outcome is not yet certain: polling shows a closely divided public.In Florida, legislators are preparing for a special session next week to decide whether, and how, to redraw that state’s map. Recent Democratic overperformances, combined with a state constitution that bars partisan gerrymandering, make the politics there more complicated.Once Virginia and Florida settle on their paths forward, we should finally — in the middle of primary season — have a clearer sense of what the 2026 congressional map will look like.That’s our focus on today’s podcast. We also dig into broader questions around election administration, including Republicans’ push to pass the SAVE America Act, Trump’s executive orders, and decisions still pending at the Supreme Court.And we round things out with the latest midterm fundraising numbers and last week’s New Jersey special election. Joining me for all of it is Nathaniel Rakich, managing editor of Votebeat. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.Heads up: We’ve got a live show at the Comedy Cellar in New York City with Nate Silver and Clare Malone coming up on May 13. We’ll talk about the midterms and the Trump administration, play some games, and take questions from the audience. Grab a ticket, grab a beer, and come join us!Last November, friend of the pod David Byler joined me to argue that, while artificial intelligence was still on the periphery of politics, it wouldn’t stay there for long. The parties, he said, should prepare for disruption.Less than six months later, it feels almost silly to have ever imagined otherwise. Over the past few months, the Department of Defense has publicly clashed with Anthropic over how its models could be used in war. Anthropic, for its part, developed a model so powerful that it is now back in talks with the Trump administration about how to protect the nation from its own capabilities.At the same time, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders proposed a national moratorium on data center construction in response to local concerns about energy costs and broader AI skepticism. Just this week, Maine passed the first-ever statewide version of that idea, banning the buildout of large data centers through the end of 2027. Meanwhile, the White House has proposed federal legislation that would preempt such state laws, and 2028 hopefuls are beginning to stake out positions of their own.AI has officially entered the political mainstream.To mark its arrival, I invited David Byler back on the podcast. He is the vice president of trends and futures at National Research Group, and together we talk through how AI became a live political issue. We also ask whether the latest examples of AI polling, described in the New York Times op-ed “This Is What Will Ruin Public Opinion Polling for Good,” count as good data, bad data, or not data.

When we last checked in on the economy on the podcast, on February 23, Harvard economist Jason Furman said it looked like the U.S. had pulled off the first soft landing of the postwar era. Inflation was largely under control, the labor market was solid, and growth looked decent too.Five days later, the United States went to war with Iran, upending the global economy. Since then, oil is up about 50 percent, average gas prices have risen by more than a dollar, and inflation has followed suit. On Friday, March inflation came in at 3.3 percent over the past year and about 1 percent since February, the fastest pace of Trump’s second term.So today we’re taking stock of the American economy a month and a half into the conflict. In addition to inflation data, we’ve got new data on jobs (not bad), economic growth (not good), and consumer sentiment (not happy). Plus, taxes are due by Wednesday, so we are taking the opportunity to assess the country’s fiscal picture. (Happy Tax Day to all who celebrate!) And we also get into that alarming headline from the Times last week that read, “This Is Starting to Look Like a Slow-Motion Bank Run.”Joining me is Martha Gimbel, executive director and co-founder of the Budget Lab at Yale University. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.Where do we begin? Tuesday gave us plenty of election results worth digging into. In Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, Democrats turned in their biggest overperformance in a special House election since 2024, in the race to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene. Republicans still won, but by a margin 25 points more Democratic than the district’s baseline.And then there was Wisconsin, where the liberal candidate for the state Supreme Court won by — checks notes — 20 points. Twenty points, in a statewide race, in the consummate swing state. There are caveats, which we’ll get into, but taken together, it’s an unnerving picture for Republicans.Speaking of unnerving pictures, this is our first episode since President Trump threatened to kill “a whole civilization” early Tuesday and then, by day’s end, agreed to a ceasefire with Iran. We recorded this Wednesday afternoon, when a lot was still in flux, so some of the details may have changed by the time you hear this.At the moment, even the contours of the ceasefire are murky. Is the Strait of Hormuz actually open? Is an end to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon part of the deal? Have strikes in the Gulf really stopped? And that’s before you get to the longer-term problem: the American and Iranian visions for any lasting agreement still seem fundamentally incompatible.Politically, incompatible narratives are emerging too. The White House is claiming victory over a severely diminished Iranian military. But the regime is still in place, Iran still has its enriched uranium, and it now appears to have a say — and even a financial stake — in who passes through the Strait of Hormuz.Also on the docket today: the election this Sunday in Hungary and a “Good Data, Bad Data or Not Data” question on polling showing Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger floundering in approval polls after winning by 15 points last fall.With me to talk about all of it are Mary Radcliffe, head of research at FiftyPlusOne, and Lenny Bronner, senior data scientist at The Washington Post.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.President Trump’s approval rating now sits just below 40 percent, according to the Silver Bulletin average. That makes for a good headline, but it’s still well above the zone presidents reach when things truly fall apart. Both Bushes saw their approval sink into the mid-to-high twenties during their time in office, as did Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon.And while approval in the high thirties to low forties is politically dangerous, it does not necessarily herald the kind of sea change that produced the Watergate reforms or the Reagan Revolution.For most of Trump’s decade in the political spotlight, the conventional wisdom has been that he is sui generis. No matter the controversy, the thinking goes, he will retain a base of support strong enough to keep his approval from falling to the levels reached by America’s least popular presidents.In light of the political backlash to the ongoing conflict in Iran, Nate Silver and I took to Substack Live to ask whether that wisdom will hold in Trump’s second term. We also talked about the midterms, the Democrats, and plenty more. Nate even shared when he plans to launch his midterm forecast, plus what Elon Musk called him in their latest beef 😬.

