The video version of this podcast is available to paid subscribers here.

Tuesday’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race serves as a test of how voters in the consummate battleground state are feeling ten weeks into Trump’s second term, and one of the main themes of Trump’s presidency is taking center stage: the role that Elon Musk is playing in government.

The race is nominally nonpartisan, but liberal judge Susan Crawford and conservative judge Brad Schimel have been very clear about where they stand on state and even national politics. At stake is the ideological balance of the state’s court, which flipped to liberal for the first time since 2008 in 2023.

Director of the Marquette Law School Poll Charles Franklin and Political Reporter for CBS58 Milwaukee Emilee Fannon joined me to talk about it all.

Subscribe to GD POLITICS at www.gdpolitics.com and wherever you listen to podcasts!

At the start of the year it looked like Canada was getting ready to repeat a political story we’ve seen play out across the globe. After decades-high levels of inflation, amid a shortage of affordable housing and a backlash to liberal immigration policies, the unpopular incumbent, the Liberals, seemed destined for electoral defeat.

But then two things happened: On January 6th, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, boasting a mere 22 percent approval rating, announced he would resign. And two weeks later, President Trump took office, talking about turning Canada into America’s 51st state and threatening many — and then levying some — new tariffs on Canada.

I could think of no one better to talk to about all this than the election forecasters of Canada: Philippe Fournier, Editor-in-Chief of 338Canada and Eric Grenier, author of The Writ.

The video version of the podcast is available to paid subscribers here. Subscribe to GD POLITICS at www.gdpolitics.com and wherever you listen to podcasts!

Nate Silver joins me for a wide ranging and candid interview on the inaugural episode of the GD POLITICS podcast. We talk about what it was like behind the scenes at FiveThirtyEight, Elon Musk’s increasingly erratic behavior, and much more. The video version of the podcast is available to paid subscribers here. Subscribe to GD POLITICS at www.gdpolitics.com and wherever you listen to podcasts!

Welcome to the GD POLITICS podcast! I hope you'll subscribe in your favorite podcast app and at www.gdpolitics.com.

In one of the biggest election nights of the year, liberal judge Susan Crawford easily won a state Supreme Court race in Wisconsin and Democrats overperformed by double digits in two Florida congressional races.

Deputy editor of Inside Elections Jacob Rubashkin and political reporter at The 19th Grace Panetta joined me to break down the results.

GD POLITICS is a listener-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The video version of this podcast is available here.

Last week I had the chance to speak with Republican Senator from Alaska Lisa Murkowski at length. She was candid about many things: Her openness to the idea of leaving the G.O.P, her aversion to bombing Iran, and the safety concerns involved in being a lawmaker during a period of increased political violence.

She also discussed her feelings about Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s performance on the Supreme Court (after voting not to confirm him), her likelihood of supporting the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” and why she thinks the U.S. shouldn’t have closed primaries.

Sen. Murkowski has represented Alaska in the U.S. Senate since 2002 and her new book is called, “Far From Home: An Alaskan Senator Faces the Extreme Climate of Washington, D.C.” Our conversation took place on Thursday, June 19.

The video version of this podcast is available to paid subscribers here.

I’m sure you’ve all seen the news about the United States’ attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities over the weekend. It’s a fast moving situation that we are going to talk about on future episodes of this podcast.

It also happens that I wrote an op-ed about presidential politics that is in The New York Times today. I wanted to publish a podcast elaborating on my thinking around the op-ed and that’s what today’s episode is. In a nutshell, it’s about the lessons that can be learned from how Trump ran against his own party and outflanked it from both the right and the left in 2016. By the way, today’s episode was recorded before Saturday’s attack.

To give you a sense of the rest of the week, I also recently recorded an interview with Sen. Lisa Murkowski, which is going to be in your feeds on Tuesday. The first question I asked her was whether she thought the US should bomb Iran and she was candid on that and many other topics.

Today’s podcast is a little bit different. When I launched GD POLITICS, I said that I wanted to hear directly from you and speak directly to you, building a community as we go. I hope you already feel a part of that community, but to that end, I want to occasionally do podcasts where I update you, share thoughts, and answer your questions. So, today it’s just me!

America got its first pope! I was sitting next to one of about 30 Indiana University study abroad students on my flight back from Madrid on Saturday and my seat mate told me that her whole dorm was live streaming the smoke from the Sistine Chapel. As she recounted, everyone went crazy when “America won.” You love to see it!

I’m not just interested in the pope as part of this podcast’s religious community revival agenda (I kid). I’m interested in the pope because for the first time ever, he is a registered voter in Illinois. We’ve got some receipts from his primary voting record as well as his subtweets of the president on social media.

Also, some big Republican names are sitting out of marquee 2026 Senate races. Last week Georgia governor Brian Kemp said he’s declining to challenge Jon Ossoff, meaning the party is missing out on its strongest recruit for its strongest pickup prospect. Last month Chris Sununu also declined to run for New Hampshire’s open Senate seat.

With me to discuss the pope and the Senate are two dear friends of the pod, Mary Radcliffe and Nathaniel Rakich.

