Because the key for Democrats is not just getting blood, drawing blood from Donald Trump, but it's also going to be laying the foundation for 2028.

Kristen? So it is absolutely true.

Not only was government corruption one of the top issues, it was actually rated as crucial to the votes of more people, even than cost of living.

I mean, it was very close, but that just tells you how important this is.

Now, for some voters, when they're thinking about the type of government corruption they want investigated, they're thinking about Donald Trump, his family, the people around him.

How have they personally benefited? But there are a lot of people that think about this more broadly.

They think about it as we live in a society now where if you work hard and play by the rules, you don't get ahead.

Yeah, and what about those voters who voted Republican, voted for President Trump in the last election, and then flipped him this election? How much was corruption a driving force for them?

So tell us what you think is the most sort of signal thing that you came out of that survey with.

So when we conducted this survey of workers last year, we found that workers were skeptical but not completely out on tariffs.

They were open to the idea that maybe this could be beneficial.

And certainly in qualitative research I've done, if people hear that country X has a tariff on us, they think, well, fair is fair.

So retaliatory tariffs can kind of make some sense.

The idea of having a regime in place that tries to make sure that trade is balanced does seem to resonate with some people.

But then what we've had over the last year is the implementation of tariffs, which has often looked kind of scattershot, unpredictable, all over the place.

And so I'm just going to ask you to do it for me.

Yeah, Kristen, why don't you defend our entire industry? Why don't you start us off?

So first I would say, you know, you mentioned a couple of examples, things like the Des Moines Register poll in 2024.

I think for a lot of folks in the field, you could look at that poll and see, you didn't have to look too far under the hood to see, you know, I really don't think that white senior citizen men in Iowa are breaking for Kamala Harris.

Like something is not right here, where right now what I think is challenging for the industry is the polls have been off in years when Donald Trump is on the ballot.

He brings out a type of voter who is very hard to poll.

In general, polls have a bias toward overcounting people who are really politically engaged and excited to share their opinion.

The good news for political pollsters is that's a helpful bias in a midterm year.

Yeah,

And why don't you defend our entire industry? Why don't you start us off?

So first, I would say, you know, you mentioned a couple of examples, things like the Des Moines Register poll in 2024.

I think for a lot of folks in the field...

You could look at that poll and see – you didn't have to look too far under the hood to see, you know, I really don't think that white senior citizen men in Iowa are breaking for Kamala Harris.

Like something is not right here.

Where right now what I think is challenging for the industry is the polls have been – off in years when Donald Trump is on the ballot.

He brings out a type of voter who is very hard to poll.

But how are we seeing Senate Republican candidate Ashley Hinson and Democrat Josh Turek navigate the issue? Iowa will also be electing a new governor, and the polls favor Democrat Rob Sand over Republican Zach Lane.

And as someone who's been polling a lot of voters and focus grouping and so forth, what is your best guess about what's gonna happen? Is it possible that Republicans could retain control of the House or the Senate? Like, how big do Democrats win?

So I am, I am frequently a Republican doomer, um, where I am, I, it is-- I, I'm, I'm often of the mind that whatever can go wrong will go wrong.

And so, you know, the, the polls are all really clear that this is likely to be a, a very good to very great night for Democrats coming up in November.

Um, the generic ballot in my polls, as well as most averages of polls, tend to show Democrats with about an eight-point lead on the generic ballot.

And to put that in context, in 2022, when Republicans did well, but it was not a red wave, I think it wound up being R plus two to R plus four on the generic ballot.

So this is a very different environment than 2022, which again, was good for Republicans, but still wound up with, like, a s- fairly closely divided government, um, not some vast overwhelming Republican majority.

Um, now structurally, because of gerrymandering, because of the way the Senate map tends to favor rural states tend to vote Republican, um, Democrats kind of need a generic ballot that is more aggressively in their direction to reap the rewards.

Voters are reacting to that.

Tell us, how does it work now? How do you actually gather the good insight so that you can have a reliable poll? And can polling even be trusted today? I'll throw you a big wide pitch to start with.

Yeah.

So it's a very, very big question.

It's existential for our industry.

You know, when I first started working in polling over 20 years ago, every survey we did was calling people up on their landline phones saying, The way we got the phone numbers was you did something called random digit dialing.

A computer would just randomly generate phone numbers in the area codes you were looking to call, and you just hoped you got someone on the phone who met your criteria.

But that has all sort of fallen apart.

I guess comment on overall, will those low propensity voters who voted Republican in the last time vote in the midterms in those two specific groups of Hispanics and young males?

Would you compare this moment for Democrats to what the Tea Party was for Republicans and the rise of Trump?

Yes.

And when I do this, I find that Democrats I talk to, like they were kind of recoil and horror.

They're like, oh, like the Tea Party was so gross.