On today’s podcast, we’re taking a break from American politics and diving into the seemingly consensus-driven — but in reality quite messy — politics of Japan.I spoke with Kenneth Mori McElwain, a professor of comparative politics at the University of Tokyo, on the final day of my two-week trip to Japan. It was a welcome chance to step off the American news-cycle hamster wheel and use the time to get a sense Japanese politics.The stereotype of Japanese politics is that it is staid and steady, conservative in both the capital-“C” and lowercase-“c” meanings of the word. The conservative party, the Liberal Democratic Party, has governed Japan for 66 of the 70 years it has existed. But even with this apparent political consensus, a bias for the status quo has made it difficult, at times, to tackle big questions.The LDP remains in power today, but Japanese politics has not felt especially staid or steady lately. Last month, Sanae Takaichi, the country’s first female prime minister, secured the largest majority in Japan’s postwar history — a two-thirds supermajority in the lower house. That came less than two years after scandal cost the LDP 28 percent of its seats and forced it into minority government.Now Takaichi is confronting a daunting set of problems. Japan has finally emerged from decades of deflation, but wages have not kept pace with rising prices, contributing to a cost-of-living crisis. While I was visiting, gas prices hit a record high.At the same time, Japan’s pacifist constitution is once again a live political issue. Drafted during the U.S. occupation after World War II, it renounced Japan’s right to wage war. In its 80-year history, it has never been amended, making it the world’s longest-lived unamended national constitution. Takaichi says she wants to change that.Japan also famously faces a rapidly aging population. Takaichi has promised to deliver economic growth, while maintaining tough limits on immigration and avoiding a further expansion of the national debt.And that is before getting to some of the country’s other high-profile cultural debates, including whether women should be allowed to become reigning empresses and whether married couples should be allowed to keep separate surnames. At the moment, the answer to both is no and Takaichi wants to keep it that way.The big question facing Takaichi at the moment is whether she can translate her sky-high popularity into tangible results for the Japanese people. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

I am back from Japan and I hope you enjoyed the evergreen conversations we published while I was away. Today it’s back to the news cycle, although in a somewhat different format.I’d planned on getting up to speed on the news I missed and talking to Nathaniel Rakich and Mary Radcliffe about it. However, when I woke up from an in-flight nap on Saturday, Nathaniel and Mary had messaged me telling me that they had planned the whole podcast already and that it would be best if I didn’t go on twitter or read up on the news ahead of time. Just show up and turn the show over to them.So (and this is how much I trust them) that is what we did on today’s podcast. I relinquished hosting duties to Mary and Nathaniel and they quizzed me on the twists and turns of the past two weeks. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.Democrats are in the midst of an intraparty debate over how to win their way out of the wilderness. There are arguments about ideology, strategy, identity, and more. And while these debates always feel urgent for the party out of power, they are, at the very least, not new.Parties and politicians have been trying to figure out how to shore up their vulnerabilities, enhance their strengths, and fight another day for just about as long as representative politics have existed. Today we are going to focus on one such instance. We’re looking back at late-20th-century Nevada and the beginnings of a political machine built by former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.It’s the subject of a new book by CEO of the Nevada Independent Jon Ralston, titled, “The Game Changer: How Harry Reid Remade the Rules and Showed Democrats How to Fight.”