In the U.S., Trump’s popularity hit a new low of net -10 percentage points right as he clocked 100 days in office. Abroad, the political impact of Trump’s first 100 days is perhaps more tangible. In both Canada and Australia, the center-Left parties, which looked destined for defeat just months ago, came roaring back in recent elections.

A week ago, Canada’s Liberal Party won the most seats in parliament, ensuring Prime Minister Mark Carney would stay in office for the party’s fourth consecutive term in control of government. This past weekend, Australia’s Labour Party secured a second term for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, expanding its majority in what Australian analysts have been calling a landslide.

Joining me today are two friends of the podcast, author of The Writ, Eric Grenier, and author of 338 Canada, Philippe Fournier.

There’s rarely more attention paid to religion than when one pope passes and the College of Cardinals gathers to select another. Maybe it’s because the grandeur and secrecy of it all makes for a compelling news story, maybe it’s because 1.4 billion Catholics around the world really do care about the outcome, or maybe the weight of a millennia old tradition captures our imagination in a rapidly changing world.

Whatever the reason, it gives us on the GD POLITICS podcast an opportunity to reflect on the role that religion plays in society and politics today. And it’s a pretty complex story, at least in the US. After a rapid rise of people who don’t consider themselves part of any religion over the past 20 years, that trend line seems to have plateaued or maybe even reversed slightly.

On today’s podcast, I’m joined by someone who spends his days pouring over just about all the data out there on religion in America. Ryan Burge is a professor at Eastern Illinois University, he writes the Graphs About Religion Substack and until very recently was himself a Baptist Pastor.

Only paid subscribers have access to the full-length video and audio of the show, so make sure to subscribe!

We discussed the search for a new pope, 100 days of Trump, played a game and answered questions from a sold out audience in New York City

The video version of this podcast is available to paid subscribers here.

If the data tells a story, there’s one person you can count on to narrate it. Friend of the pod and chief data reporter at the Financial Times, John Burn-Murdoch, has for years been catching readers’ attention with charts that highlight just how society and politics are changing: social classes stratifying, innumeracy and illiteracy rising, birth rates dropping, gender gaps widening, American life expectancy stalling out.

Lately, his work on economic and social reactions to Trump’s second term have been literally jumping off the page. In a chart showing plummeting European tourism to the United States, Icelandic tourism decreased so much it got cropped off the page. The US economic uncertainty index grew so much it also extended off the axis, dwarfing the great recession and covid pandemic.

So I could think of no one better to talk about some of the ways the data is telling the story of our evolving American and global politics than John Burn-Murdoch himself. He joined me on the latests installment of the GD POLITICS podcast.

This is an audio preview of the full draft, which is available to paid subscribers here.

On Wednesday afternoon, Nate Silver and I went live on Substack to host our first ever 2028 Democratic primary draft. We said it was “way-too-early,” but I’m not sure that’s right. The potential candidates themselves certainly don’t seem to think so. Look at just about any ambitious Democrat and it will be clear that they are making moves: doing arena tours, starting podcasts, showcasing their abilities to “get sh*t done.” So we took the opportunity to put our early assumptions for 2028 on the record.

The video version of this podcast is available to paid subscribers here.

Americans have had a lot to digest politically and economically over the past couple weeks. Trump’s volatile approach to tariffs began basically as soon as he took office, with Canada and Mexico being the first targets, but so-called “Liberation Day” marked the start of something akin to full blown chaos.

It’s one of those times when you want as up-to-date data as possible, and lucky for us, our guest had just that. Kristen Soltis Anderson is a longtime friend of the pod. She’s the founder of Echelon Insights, which works with Republican campaigns and is a contributor to the New York Times and CNN. Her latest verrified voter survey came out of the field this morning, and shows some concerning signs for Republicans on the economy.

The video version of this podcast is available to paid subscribers here.

Nathaniel Rakich, Mary Radcliffe and I say goodbye to FiveThirtyEight (and talk about Gavin Newsom's podcast).

The video version of this podcast is available to paid subscribers here.

We recorded this podcast before markets closed on Monday, but at one point during the day the S&P 500 dipped into bear market territory — 20 percent off its recent high — before rebounding. In the two days following President Trump’s Liberation Day tariff announcement, the markets posted a 10 percent loss, the biggest two-day drop since the Covid crash.

On this episode of the podcast, Elliott Morris and Mary Radcliffe join me to talk about some of the math behind what Trump says he’s doing and how the public is reacting.

The video version of this podcast is available to paid subscribers here.

If you find the title of this episode confusing, the cold open should help clear things up. I believe it’s the longest cold open I’ve ever done for a podcast. Enjoy!

On a more serious note, we’ve got an awful lot to talk about today. I had originally planned to open up the mailbag and answer listener questions (which we still do), but before we get to that, Nathaniel Rakich and I talk about some of the news since the last episode.

Last Thursday evening Israel began bombing Iranian military targets with the goal of preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and the two countries have continued to exchange fire in the days since.

Friday night, a man who’s now in custody shot two Democratic Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses, killing state Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband and wounding state Senator John Hoffman and his wife. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz described the attack as “targeted political violence.”

On Saturday, President Trump hosted a military parade in Washington, DC marking the 250th birthday of the U.S. military, which also happened to be his birthday, and protesters gathered around the country under the banner “No Kings.”

