I mean, this was a state that voted for Obama two times, and I wonder if you still think that Iowa... exists? How red is it really?

What I know about Iowa and quite possibly like Hannah, I've had the opportunity as an operative to spend quite a bit of time there during presidential years.

These are professional voters.

These are very, very discerning voters.

They really do their homework.

They really want to hear from the candidates.

They really want to make sure that they're making the right decision, not just for themselves and their families, but also for the country.

Does the president and the Republican Party risk losing that part of the electorate as well?

Mm-hmm

...

but the, the, the fact remains that politics is a people business, and there are some things that are just not going to be captured by just raw numbers and polling alone.

First of all, polling is obviously extremely difficult.

It's gotten more so over the past few cycles.

Um, and so while I think that the race ratings do play a role in maybe kind of helping to set the narrative a little bit, I think that it's just, you know- Charlie Cook's a very, very smart guy, and he's been around for a very, very long time, but there's no way that he can be in 35, 40, 50 different congressional districts all at once.

And so he's really-- he is relying on a set of data, and some of it's very helpful.

Let's talk about, uh, more specifically, what do you think Washington, D.C. is paying too much attention to in 2026? Like, the, the new-- What are you seeing now that you're saying, "I'm not seeing that on the ground"? Is there anything that stands out?

What's involved in the ground game? What do you do?

So I would say when I started working on campaigns, first of all, I was working on Republican campaigns in Berkeley, California.

So it's very lonely for a time.

But, you know, you would get a maybe a list of voters, maybe not a little bit of literature.

Go knock on homes in your neighborhood and maybe knock on some homes right next door, the neighborhood right next door.

That was kind of the ground game.

It was maybe making phone calls in support of a candidate, but it was very untargeted.

So how does the ground game accommodate that element of voting? How does the ground game sort of make sure that the right people who get absentee ballots vote the right way? And how do you monitor how they vote?