If you’ve spent time reading think pieces on the internet during the past handful of years, you might have come across the following ideas: first, that American men are suffering from a loneliness epidemic and, second, that conservatives are happier than liberals.If you aren’t familiar with these takes, then you probably aren’t online enough to experience the sad loneliness of the American male liberal, so please carry on as you were. I joke, I joke.In any case, these ideas have caught on enough that friend of the pod Lakshya Jain — a machine learning engineer by day and head of political data at The Argument in his spare time — wanted to do more research into what differences actually exist across the political spectrum and between men and women.In this episode, he breaks down what he found and also gets into his latest research on affordability and whether Americans are lying to pollsters about how much they read. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.Depending on who you ask, we’re either living through a moment that feels totally unprecedented or alarmingly familiar.Today’s guest argues it’s alarmingly familiar: great powers jostling for influence, nationalism on the rise, trade and technology turning into weapons, and festering conflicts with the potential to spiral.In his new book, “The Coming Storm: Power, Conflict, and Warnings from History,” Yale historian Odd Arne Westad compares today’s geopolitical landscape to the decades leading up to World War I.A hundred-plus years ago, the world looked modern, interconnected, and — at least to many people — too prosperous and rational for a major war. Then, in a matter of weeks, a localized conflict became a continent-wide crisis that ended in 40 million casualties.The percentage of people alive today who have experienced great power conflict is vanishingly small, and after 80 years of great power peace, it can be easy to think of the prospect as far-fetched. Westad argues that this, too, may be a similarity to the early 20th century.Today we talk about those similarities and differences and what lessons we can learn.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.On today’s episode, we open up the mailbag for an overdue round of listener questions — and you had some great ones! You asked whether Democrats might be locked out of the California governor’s race, who might win the heated primary in Illinois’ 9th Congressional District, and whether Iowa is actually in play for Democrats. You also had some more philosophical questions, like whether the Republican and Democratic parties will still exist in 2040 and what strategically is the best path forward for the GOP. Continuing a past theme, you also asked why Zohran Mamdani’s favorability rating is so high and what we expect turnout to look like in 2026.As a reminder, paid subscribers can share questions in the paid subscriber chat, which we’ll prioritize, and you can also reach me with questions on social media or by email at [email protected].

We are entering our thirteenth day of the war in Iran, and we’ve been getting conflicting signals about how long it might last and what the end goal actually is.At the start, it seemed the goal was regime change. President Trump called on Iran’s forces to lay down their arms and for civilians to revolt, saying the operation could last four to five weeks.Since then, Trump has also called for Iran’s unconditional surrender, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio framed the goal of the conflict as destroying Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities, missile production factories, and navy.On Monday, Trump said the war was ahead of schedule and “very complete, pretty much.” The same day, the Department of War said, “we have only just begun to fight.” On Tuesday, Democratic senators emerged from a briefing telling the press they were concerned about the likelihood of the U.S. putting boots in the ground in Iran.Meanwhile, the economic repercussions of the conflict and the near closure of the Strait of Hormuz, have rippled across the globe, amping up the stakes of the war.To borrow an analogy from a friend of the podcast, there is an awful lot of noise surrounding the operation. Today we are going to try to find the signal. Where do things stand? What are the upside and downside risks? And what are the possible outcomes?Joining me to do that is Mara Karlin, professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. She served in national security roles for six U.S. secretaries of defense and most recently served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans, and Capabilities under President Biden. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