Not that we need anything more to discuss, but today, June 16th also happens to be the 10th anniversary of Trump’s descent down that escalator and entrance into presidential politics. Nathaniel and I bring some data to try to make sense of it all.

Nate Silver and I went live on Substack Thursday afternoon to sort though some of the messy politics of the moment: There are the immigration raids in Los Angeles and the response from protesters and the Trump administration. There’s a competitive Democratic primary for mayor of New York City. Elon Musk seems to be back in the fold after threatening to …

The video version of this podcast is available to paid subscribers here.

The contours of the 2026 midterms are taking shape in House districts across the country. Inside Elections just released their most up to date ratings, so today we spotlight five districts to watch, across Colorado, Maine, New York, Washington and Iowa. Democrats only need to flip three seats in order to gain control of the House, but how deep into Republican territory are they trying to compete?

We also get into last week’s breakup between Donald Trump and Elon Musk. A recent piece in POLITICO argues, based on the polling, that “Musk boasts his own base of support that exists outside traditional partisan boundaries, particularly marked by the parasocial relationship young men have with him. That makes him a danger to the fragile coalition Republicans relied on in 2024.” Is that a good take based on the data?

With me to discuss it all is Jacob Rubashkin, Deputy Editor at Inside Elections.

The video version of this podcast is available to paid subscribers here.

Prepare to get nerdy today. We dig into the most rigorous data available on how different parts of the electorate voted in 2024.

The video version of this podcast is available to paid subscribers here.

What do Americans think about the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA)? And is the acronym pronounced “OH-bah” or “ABBA?”

For our purposes I think we’ll go with “ABBA,” so, will this be a case of The Winner Takes It All? Or will this be Republicans’ Waterloo? (This one’s for you ABBA fans!)

In any case, the House narrowly passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act just before Memorial Day. Senate Republicans now have to figure out what they want to do with it. And while they do that, on today’s podcast we figure out how Americans are reacting to it. We also look at what Americans think of Trump’s broader agenda, much of which is being enacted through executive actions.

We’ve got a lot of polling from our friends at YouGov to help us do that and they’ve also got a new survey out testing Americans’ self-regard. Do Americans think they are trustworthy? Smart? Good at driving? Good at running? And how do the sexes view themselves differently?

Joining me to get into it all is Carl Bialik, US politics editor and VP of data science at YouGov, and Taylor Orth, Director of Survey Data Journalism at YouGov.

I hope everyone had a nice Memorial Day Weekend!

If you’ve paid any attention to politics over the past decade you know that one of the most important ways America’s coalitions have changed is that Democrats have done increasingly well among voters with college degrees, while Republicans have done increasingly well among voters without them. In a country in which 63 percent of people don’t have a degree, that’s a losing proposition for Democrats.

The challenge facing Democrats runs deeper than strictly whether their voters completed a bachelor’s program. We talk about educational attainment so much, in part, because it's easily measured. We collect education data on the census and pollsters routinely ask respondents about it. But often when we talk about the diploma divide, we’re actually talking about something more complicated. We’re talking about class.

Class can shape all kinds of things about ourselves, including – importantly for our purposes – what we value in our leaders and how we want them to solve our problems. That is the topic of the new book by Joan C. Williams, “Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back,” and she’s today’s guest on the podcast.

GD POLITICS is a listener-supported podcast. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber here.

The video version of this podcast is available to paid subscribers here.

The latest techniques in polling, why less engaged voters rate Trump's performance more highly, and a new game!

The video version of this podcast is available to paid subscribers here.

Economic forecasting has often been as much of an art as a science, but since the pandemic it seems to have turned into a full on Jackson Pollock painting.

Remember when Biden-era inflation was transitory? Or when a recession was a 100 percent certainty at the start of 2022? Or how about when President Trump’s election to a second term marked the start of renewed boom times? You’d be forgiven if you started to think folks were just flinging s**t at a wall.

But even in this era of uncertainty and folly, this moment feels especially disorienting. What is the deal with all the on-again-off-again tariffs? Are the latest promising inflation numbers the calm before the storm? And what do Republicans actually want to do about the deficit, or Medicaid, or taxes?

Lucky for us, if anyone can make sense of this economic Jackson Pollock, it’s our guest on today’s podcast. Neil Irwin is the Chief Economic Correspondent at Axios. He’s also the author of "The Alchemists" and "How to Win."

The video version of this podcast is available to paid subscribers here.

Even by the standards of Trump-era news cycles, the back half of June has been a doozy. Remember when the L.A. immigration raids and protests were leading the news? That was only two weeks ago.

Since then, we’ve had a military parade, nationwide protests, Israel went to war with Iran, the U.S. bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities, there was a historic heatwave, Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral primary, the Supreme Court ruled to severely limit nationwide injunctions, and the U.S. stock market hit an all-time record.

And we’re not done yet! President Trump is hoping to get the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” passed by July 4th.

In this episode I speak with Mary Radcliffe and Lenny Bronner about how Americans are reacting to everything that’s going on. We also check out a new analysis of special elections since Trump took office. Yes, Democrats are over-performing, but not to the same degree everywhere.

