Anthony, what do we know?

Hey there, Major, and yeah, you can't talk about this election without talking about inflation and prices.

It's what voters say is the number one issue, and look, pertinent to what you were talking about earlier, this is from our recent poll.

Is the military, military conflict with Iran making US oil and gas prices, you get two-thirds thinking a lot higher or a little higher.

That is what is on voters' minds.

And then that, in turn, is true, what you see in the polling in a lot of these key Senate races.

I'll show you this, which our partners at VoteHub put together.

So show us that story for Texas and Maine Senate races.

Anything worth sifting in early voting?

Okay.

Number one thing, big picture is you mentioned the president earlier in the show and you set the context here.

For most voters, he is on their minds.

either to oppose him, which more say they are, or to support him, which a lot of Republicans say that they are.

But that's one of the reasons you see him now out there on the campaign trail.

The other part of this, Major, and I'm going to keep coming back to this, when we look at the polling, you know, the Republicans have a turnout deficit in the polling.

Wasn't there.

How real is this momentum?

Well, let's pick Kansas, like you just opened the sh- the, uh, segment there with, Major.

So in Kansas, the first thing I remind everybody is I show you the presidential vote, which was lopsided for Donald Trump, so reemphasizes the point.

This is a red state.

But at the same time, if I show you what the markets and what Kalshi is showing, Republican Roger Marshall is still favored, and you can see that by, reflected in the fact that his price is higher than Democratic challenger Adam Hamilton.

At the same time, though, and to your point, the trend here since Labor Day is toward Adam Hamilton.

And so there's, if you wanna talk about that as momentum, at least in the markets.

Help my audience, help all of us figure out the chicken and egg part of this.

What is it telling us?

Hey there, Major.

And, hey, look, I worry about polling too, in the sense that there are a whole lot of polls out there, and not all of them are necessarily carefully done.

None, uh, all of them are necessarily picking up differences in turnout.

I think one of the things that can really change over these coming weeks is Republicans, if they do activate and turn out, that's gonna change the landscape a lot.

Here's our battleground list right now.

You all talked about Alaska, I think obviously appropriately so.

What does our battleground tracker say about House prospects for either party?

So, Anthony, picking up on the point that Ed just made, why is the president nervous about Republican turnout?

Hey there.

So let me show you the numbers.

These are the percent of Dems, Independents, and Republicans who say they're definitely going to vote.

And the first thing you notice is that there are more Democrats who say they're definitely going to vote than there are Republicans.

That's it, in a nutshell.

Now, why is that? And of course, that's something that could change over the coming weeks.

And what about Latino voters? What does our survey data tell us about any changes from 2024 to now?

What does it look like at the CBS News decision desk? What do you know at seven PM that the public doesn't, and what's really the hardest part of calling a race responsibly?

Sure.

One of the things to start off with is that I'm really proud of the fact that in recent cycles, we've put the decision desk front and center on our broadcast, which is a way of being transparent and going after and addressing some of the questions like, like the one you raise, how is it that we make projections, and what is it that we're seeing? The idea being that we want folks to see things at the same time and just as we see them, and that's also part and parcel of the reason that I present some of that data directly to the viewers.

So I'm always grateful for the chance to do that.

In terms of specifics, early in the evening, we always start to see the exit poll.

And while that doesn't necessarily tell you who's going to win any particular race, it does give you an early sense of the dynamics that are taking shape, what was on voters' minds, and what types of voters might be inclined to go one way or the other.

That starts to set the stage.

So, like, as we characterize uncertainty, I think the default that people do, and they kind of feel like they're being sophisticated about looking at margin of error and so forth, I'm just a l- honestly, I'm a little wary of that, and I think it's, it's a much harder problem.

What are we seeing, Anthony?

How you doing, Major? So this is your top line right now.

The voters are saying they have a preference for Democrats over Republicans in the battle for House control.

In our model, that has the Democrats up at 228 seats, and that would be enough for a slight majority.

One of the big narratives in this, and this is one of the things you get from a poll, is whether people feel motivated to turn out.

And right now, more Democrats say they feel motivated to turn out and definitely vote than Republicans do.

And that's one of the things that's driving those poll numbers, Major.

And what are Kalshi predictive markets

What is on your mind this happy Monday?

So let's start with views on the Iran conflict.