We are officially in the second week of the war with Iran and the fallout is intensifying.President Trump now says the goal is Iran’s unconditional surrender. Meanwhile, Iran’s clerics have appointed Ali Khamenei’s hardline son as the new Supreme Leader, suggesting surrender is unlikely for now.Fifteen countries have become involved in the conflict in some way, the number of U.S. service members killed has risen to seven, and the number of deaths in Iran is estimated to be more than 1,200.Markets have fallen around the world as the likelihood of this being a short, contained operation is fading. Perhaps most notably oil prices have gone vertical. They reached $120 a barrel overnight and were at about $100 a barrel at the time we recorded the podcast.That compares with $55 a barrel in December and $65 a barrel just before the war. The average price of gas nationally has shot up 50 cents per gallon in just a week and now sits at about $3.50 per gallon.Last week Congress declined to rein in Trump’s authority in the conflict, but that doesn’t mean the domestic politics of the matter are settled. Not by a long shot. With me to discuss the unfolding politics here at home is Gabe Fleisher, author of the “Wake Up To Politics” newsletter. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.The war in Iran has set off a civil war within the Republican Party over whether the military adventurism of Trump’s second term is America first or America last. As one indication, Megyn Kelly kicked off her podcast on Monday (one of the most popular right-wing shows in the country) with withering criticism of Trump’s decision. Her first guest, Marjorie Taylor Greene, suggested it could lead her to stop voting.On Tuesday, Texas’s incumbent senator, John Cornyn, managed to fight his primary merely to a draw with scandal-plagued Ken Paxton after spending a record $70 million. Further down the ballot, once rising star Rep. Dan Crenshaw lost his primary outright. The tensions within the GOP, at least at the elite level, are already at a rolling boil. So what happens when Trump — a force helping to hold both parties’ coalitions together — leaves the scene?That is the question I attempted to answer, alongside friends of the podcast Nate Silver and Clare Malone, at a live show Wednesday night at the Comedy Cellar in New York City. Joined by a rowdy, sold-out crowd, we hosted our first-ever 2028 Republican primary draft. We even got a West Village audience to applaud for Tucker Carlson. (If you missed our Democratic primary draft from January, I encourage you to check it out!)We also discussed the political consequences of the big news stories of the day: the results in Texas on both sides of the aisle, the expanding war in the Middle East, and a torrent of attention-grabbing AI news. Plus, we opened the mics and answered audience questions.

Looking for nerdy yet irreverent coverage of the Texas primaries Tuesday night?! We’ll be live streaming with friends of the pod beginning at 7:30pm ET on March 3rd. Join us at the link here.We were originally planning on dedicating today’s whole episode to the kickoff of the 2026 primary calendar with Tuesday’s elections in Texas, North Carolina and Arkansas. However, if I’ve learned anything hosting the GD POLITICS podcast, it’s to be flexible — we might end up at war.The U.S. and Israel struck Iran beginning on Saturday, killing Iran’s supreme leader. Iran responded, attacking Israel, U.S. military assets, and civilian targets in the Gulf States. Hezbollah in Lebanon has also joined the fighting.As of the time of our recording, the back-and-forth bombing is continuing and there are more questions than answers about what will happen next. Will there be a revolution in Iran? Will it be successful? What would the current regime staying in power look like? How wide could the conflict spread and how long could it last?I’m sure those are questions we’ll contend with in the future. Today we are going to kick things off with how the American public views the conflict and how politicians are reacting.Then we will move on to Tuesday’s primaries. The blockbuster races are the Republican and Democratic Senate primaries in Texas. I’ve covered a lot of these races in my day and I can’t remember the last time I saw polling as contradictory as what we’re seeing in the race between Jasmine Crockett and James Talarico in Texas. We’ll also touch on some of the House primaries worth keeping an eye on Tuesday night.Joining me is director of data at FiftyPlusOne, Mary Radcliffe, and deputy editor of Inside Elections, Jacob Rubashkin. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

President Trump offered strikingly few proposals in the longest State of the Union address ever delivered and what he did offer was not particularly heavy on legislation or ambition. Instead, he leaned into conflict with the Democrats in the chamber and highlighted stories from guests in the audience that often included graphic details. Friends of the podcast Mary Radcliffe and Nathaniel Rakich joined this throwback late-night reaction episode to discuss this and much more. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