New York State Rep. Zohran Mamdani seriously outperformed expectations in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary on Tuesday, well positioning himself to win the general election this fall.

The election had become a two-way race between Mamdani and former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, with polls projecting the results would likely be close enough …

If you are tired of hearing about how messy American politics are, today I’m offering you a reprieve. You’re going to hear about how messy British politics are.

Last week I was in London, exploring the city and speaking with journalists, friends and strangers alike about life in Britain. I visited a couple newsrooms and toured parliament during Prime Minister’s Questions. The big news of the day was the Labour government’s budget proposal and, despite their largest majority in nearly 30 years, Labour seems to be facing challenges on all sides.

If American politics can feel disappointing or frustrating, wait till you hear Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s approval rating: net -52 percentage points. By comparison President Trump, facing his own second term low of net -14 points, looks utterly popular.

Today we get into the challenges facing the Labour party and much more – the rise of the populist Right in the UK and Europe, relations with the US, and yes, people are still talking about Brexit.

To do this I reassembled the team from the dearly departed Talking Politics podcast. The former hosts, Helen Thompson and David Runciman, used to join me on the also departed FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast during the height of the Brexit drama. Think of this as the ghosts of two podcasts past.

Helen Thompson is a professor of political economy at Cambridge and author of the book “Disorder: Hard times in the 21st Century.” David Runciman is an honorary professor of politics at Cambridge and the host of the “Past Present Future” podcast.

The full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player by following the directions here.

Oftentimes when we talk about what divides the United States we talk about things like education, race, gender, or class. My guest today makes the argument that there’s something else fundamental at play, stretching back hundreds of years, to well before the founding of the country: the regional cultures that were developed by the people who settled America.

It may seem like a stretch to say that after waves of immigration and internal migration, technological and social change, that the pilgrims, quakers, aristocrats, and pioneers are still culturally with us. But Colin Woodard argues that you can’t actually understand our contemporary politics and the fights we’re having without that context.

In his previous book “American Nations” he laid out what he described as the 11 different “nations” – or culturally distinct regions – within America. In his new book “Nations Apart” he looks at the political and social differences across them on everything from voting, to health outcomes, to gun violence.

He also discusses what kinds of common narratives have united us in the past and what might work again today based on public opinion research. Colin is the director of Nationhood Lab at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy at Salve Regina University.

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Election Day 2025 is just about upon us. In a matter of hours New York City will elect a new mayor, Virginia and New Jersey will elect new governors, and California will decide whether to gerrymander its congressional maps. Millions of Americans across the country will also cast ballots in local elections.

We’ve got a lot cooking at the GD POLITICS pod, so let me share the game plan. Today’s podcast is a tick tock of what to expect on election night: when the polls close, what races we’ll be watching, what data we’ll have, and what time we might get race calls.

Monday night we have an election eve live show at the Comedy Cellar in New York City. It’s officially sold out and I look forward to seeing some of you there! Paid subscribers can expect to get a recording of that in their feeds Tuesday morning (so smash that paid subscriber button!).

On election night, I’ll be live streaming at gdpolitics.com alongside some of your GD POLITICS faves starting at 7pm Eastern Time – Lenny Bronner, Nathaniel Rakich, Mary Radcliffe, Jacob Rubashkin, with some other guests stopping by. Wednesday morning we’ll have a reaction podcast in the feed.

Hold on to your seats, folks!

Two election week updates to start: First, we have a live show coming up at the Comedy Cellar in New York City with Nate Silver and Clare Malone on election eve, November 3rd. There are a few tickets left, so grab ‘em and join us!

Second, I’ll be live-streaming on election night, November 4th, alongside some of your GD POLITICS faves. Think of this as friends having an election watch party that you’re invited to. Assuming we make it to midnight, it will also be my birthday, so don’t be surprised if you see a glass of wine or birthday shots. Grab your favorite beverage and join us starting at 7pm ET at gdpolitics.com.

I’m first going to apologize to listeners who don’t care about New York City politics, because that’s what today’s entire episode is about. Though I wouldn’t skip just yet; I promise it will be interesting.

For our New York-minded friends (or people who just get a kick out of Democratic Party drama) today is your day! We are just five days out from a New York mayoral election that has been nothing if not attention grabbing, and, in its own special way, reflective of the complicated city the next mayor will govern.

Let’s begin with the spark notes version of the past 8 months…

It all started with incumbent mayor Eric Adams switching his party identification to Independent, acknowledging that his corruption scandals and relationship with President Trump would prevent him from winning renomination in a Democratic primary.

Then, there was the assured primary victory for the also scandal-plagued three term-governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, which, of course, was not assured after all. Thirty-three year old Democratic Socialist assemblyman Zohran Mamdani won the primary by 13 points, after making the cost of living his defining issue.

Cuomo vowed to continue on as an Independent, while the Democratic establishment remained wary of endorsing Mamdani. Mamdani’s past statements about defunding the police, globalizing the intifada, and more – which hadn’t gotten much play during the primary – came to the fore.