We're not doing that.

That's not what it is.

And what I always try to say is, like, I actually think that the Tea Party was not a pure net negative for the Republican Party.

You can describe what they are, but I'm also curious to hear sort of like how they're evolving or how they're growing, like what it tells us about the future.

What do you, what, what book would you recommend?

Uh, I would recommend C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters.

And while it is a Christian book, it's not a, like, proselytizing book.

It's a book about what goes on in the mind when you are being tempted away from your values, and how we think somebody's temptation to do something bad is, like, it's obvious.

And instead, it's about how, like, the little voice inside your head, just tiny little things, little annoyances, li- like, lead, can lead you down a path away from what you truly believe is important.

When I hear about troops being on a ship where the toilets aren't working, and there's not enough food, and they're so morose about this that at least one of them jumped off the ship, uh, it j- it just makes my blood boil.

Well, and this is also why it's so important that if you are going to do something like commit American troops to a war where war is hell, um, is it has to be for a reason that's a very good reason that you've communicated very well to everybody who's involved.

And for these soldiers to feel on the ship, not only are they being let down by the actual conditions that they are in, but to also not feel like they're there for any kind of mission that is, is worth fighting.

Mm-hmm.

However, what Democrats have working in their favor is that the median Democratic primary voter is not a 25-year-old campus activist.

It is a 55-year-old African American woman who is quite eager to see the government do more to help, you know, the working class, but is not necessarily on board with canceling Thanksgiving or the more unusual out there positions that some in the Democratic activist base would like to see more, more prevalent throughout the party.

And so Democrats have in some ways been saved by their own voters right now.

I think the bigger challenge, though, is what happens once Democrats have what is likely to be a very good 2026 midterm? What happens once you have a Speaker Hakeem Jeffries, if that's where this ends up, and you then have fights over how do you keep the government open? Those are the sorts of things that led to the Republican Tea Party movement really accelerating and gaining steam, were these fights about what do you do when you actually have to govern?

[laughs]

Yes.

Uh, which, which, again, wasn't a popular proposal, though I might add, if it had been done, where would we be fiscally now? Uh, a question worth pondering.

[laughs]

One of, one of the things that, that makes people upset, though, is it's not even necessarily just the, like, the raw price of what you're paying, but it's how you feel you used to be able to live relative to now.

And I think inherent to people's idea of the American Dream, which lots of people define many different ways, is the idea that you can always get ahead, that you can always advance, that you can always improve your quality of life.

And if you rightly or wrongly think things used to be better, and now when I'm growing up, I'm getting screwed, I understand why folks in Gen Z feel like...

They say they don't believe that the American Dream is real.

They say they don't believe the system works.

I think it is true that there has probably never been a better time or place to be alive than the United States of America in 2026 re-

Right.

Like what's the what is that rising group in the Democratic Party? What do they believe and who are they?

So in order to come up with our eight tribes, we asked people in a survey to answer almost 30 questions about views on their social positions, on their economic views, on their views toward things like foreign policy.

And again, questions like, do you think that most journalists are pushing their opinions or are reporting truthfully? Do you think free trade agreements are good or bad? We ask a whole bunch of different questions.

And then we come out of that with questions these different clusters.

And on the Democratic side, the biggest cluster, one that has grown by a lot in just the last two years, is what we call the loyal left.

We think they make up about one out of every five voters in the country.

They are the people who, when you ask them nine questions about social and cultural issues, they're picking the progressive position on eight out of nine.

Kristen, what do you take of my Pollyannish view there on Democrats' willingness to process information?

I mean, looking at those historical numbers, in 2010 Barack Obama's numbers weren't

weren't... terrible back then, and yet there was a lot of room for the tide to come in and for it to be a really big red wave election.

So being the incumbent party is always tough, but it's been made worse by things like high gas prices, a tough economy, things that President Trump was elected to fix.

Uh, he used to have great job approval numbers on the economy, even if his numbers weren't so great elsewhere.

Um, but right now it is really the economy and concerns about, uh, whether or not people are gonna be able to make ends meet that are, are driving these numbers down.

So when you see that, Kristen, what do you think that mean? What opportunities that, does that give Republicans, and what do you think that means for November?

The best thing Republicans have going for them right now are the Democrats.

Uh, that right now there are a number of races where Republicans could be very vulnerable, but there is a chance that Democrats will have somebody emerge from a primary process who is just not as electable, is much, uh, easier for a Republican to go after.

But why do you believe there's this cut in things?

I think part of what's going on is that when voters feel like the economy is not going well, they're more open to the idea that you should sort of hit reset and start from scratch.

Now, hopefully that doesn't actually mean wanting a communist system.

But what you've seen in a lot of polls that have come out in the last week or two, including my own data, is that there's been this erosion.