Today’s episode turned out to be serendipitous. Last Friday, I’d been planning to speak with Harvard economist Jason Furman, Obama’s top economic advisor, about the recent flood of economic data: the jobs report and revisions for the past year, inflation data, GDP growth, trade balances, consumer sentiment, and more.There was one piece of data I did not expect we’d be getting in advance of our conversation: the Supreme Court’s decision on President Trump’s emergency tariffs. Friday morning, the Court struck them down in a 6-3 decision, concluding that the power to enact such broad tariffs lies with Congress.So, on today’s episode, we begin with the latest tariff news and then widen the lens to the broader economy, including Furman’s suggestion that we may have achieved the first indisputable “soft landing” in postwar American history: bringing inflation under control without triggering a recession. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

Subscribe to GD POLITICS wherever you listen to podcasts. The video version of this interview is available here.My favorite interviews with politicians happen when they’ve run their last race and can reflect candidly on their time in office and the complexities of politics and the world. Today you’re going to hear such an interview with former governor of Texas and former secretary of energy Rick Perry.We begin by talking about the heated Senate primary in Texas. The former governor has thrown his support behind incumbent Sen. John Cornyn and doesn’t shy away from criticisms of Attorney General Ken Paxton or the Democratic side.We then turn to a more personal topic: Perry’s experience with the psychoactive drug ibogaine and his advocacy for its use in treating things like addiction, PTSD, brain trauma, and cognitive decline. It may seem like a counterintuitive position for a social conservative, and we get into that.We end by talking about the moment during the 2012 GOP primary debate when Perry forgot the name of one of the agencies he intended to shutter as president — the Department of Energy. It became something of a viral moment at the time, but in this interview we talk about what was going on in his personal life, which he describes as the most difficult six months of his life. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

Heads up: We have a live show scheduled for Wednesday, March 4 at the Comedy Cellar in New York City! After a rowdy live 2028 Democratic primary draft last month, Nate Silver, Clare Malone, and I will tackle the Republican side of the ledger. Grab tickets here!If you’ve been enjoying your long weekend, I apologize for the potentially panic-inducing content of today’s episode.We seem to be in something of freakout moment over artificial intelligence. In particular, several viral posts have been making the rounds on social media from people who work in AI warning about what’s coming.Mrinank Sharma, an AI safety researcher at Anthropic, quit last week and published a letter saying the “world is in peril” and that we need to wise up.Zoe Hitzig, an economist at OpenAI, also quit and wrote a New York Times op-ed criticizing how ChatGPT is implementing ads, suggesting the company could use people’s private motivations to manipulate them.Matt Shumer, the CEO of an AI startup, wrote a viral post on Twitter called “Something Big Is Happening,” comparing this moment in AI to what February 2020 felt like for COVID.As far as markets are concerned, software stocks have fallen 15 to 30 percent over the past month in reaction to new AI developments in coding.On today’s episode, I talk to John Burn-Murdoch, a columnist and chief data reporter at the Financial Times. He’s been using data to track AI’s effects on the world so far, particularly when it comes to work.Also, in case AI panic isn’t enough for one episode, John’s been doing a lot of work tracking democratic backsliding in the U.S. and around the world. So, fittingly for Presidents’ Day, we get into his research on that, and ask whether these two sources of anxiety — AI and democratic backsliding — might be connected in some way. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.Also, heads up: We have a live show scheduled for Wednesday, March 4 at the Comedy Cellar in New York City! After a rowdy live 2028 Democratic presidential primary draft last month, Nate Silver, Clare Malone, and I will tackle the Republican side of the ledger. You can get tickets here.We’ve got a lot to talk about! In fact, I think this is our first-ever emergency edition of “Good Data, Bad Data, or Not Data.” Gallup announced this week that, after 88 years in the field, it will stop tracking Americans’ approval and disapproval of presidents. Its final approval rating for President Trump was just 36 percent.Gallup may no longer be asking how Americans feel about the president, but plenty of pollsters still are and that will be useful for two topics we’re discussing today: the showdown over Department of Homeland Security funding and the political fallout from the Epstein files.We’ve also got election news to check in on. The Democratic primary in New Jersey’s 11th District has become a microcosm of Democratic Party drama. A little-known progressive organizer won the primary after an AIPAC-backed group spent $2 million attacking a moderate, pro-Israel former congressman. Yes, you read that correctly.Susan Collins also formalized her bid for a sixth term in the Senate this week, which means another chance for us to talk about the 2026 race for control of the chamber. Plus, friend of the pod Mary Radcliffe did a deep dive into whether support for Trump is crashing among young men. She’s with me to discuss it all, along with Washington Post senior data scientist Lenny Bronner.