But while Mamdani has struggled to reach 50 percent support in the polls, anti-Mamdani forces haven’t had much luck either. The scandals and lack of charisma that plagued Cuomo in the primary, haven’t gone away. Curtis Sliwa, the – perhaps you could say – odd ball Republican candidate, who’s been a debate favorite for his old-school New York zingers, has wallowed in the teens. Though he told the press he’d only drop out if a Mack Truck hit him and he couldn’t be resuscitated in the ICU.

While incumbent mayor Eric Adams did drop out after polling in the high single digits, his endorsement of Cuomo hasn’t made up the difference for Cuomo. Throughout all of this, Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries and New York Governor Kathy Hochul have concluded, like just about everyone, that Mamdani will win the election and that they are better off endorsing.

A similar conclusion about the inevitability of Mamdani from business leaders, online bettors, and political analysts alike hasn’t stopped the candidates from a brawl down the final stretch. For my part, I’ve spent more than one November in Wisconsin, and the political ads in the city right now are next level.

So that gets us to where we are today. To elaborate much more, joining me is Michael Lange, the author of the newsletter “The Narrative Wars”. The big question now facing Mamdani is whether he can win an outright majority of New York City voters. The answer will shape his likely tenure.

We have a live show coming up on November 3rd at the Comedy Cellar in New York City with Nate Silver and Clare Malone. Come join us for a rowdy election eve!

We are one week away from Election Day 2025, so this week we’re zooming in on the biggest contests of the year. Today it’s Virginia, New Jersey, and California. Later in the week we’ll take a detailed political tour of New York City’s vastly different neighborhoods.

In Virginia, Democrat Abigail Spanberger currently leads Republican Winsome Earle-Sears in the race for Governor by an average of 8 points. Underneath that top line number there’s plenty of variation, with recent polls ranging from a 5 point lead to a 13 point lead for Spanberger. The Attorney General’s race, in which Democrat Jay Jones has had to apologize for text messages that promoted political violence, is significantly closer.

Meanwhile in New Jersey, Democrat Mikie Sherill leads Republican Jack Ciattarelli by 6 points on average. Most polls there have shown a mid-single digit race. In the legislatures in both states, Democrats appear assured to maintain their majorities or grow them.

We also take a look at areas of Virginia and New Jersey that could give us and indication of how different parts of the electorate are reacting to Trump 2.0. There are the wealthy Northern Virginia and Northern Jersey suburbs, large Latino communities also in northern Jersey, and large Black communities in Hampton Roads, Virginia.

If you stick around until the end, we also get to the latest Graham Platner polling in Maine.

With me to do it all is Chaz Nuttycombe, executive director of State Navigate, which covers state-level politics around the country from a data perspective, and Mary Radcliffe, who also works at State Navigate and runs the new polling aggregation site FiftyPlusOne.

The full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player by following the directions here.

Shortly after I launched this podcast, I had a guest on who caught folks attention. Her name was Joan C. Williams, a law professor at UC San Francisco, and she joined me to talk about her new book, “Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back.”

She spoke straightforwardly about why the cultural values of America’s liberal elites and working class are different. As she said, working class values reflect working class lives. And she described how a strict adherence to elite values by Liberals creates challenges for a Democratic Party in pursuit of a majority coalition. After all, less than 40 percent of American adults have a college degree.

It turns out that Joan became something of a listener to this GD podcast herself. A few weeks ago, she sent me an email saying that she listened to an episode I did about whether there are electoral advantages to being moderate. She told me she had just written an op-ed in the Boston Globe about what politicos mean when they talk about moderation, and that there are many different types of so-called moderation, not all of which have the same electoral advantages.

I told her to come back on the podcast and talk to me about it and that’s what we’re doing today. And speaking of liberal elitism, Joan joins me from Siena, Italy where she has been writing about class divides from the 13th century and how they relate to our class divides today.

We have a live show coming up on November 3rd at the Comedy Cellar in New York City with Clare Malone and Nate Silver. Come join us for a rowdy election eve!

Maine Democrats have themselves a primary contest between the current governor Janet Mills and former Marine and oyster farmer Graham Platner in their bid to oust Senator Susan Collins next year. On its face, it looks like a battle for the soul of the party, though Platner’s recently resurfaced comments on Reddit could disrupt his momentum.

On today’s podcast we take a look at the contours of that race and what’s at stake in the Voting Rights Act case at the Supreme Court. Nate Cohn at the New York Times is calling it the “case that could hand the House to Republicans.”

We also get some updates on the 2025 elections, which are just two weeks away. It’s debate season and we’ve now seen gubernatorial debates in Virginia and New Jersey and a meme generating mayoral debate in New York City. Think parade politics, bodega orders, and New Yorkers’ favorite kind of virtue signaling: subway ridership.

With me to discuss it all is reporter at the Associated Press Leah Askarinam and chief elections analyst at Decision Desk HQ Geoffrey Skelley.

A question that political analysts often ask is whether something is “breaking through.” Is a piece of information reaching the masses? And is it not just the case that everyone knows it, but does everyone know that everyone else knows it too.

Did we all see that Super Bowl ad? Did we all see that political gaffe? Or as today’s guest would put it: Is it common knowledge?

When people know that something is known or believed by others, it can change human behavior. Think about the watershed moment that President Biden’s 2024 debate caused. Polling already showed that a majority of Americans – even a majority of Democrats – believed Biden was too old for the job. The debate didn’t so much change the facts, as it made it obvious that everyone else knew them too.