A- and it's not just happening overnight, but it's been a slow erosion over the last few years-

Right.

And there are things that are making it worse.

But Democrats haven't done any better at saying, "Here's what I would actually do." They'll talk around the edges about, "Well, maybe we'll do some more government subsidies of this or that or the other thing." But it hasn't come together into a message that voters find credible, which leaves them vulnerable to Trump being able to say, "Well, you may not like me, but do you wanna go back to the, you know, the way things were under Biden?" Independent voters don't like that either.

Very fascinating.

Well, thank you, Scott.

So we believe that America is not as easily described as just Republicans and Democrats.

That is too simple.

That is oversimplification.

And we know that within both of the parties, there are a lot of different flavors, a lot of different people who believe a lot of different things.

So we do this project every year to try to better understand where Americans actually sit.

So, uh, when you look at all these tribes, and you've got eight different ones, where do most people break down? Am I a minority opinion or, or am I one of the larger party, uh, uh, one of the larger tribes out there?

So when you look at all these tribes and you've got eight different ones, where do most people break down? Am I a minority opinion or am I one of the larger party – one of the larger tribes out there?

So loyal left and loyal right are the two biggest tribes we have right now, and they're the ones that have grown the most in the last, say, two years.

We've been tracking this since the tribes were new last year, but we've been tracking people's political ideology for a while.

And folks who are pretty rock-solid conservatives or pretty down-the-column progressives, they're going to play a big role in this election in the midterms.

This is a of turn out your base kind of election.

But there are also six other groups that we've got throughout the middle.

Within the right, there's moderate folks on the right.

Kristen, when you look at these eight tribes, which of them has the most voters who are actually likely to turn out in an election? And which of them has the most infrequent voters, so the least likely to vote?

Yes.

But, you know, in the summer of 2025, Americans were told that Iran's nuclear capability was, was taken out in a pretty serious way.

And so in all of my data, when I ask voters, "Do...

What do you think would be a legitimate reason to engage in military activity against Iran?" To prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon is the top of the list.

Significant majority say, yes, that's a good reason to go to war.

But is that the case that the president made to the American people before engaging in this action? I would argue that, that it is not, that it felt like it came out of nowhere.

And that's why now this trade-off of, like, well, I mean, you're glad you're not getting bombed, right? Like, people are like, "Well, yes, I am glad I'm getting bombed.

Mm-hmm

Just make it up, just like you poll what?

So I, I can tell you about the polling we've done on...

I've done some polling on prediction markets, um, where, you know, I'm asking to what extent are people using them, what are they using them for, and those are the kinds of things that are valuable for somebody who might be trying to decide, "Do I invest in one of these companies?" Like, "If I'm gonna regulate them, what sort of regulatory approach should I take?" Uh, it's the sort of thing where...

Like, I'll give you an example.

In our poll, we found about one-third of people either bet on prediction markets, that's now the majority of them, or, like, use the data.

Like, they either they tune into it just for entertainment purposes or what have you.

So if my poll shows 36% of people fall into that category, the real number, assuming that I've done my survey right, the real number could be a few points off in either direction, and that's not the end of the world.

Are you impressed by a lot of political, um, outfits? Give me, give me things that you think are, have done it well, uh, in the political space or of corporate space.

Kristin, uh, what do we know about how voters see the two parties when it comes to dealing with the cost of energy, and how might the war affect that further?

Well, when you ask voters which party they trust more on the overall question of cost of living, much to Republicans' chagrin, it's become a, a more e- even fight than it was certainly than a year or definitely than two years ago.

Um, but when you break it out by different categories, which party do you trust more on an issue like healthcare? Democrats tend to be much more trusted to bring down the cost of healthcare.

When you ask who do you trust more to bring down the cost of education, Democrats are much more trusted.

But on energy and gas prices, that is one area where voters have tended to trust Republicans more.

They look at Republican policies to expand domestic production of energy, and they say, "Look, I think that if somebody's gonna make my price at the pump cheaper, it's gonna be Republicans.

I think if somebody's gonna make my power bill cheaper, it's gonna be Republicans." And so for Republicans to preside over a moment where suddenly that's no longer the case, that really complicates what was one of their sort of best issues within this broader bucket of cost of living.

Kristin, is, is the Democrats' problem with these voters whom they'd like to see return to the Democratic Party, is it basically, ah, cultural issues, or is it bread and butter issues?

Uh, for folks who haven't read it, can you walk us through, um, the data kind of underpinning your conclusions, and, uh, you know, what you were saying?

Sure.

So a couple of years ago, uh, I got asked a really interesting question, which was, you know, what does the American center actually look like? Are voters really as polarized as we think or is there, um, a space in the middle that is being underserved? Um, and at the time, the assumption was that the underserved middle kind of looked like a fiscally conservative but maybe more socially progressive audience.