Heads up: We have a live show scheduled for Wednesday, March 4 at the Comedy Cellar in New York City! Nate Silver, Clare Malone, and I will share our reactions from the Texas primaries and much more. You can get tickets here.Primary season is starting with a bang in just three weeks. Texans will decide which Democrat and Republican they’d like to see face off in a potentially competitive Senate election this fall.Arkansas and North Carolina will also head to the polls on March 3, but few contests across the country compare to the matchups in Texas. On the Democratic side, the race is primarily between state Rep. James Talarico and U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett. On the Republican side, it’s incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, state Attorney General Ken Paxton, and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt.Both primaries feature some similarities: a better-funded, more mild-mannered establishment favorite on one side — Talarico and Cornyn — and a more bombastic presence known for riling up the base on the other — Crockett and Paxton. Of course, there are plenty of differences, too, which we’ll get into. For one, the Republican primary appears likely to head to a runoff.All of this comes shortly after a special state Senate election in historically Republican Tarrant County resulted in a 30-percentage-point swing to the left. Democrat Taylor Rehmet won by 14 points in a district Trump carried by 17. That gives Democrats some hope in their pursuit of winning a Senate race in Texas for the first time since 1988, though there’s plenty of disagreement within the party over what that path might look like.Today, we take a look at both Senate primaries in Texas, as well as the broader political environment in the state at a time when one of Republicans’ biggest success stories — gains with Latino voters — looks seriously imperiled. With me to do that is Patrick Svitek, a political reporter who has long covered Texas at The Texas Tribune and the Houston Chronicle and most recently covered national politics at The Washington Post. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.gdpolitics.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.comThe full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.On Monday’s episode we began to set the table for the 2026 midterms. Today we acknowledge that there’s something of a bull threatening all the fine china we’ve just laid out. Pardon the strained metaphor.Put bluntly, the 2026 midterms will be the first nationwide federal election with Trump as president since 2020, when he pushed to overturn the results. Some recent developments have already caused a tea cup or two to wobble. I promise I’m done with the metaphor now.This week, on Dan Bongino’s podcast, Trump suggested that Republicans move to nationalize elections in 15 unnamed states and later reiterated his push from behind the Resolute Desk at a bill signing ceremony. Last week, in an unusual move, the FBI raided a Fulton County elections office, seizing 2020 ballots and other voting records.In the background of all of this, starting last year, the Department of Justice began requesting full voter rolls with private voter information from states, in an apparent attempt to create a national voter file.Trump has also issued executive orders attempting to change the elections process nationally, including that all ballots be received by the time polls close on Election Day and that Americans show government-issued proof of U.S. citizenship when they register to vote. For what it’s worth, he has also quipped about canceling the election, something he can’t do, and about ending mail voting.Concerned about losses at the midterms, state Republicans, at Trump’s request, have already pursued mid-decade gerrymandering to try to buttress their majority. Trump’s latest comments about nationalizing elections came after a Democrat won a state Senate seat in Tarrant County, Texas, by over-performing Trump’s win in 2024 by 30 percentage points.It doesn’t take a detective to put these pieces together. A president who has a record of only accepting election results when he wins is concerned about Republican losses at the midterms. He has told Republicans himself that he doesn’t want the ensuing consequences, which would be Democratic investigations into his administration. In an attempt to prevent that, Trump may sow doubt in the results in 2026 or try more serious interventions.Today we dig into what that could look like and detail the ways American elections are designed to be resilient. After all, it’s not one bull in one china shop. There are more than 9,000 jurisdictions administering elections nationwide and no matter what Trump says, the constitution charges the states with running elections.With me to discuss it all is Nathaniel Rakich, managing editor at Votebeat, and Jessica Huseman, editorial director of Votebeat. Votebeat is a nonprofit newsroom that covers voting and election administration.