Or think about the many Democratic voters in the 2020 primary who wanted to vote for the candidate they believed others would vote for. In an instance like that, simply publishing polling results can influence who voters might support.

This is a phenomenon that shapes electoral politics, but it extends well beyond that, to stock market bubbles and bursts and online mob behavior. With me on today’s podcast to break it down is Steven Pinker. He’s a psychology professor at Harvard University and author of many books, the latest of which is, “When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . . Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life.”

Today’s episode focuses on something that few Americans and seemingly even few lawmakers in Washington are particularly preoccupied by: the fact that the government is shut down. Given the lack of urgency, how will it actually end?

After that, we have something of a grab bag of topics. We talk about the axis of conflict that Democrats are hoping to wage the midterms on, that video of Democratic candidate for California governor Katie Porter bombing an interview that wasn’t even particularly hostile.

We also look at some polling on free speech and political violence that should give folks cause for optimism, and the legal questions at play in President Trump’s attempts to send the National Guard to American cities.

This is a conversation that Gabe Fleisher and I had last week on Substack Live. Gabe is the author of the newsletter Wake Up To Politics, which he started writing at the age of nine, so he’s got quite a wealth of knowledge.

Relatively little has changed in shutdown negotiations since we chatted, except one note that Trump announced that members of the military will continue being paid despite the shutdown. They otherwise would miss their first paycheck on Wednesday, October 15.

A heads up that this is your last chance to get 20% off an annual subscription to the podcast. Our first-ever discount, offering paid subscriptions for just $5/month, ends at the end of this week.

Paid subscribers get access to a second weekly podcast, access to the paid subscriber chat, and recordings of live shows like our upcoming live show on November 3rd. I hope you’ll join the crew!

We are less than a month away from Election Day 2025 and today we have a primer on the key races to watch.

There are technically elections all over the country, in 32 states, including contests for school board, city council, sheriff and more, plus referenda of all kinds. But the real blockbuster races are the gubernatorial and legislative races in New Jersey and Virginia, the mayoral race in New York City, and the redistricting ballot initiative in California. Call it the revenge of the coasts!

The New York City race, as you might have heard, is a rematch between former governor Andrew Cuomo and state assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, with perennial Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa along for the ride.

In New Jersey, Democrats are starting to get angsty as the governor’s race between Democrat Mikie Sherrill and Republican Jack Ciattarelli looks to be a single digit race, maybe even a low single digit race.

In Virginia, while the governor’s contest looks like an easier bet for Democrats than historically bluer New Jersey, that hasn’t stopped a spate of scandals from disrupting some of the down ballot statewide races.

And lastly, the California fight over redistricting – Prop 50 – is already the third most expensive ballot measure in state history, with $215 million in spending as of the first week of October. The polling looks somewhat positive for Democrats hoping to gerrymander the state, but polling in such an irregular race can be tricky.

With me to dive into all of this is deputy editor of Inside Elections Jacob Rubashkin.

We are currently offering our first-ever discount on paid subscriptions. Right now, an annual subscription is 20% off, meaning you’ll become a paid subscriber for just $5/month. Paid subscribers get access to a second weekly podcast, including recordings of live shows like our upcoming live show on November 3rd.

The government has now been shut down for 6 days and there’s no clear end in sight, let alone any palpable urgency to reach that end. During past government shutdowns, there has at least been the sense that lawmakers are earnestly trying to find a path forward. Why not this time? Perhaps we need not look any further than the polls.

The bulk of polling suggests Americans blame Republicans more than Democrats for the shutdown, so Democrats aren’t feeling pressure to fold. Historical polling also suggests that the party making the demands that provoke the shutdown – in this case Democrats – are eventually seen as responsible and fold after achieving little to no policy concessions. Given that, Republicans probably aren’t feeling the pressure to compromise either.

Today we dig deeper into those surveys and try to get a sense of where things might go from here. We also focus on a couple other polls that have attracted attention recently. (Yes, it’s a polling heavy day, so grab that calculator and put on those stats nerd glasses. I promise it will be fun 🤓)

The New York Times released its first national poll since April, following months of newsworthy developments and political rancor, resulting in… wait for it… no discernible change in how Americans view Trump and Democrats.

There’s also a new poll out of Pennsylvania showing that Democratic Senator John Fetterman is a relatively popular figure in the state. Just one important footnote: he is 20 points underwater with his own party’s voters and 40 points above water with Republicans. So is his approach a roadmap for other Democrats to win over Republican voters or a one way ticket to a primary challenge and an ouster from Washington?

With me to discuss it all are friends of the podcast Mary Radcliffe and Lenny Bronner.

We are currently offering our first-ever discount on paid subscriptions. Right now, an annual subscription is 20% off, meaning you’ll become a paid subscriber for just $5/month. Paid subscribers get access to a second weekly podcast, including the audio and video from live shows like the one above and our upcoming live show on November 3rd.

Today’s episode is a live taping of the podcast with Nate Silver and Clare Malone at the Comedy Cellar in New York City. The video version is available here.