And then a, uh, political scientist named Lee Drutman did a study where he asked people a couple of questions about their social views, a couple of questions about their economic views, and sort of plotted out where people fell on, uh, you know, a social conservatism axis and then an economic conservatism axis, and really found that there were a lot of Americans that don't take all of column A and all of column B.

But to the extent that they're people who are heterodox, they're picking a little bit from both sides, they actually tend to be more socially conservative but fiscally progressive, as in they're really alarmed about things like immigration, they maybe have more conservative views on things like crime, race, gender, but they are not interested in tax cuts for billionaires.

They are not interested in slashing the federal government.

Um, they very much think that social safety net programs are important.

Um, so what do you think is, like, the state of play at the moment?

How unpopular is it?

Well, it really depends on how you word the question, and this perhaps more than any bill I've seen recently is so susceptible to that dynamic because it is one big bill that includes hundreds of different things.

Um, if I poll tested do you believe that you should only get government benefits for healthcare if you're working, if you're able-bodied, people will say yes.

Do you think that government benefits should only go to people who are here legally? People will say yes.

But if you say do you want to cut Medicaid, people will say no.

If you say, uh, do you want to cut government spending on the following programs that people all like, they'll say no.

And so this is one of those bills where how it gets messaged and which party sort of wins that war for defining what are the main marquee things people take from this bill is gonna win.

What are you seeing in terms of trends here? Might we see more of this type of thing?

So can you in your capacity as a pollster help us understand why voters constantly say they want no dep- no debt, low deficits, and also not to do anything that we get out there?

(laughs) And isn't this just a, a diffuse benefits concentrated costs problem at some level? That, like, having a balanced budget is a thing that sounds lovely and important, but the benefits of that are pretty diffuse.

It's hard for somebody to say, "Here is how my life will be different if we have a balanced budget." But if you have somebody who they are on Medicaid or you have somebody who, uh, avails themself of a variety of different public services, um, the idea that you are going to cut that particular thing that really affects them, suddenly that's, that is concentrated.

It is not hard for them to make the leap and say, "Oh, this is how this hurts me." And so it's why you will always see this big gap in polling where people like the idea in theory of having a balanced budget, it sounds nice, it sounds like the right thing to do, but they believe that there is a significant amount of things like waste, fraud, and abuse, that you can go after all of that stuff first before you have to touch any of the stuff that affects my life, because the stuff that's affecting my life and making my life better, that's not waste, that's not fraud, that's not abuse.

Um, I, I think there is a sense that perhaps if the government was the right size, it would also, uh, to where it's providing the services people believe government ought to be providing, that you can do that in a way that's not running up, uh, massive deficits....

but on the question of what it would take to get there, uh, people are kind of, uh, un- unwilling to really go there on the trade-offs.

One question that we asked that I think is particularly interesting is we asked people, we said, "If you had to choose one of the three- the following three things, you can only pick one, which one would you pick?" And we offered a balanced budget, um, keeping taxes low on everyday Americans, or protecting important programs from cuts.

Uh, so what did you find?

Mm-hmm.

...

I, I don't think that, at least in terms of elected Republicans, you're likely to see many of them follow him.

Th- the Big Beautiful Bill faces a number of hurdles before it gets across the finish line, and I definitely think Elon Musk giving voice to the same concerns that folks like a Rand Paul have been voicing for a long time doesn't make it easier for the bill to get passed.

Um, but I do think that if you force these elected Republicans to say, "You have to choose.

Are you with Elon Musk, or are you with Donald Trump?" I think 100% of them will pick Donald Trump in that fight these days.

Yeah.

Yeah.In terms of actual voters, I- I- I still think that the preference among Republican voters is more for things like tax cuts than it is for actual deficit reduction.

Yeah,

I think the shift in the politics on the right are so interesting.

These policies are ones that actually like California was at the forefront.

The idea that there's now a California to Republican administration policy pipeline is really interesting and it has a lot to do with the new voters that somebody like an RFK was able to bring to Trump.

It may not have been a massive, massive coalition, but the fact is there are some voters, they're not as interested in a lot of the traditional political battles, but they're really worried about what's in their kids' foods.

And those are voters that Trump was able to win by courting RFK and his coalition.

What happens to them?

Interesting.

And that's

why whenever we do these polls afterwards and we say, people who watch the speech, did you like the speech? They usually do.

It's usually people who are inclined to like that president.

What I did think was notable and what surprised me in the speech was he used two words that he even acknowledged haven't been used a long time, and that's balanced budget.

Think about how difficult it is going to be for Congress to keep the government open, much less trying to balance a budget.

And this is something where if you're talking about things you're going to ask Congress to do.

He said, we haven't done this in 24 years.

Kristen, I see you giving side eye.