Start with simple math, which is that in our polling and other recent polls, a majority, in our case 56% of voters, say that they would favor a candidate who opposes the conflict.

Now, that may explain some of the dynamic you just described there at the open about some candidates maybe breaking or saying the president should take a different course.

You want to backfill that, though, with the wider views on this conflict, which is, number one, all throughout we have seen it often bipartisan fashion.

Voters saying that there are goals they would like to see the U.S. achieve, including, yes, stopping Iran from in their minds building or developing nuclear capabilities.

The trouble is that then you follow up and ask, are those being achieved? And voters say no.

And, Anthony, one of the reasons for this, particularly in Florida and Texas, is a reassessment within the Latino community about where they were in 2024 and where they might be now.

Anthony, what do you have that is new?

So the first thing we want to do is kind of translate what you hear very much these days, which is the national environment, and show you how that translates across House seats in the battle for control.

What we mean by national environment is that depending on the poll you look at, you ask people who they're voting for for Congress.

And you get roughly or in our case, exactly a plus eight Democratic national environment.

Now, you translate that to seats because, of course, the House is won and lost 435 seats.

And in our model, that would put the Democrats at 228, a slight majority could go a little bit higher, though, could go up as high in our model as 237.

The reason for that is that those votes have to come from somewhere.

But where do we start?

Well, it's been the question of the week, which is, do people think AI is going to harm humans? So here's the answer.

How much concern is out there? It's pretty substantial.

It's 52% think that AI probably or certainly, a little more probably, will harm humans.

But this goes right to the point you just made, Major, about people being able to parse this a little bit and see some nuance.

If I ask people, and I did, do you think AI might be used by people to do harm, you get higher numbers that it probably or certainly will.

There's a couple of reasons for that.

Anthony, is in any way, shape or form, artificial intelligence a partisan unifier, defying partisan polarization?

Anthony, what else did we learn from that poll?

Well, let me take it from the top, Major, and that is you can look at people's preferences, but you've got to translate it into House seats because that's the way this thing is won and lost, right? So we did that.

This is our House model, and what it gets you is 228 seats right now for the Democrats.

That's enough to take a majority.

It's not a large majority historically.

Now, the Republicans still have a chance to hold on, so that Dem number could go as low as 215 and as high as 237.

But what really matters is that, A, the drivers you mentioned, including the president, the other one, you can't talk about an election without talking about prices.

You have an answer about that, do you not?

Anthony, give me your thoughts.

Yeah, I mean, you said state by state, but here's the big picture.

I've lit up all the states we're keying on right now.

And yeah, they stretch from Maine out to Alaska.

The economy writ large is going to be important here.

But Major, unpack a little bit of what you just said about trade, about tariffs.

One thing that's notable is that nationwide in this last couple of elections, Donald Trump is one two-thirds of white non-college voters, the kind of folks who have told us in the polls that they are often affected by parts of the economy that are affected by trade and tariffs.

Anthony, your thoughts in any state you want to highlight or trends you want to highlight?

Walk us through it.

Yeah.

Here's your battleground map of what we see as the main Senate, key Senate races.

I've got Alaska on it.

Florida is not, as you guys mentioned.

What happens in Alaska tonight is the top four candidates... are going to go through to the November election.

And they're from all parties, all running on the same ballot.

Walk us through that.

All right, Anthony, what do Democrats think about socialism and how do they define it? Or how does our survey population in general define socialism?

Yeah, because all of this is kind of a fight in these primaries about what kind of economic message the Democrats are going to offer in the midterms.

Start with this.

This is your views among the American public.

Socialism as a label is underwater.

Capitalism is above water among the public.

Rated more favorably.

What about the generational differences among Democrats on this central question?

What was the

path? Another late night waiting for Wisconsin results last night.

But this is what unfolded.

These yellow areas, a little bit more suburban counties.

A little bit better for Crowley there, marginally so, but consistently so.

He'll make the argument those are the kinds of Democrats, kinds of voters they'll need to turn out in November.

The other part of this, though, I'm going to zoom in because, of course, we're up late waiting for Milwaukee to count, where Crowley overall in the county did well.

What can we say about the polls miscasting or misrepresenting what the actual result turned out to be?

My entire life is retro.

It's context.

It's context, man.

Look, this is 2016.

Yeah, Bernie Sanders beat Hillary Clinton.