During the taping, we discuss the strategy involved in a government shutdown (it hadn’t happened at the time of the recording, but we predicted that it would come to pass). We also introduce a new segment called, “Hot Take Hat.” There was so much news to discuss that we couldn’t decide which stories to cover, so we left it to chance. As a result, we discuss the NYC mayoral race, gerrymandering, vaccines, Fed independence, and more.

Lastly, we play a game of “Guess Which Comedian Said This.” It was not lost on us that we were recording the podcast in something of a sacred place for comedians, during a time when the government is challenging First Amendment principles. To mark the significance, we compete — along with the audience — to identify which comedian is responsible for some audacious excerpts of political satire.

We wrap up with some very thoughtful questions from members of the audience, ranging from free speech to Trump’s energy policy.

If everything is going to plan, I am on vacation this week. Fear not! I have recorded podcasts ahead of time so you’ll still have two episodes this week. However, don’t be surprised if something crazy has happened in the world and you don’t hear it mentioned in conversation. I haven’t forgotten, it’s just that whatever crazy thing we are now dealing with had not yet happened when the podcasts were recorded. If past is prologue, hold onto your seats, the news cycle rarely behaves while I’m away.

Today we are opening up the mailbag to sort through our backlog of listener mail. Listeners have been sending in great questions lately! As a reminder, you can always share your questions in the paid subscriber chat at gdpolitics.com. You can also send questions to galen@gdpolitics.com and reach me via the usual social media channels.

On today’s episode we discuss the power of celebrity in politics, the possibility of the Democratic presidential primary moving to a ranked choice voting system in 2028, the state of the Republican Texas Senate primary, and much more. With me to do it all is friend of the podcast and data scientist at the Washington Post, Lenny Bronner.

P.S. — I am currently in London for a combination of work and fun. Feel free to use the channels above to share any recs!

The Left has long claimed the mantle of the party of working people. As recently as last decade, Democrats posted twenty point margins with union households. In the Trump era, the Right has posed a significant challenge to that identity. In 2024, Harris won union households by just 8 points, though as union membership has declined, that may not be the most apt measurement. Lower and middle income people have also shifted decidedly to the right.

The stories that the two parties tell when trying to win over workers have variations, but generally go something like this: American workers have gotten the short end of the stick over the past half-century, as globalization and free trade have taken root, manufacturing has been hollowed out, and wages have stagnated. The Left includes blame for greedy corporations and union busting and the Right includes blame for mass migration and regulation.

The majority of American adults are “working people,” and so there’s plenty of political power in claiming them as core to your coalition. That is the focus of today’s podcast. According to the data, how are workers doing and what do they think of the politicians who say they’re serving them?

With me to discuss is John Lettieri, co-founder and president of the Economic Innovation Group, a bipartisan think tank. They put together plenty of economic research, including a recent poll of American workers, which they did with Echelon Insights.

The full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player by following the directions here.

We’ve got a lot to talk about today. We cover who is actually watching late night TV, Kamala Harris’s new book, whether politicians are using AI to do their jobs, whether efforts to reduce partisan animus actually work, and the government’s move to cancel a survey measuring how many Americans are going hungry.

I say we, but I actually mean me. When I launched this podcast I said that I wanted to hear directly from you, the listeners, and speak directly to you as well. I imagined that might include episodes where I’d open up the mic and do exactly that … talk to you. I did it a couple times early on, but it’s been a minute and so I want to do it again.

Tentatively I’ll call this the GD Notebook. I’ll open up my notes — books, articles, and the likes — that I’ve been reading and share them along with some thoughts and answer some of your questions. Often when I read a compelling article or poll, I’ll reach out to the author or talk about it with guests on the podcast, but I read a lot of stuff and we often don’t get to all of it. I constantly have loads of tabs open on my computer with things we didn’t get to. Hopefully we can make good use of them here!

Today we’re mostly going to go through my notebook, but, as a reminder, you can send in questions on the paid subscriber chat and at galen@gdpolitics.com.

When President Trump took office on January 20th, 2025, he said in his inaugural address: “After years and years of illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts to restrict free expression, I also will sign an executive order to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America. Never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents.”

In just the past week, Trump has called critical television coverage of him “illegal,” and said that, “when 97 percent of the stories are bad about a person, it’s no longer free speech.” He’s also threatened ABC’s chief Washington correspondent to, “go after people like you,” for, “hate speech,” and urged his administration to revoke the broadcast licenses of TV stations that are “against” him. He also filed a $15 billion defamation lawsuit against the New York Times and threatened protesters and left wing groups with racketeering lawsuits.

Additionally, Trump has urged his Attorney General Pam Bondi to target his political foes. For her part, Bondi said in a podcast interview, “There’s free speech, and then there’s hate speech. And there is no place — especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie — in our society.” She went on to say, “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.” She later attempted to clarify that she was referring to incitements of violence.

As we discussed on the last podcast, FCC Chair Brendan Carr threatened Disney and ABC’s affiliate stations over Jimmy Kimmel’s recent comments saying, “This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney. We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” and “These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel, or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

The Pentagon has said it will require journalists to sign a pledge refraining from reporting information that isn’t authorized for release, including unclassified information, or risk losing press credentials. And the vice president urged Americans to call the employers of anyone seen celebrating the killing of Charlie Kirk.