This was a big upset back then.

But really people saw this as one of the first indications that the Democrats, especially with younger voters, where he dominated, were going to have some problems.

And any parts of the state that are most interesting to you, Anthony?

Anthony, go right ahead.

Hey there, buddy.

Look, I'm going to continue on a theme here, and that is uncertainty.

And here's what I mean.

I have repeatedly shown that people keep telling us they don't think their incomes are keeping up with inflation.

So do they see an answer from either party? Obviously, a critical question as we head into the midterms, right? Here's the answer.

No, and let me start with the Republicans because we get 55% a majority of Americans saying they think Republican policies are actually hurting their cost of living.

That much has eroded.

All right, Anthony, starting with you, the big aperture, what's at stake?

I'm gonna make that math even simpler for everybody, Major.

There are very few competitive House races on the board right now.

Now, maybe that changes over the next 99 days, but everybody needs to understand just how narrow the playing field is.

You just mentioned redistricting.

That's one reason for it.

People's partisanship is another.

Got it

Explain, Anthony, explain.

They say you shouldn't, you know, one-up the host, Major, but the gang here.

You one-up all of them.

All you want has clearly worked harder to print out.

Look, these are even more voter files, but it does illustrate the point.

These from North Carolina that these are available.

And let me show you or tell you how these are used and how they're not.

You gave us a little bit of a preview, but break it down for my audience what to watch for.

There we go.

So I'm lousy guitar.

Look, this first thing you notice, the first thing you notice is this is happening in cities.

You just mentioned we watched last night Colorado's first.

That's Denver.

A week ago, we were talking about New York and New York City and the same the same idea.

Why is that? Well, first of all, you've got a kind of coalition that these kinds of candidates are drawing, which is you've got younger people.

Michael Bennett, a sitting senator seeking the gubernatorial nomination, lost to someone perceived as more of a fighter and more progressive.

Anthony, tell us what happened in New York last night.

Major, everything you're talking about there is that in the modern media age, things that happen locally quickly become national.

And I'm going to show you a map and I'm going to tell you a story because I'm going to relate back to those points about socialism that you mentioned earlier.

Let me show you this.

This is the New York 13th.

Now, this is going to be a slam dunk win for the Democrats.

It's not a competitive district come November.

And if they become a recognizable part of a party's power swing, it really matters.

Anthony, please, sir, break it down.

How you doing, buddy? Look, this is the takeaway right here.

It's the why behind what you just said at the top.

Nearly seven in 10 Americans think that the war ends now.

The U.S. has not.

They are not convinced permanently stopped Iran's nuclear program.

So that's the net net out of this.

And what about the partisan breakdown, which we always try to sift with these polls, Anthony?

The top two finishers

finishersTonight or whenever the ballots get done being counted, move on to the general election.

So what you've seen in the polling up until now is this is rough order here.

These candidates, Hilton, Becerra, Styer, all getting about 20 to 25% of the vote.

If that doesn't sound like a lot, it's not.

That's because a lot of the Democrats especially have had what we call a fractured field.

They've been splitting that Democratic vote.

There you go

Exactly, no FOMO.

This is, this is what, what...

Look, the 4th district here, we all watched this all last night.

I wanna talk about what ultimately was the turnout in this race, right? So we're at 106,000 votes.

Now, in the scope of things in Kentucky, that's not a lot.

Even in the Kentucky 4th, that's not a lot.

But compared to other primaries, that is a 2X turnout, right? Other primaries, even for Massie, have had maybe 50, maybe 60,000 votes.

What do we make?

Yep.

And that is, these are the folks who choose the candidates that everybody's gonna choose between in the general, right? So on your point then, Major, about the president and his influence, you're gonna be looking at an electorate smaller than the general election.

You're gonna be looking at the most committed, most ideological, the president hopes most MAGA.

This is nationally, but we did what pollsters do.

We asked people, "What do you want in a candidate?" And take a look at these numbers, 'cause look at among Republicans, do you want somebody who supports everything Donald Trump wants, supports most things Donald Trump wants? Yeah, that's a majority, but not everything.

But then among MAGA Republicans, look at that spread right there, right? You got almost nine in 10 want somebody who supports at least most, if not everything, Donald Trump wants.

These are the kind of folks who vote in primaries.

Four House races.