The events of the past week add to a long list of moves that already concerned First Amendment defenders, like targeting law firms, museums, academic institutions, and career bureaucrats for expression Trump disagrees with and attempting to criminalize burning the American flag.

On today’s podcast, we make sense of all of this with a longtime defender of the First Amendment, Nadine Strossen. She was the longest-serving president of the ACLU, from 1991 to 2008 and is now a senior fellow at FIRE, the Foundation For Individual Rights And Expression. She is also the author of the 2018 book, “HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship” and a professor emerita at New York Law School.

Throughout her career she has defended all manner of expression, ranging from the alt-right in Charlottesville, to free speech on campuses, to pornography, to flag burning, to criticizing the PATRIOT ACT. Perhaps most poignantly, as the daughter of a holocaust survivor, she has spoken in favor of the right of neo-Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois, a case that predated her at the ACLU.

The full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player by following the directions here.

On today’s podcast we talk about two shutdowns: the indefinite preemption of Jimmy Kimmel Live! and the possibility that Democrats will shut the government down at the end of the month.

Wednesday night Jimmy Kimmel went the way of FiveThirtyEight (at least for now), when ABC preempted his show indefinitely. In a monologue on the show he had appeared to suggest that Charlie Kirk’s killer was a Republican, saying "The MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it."

On Wednesday, FCC chair Brendan Carr appeared to threaten Disney over the comments saying, “This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney. We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” and, “These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel, or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

This has all caused outrage over the suggestion of government coercion and censorship and it comes not long after Attorney General Pam Bondi characterized the First Amendment as not covering hate speech.

Today on the podcast, Mary Radcliffe, Nathaniel Rakich, and I react to the developments and the broader political environment in the aftermath of Kirk’s killing. We also debate whether Democrats should shut the government down.

We have a special guest on the podcast today: former FiveThirtyEight Politics podcaster, staff writer at The New Yorker, and dear friend, Clare Malone.

As a reminder Clare, Nate Silver and I will be taping a live show at the Comedy Cellar in New York City on September 29th. Tickets are available here.

In this installment of the podcast, Clare and I catch up on some of the latest news in politics and media. We talk about the political and emotional reverberations from Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the strange bedfellows who have found common cause in the “Make America Healthy Again” movement, and we dig through the most recent polling in the New York City mayoral race.

We also debate the potency of Democrats’ messaging about Trump’s “culture of corruption,” as well as the meaning of Kamala Harris’s new book. Lastly, we discuss what the recent Murdoch family settlement means for the future of conservative media.

The full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player by following the directions here.

I recorded today’s podcast on Wednesday before the news broke that Charlie Kirk was killed, so I want to take a moment to address it at the start.

It’s despicable and saddening. It’s sad on a human level and sad on a national level. On a human level, my heart goes out to Charlie’s family and his young children. On a national level, it’s a horrific situation to be in that someone was murdered while engaging in debate on a college campus. People must feel safe to speak their minds in a free country — left, right, center, controversial or not.

At the time I’m writing this, we don’t have details about the perpetrator, but all indications point toward political violence. If you’re a longtime listener, you’ve been alongside me for far too much political violence: multiple assassination attempts against President Trump, January 6th, the shooting of Steve Scalise, the shooting of two state lawmakers in Minnesota, the El Paso Walmart shooting, the Brian Thompson shooting, this assassination of Charlie Kirk, and more.

Partisans may focus on blaming a political party. We know from evidence that’s not helpful. The best way to prevent future political violence is for all leaders to condemn it in the clearest, strongest terms whenever it happens, by whoever it’s committed. Evidence also suggests that it’s a very small number of Americans who see violence as an acceptable form of political behavior. Tragically, though, all it takes is one person to wreak havoc on our nation and our system.

It’s heartening to see the most prominent Democratic leaders condemning the violence in absolute terms. It’s disheartening to see left-wing provocateurs celebrating and right-wing provocateurs describing this as a call to arms.

For my part, this is the whole ballgame. Decreasing political discord and engendering a shared sense of fate amongst Americans is one of the things I care most about. I hope I never have to cite statistics or evidence about the number of Americans who support political violence again on the GD POLITICS podcast. I sadly know that’s unlikely.

It’s hard to feel optimistic at a moment like this, but I do feel thankful for the positive community we have here on this podcast. So thank you for that and my prayers are with Charlie Kirk’s family.

The bulk of today’s show focuses on recent elections and questions from listeners. We got a lot of great questions, so please continue sending them in.

We talk about why Trump’s approval rating has been holding up better now than in his first term, whether all those spam calls and texts are making it harder to poll, and how young voters’ priorities are diverging along gender and partisan lines. We’ve also got some recent election news, including the special election in Virginia and a national election in Norway.

With me to discuss all of that and more is friend of the pod and senior data scientist at the Washington Post Lenny Bronner.

Tuesday is Election Day in Virginia’s 11th congressional district. Call it an amuse bouche for Virginia’s statewide elections this November.

The special election, following Democrat Gerry Connolly’s death in office, isn’t expected to be competitive. Harris won the district by 34 percentage points, but it gives us one more data point to assess how the parties are doing in special elections. So far this year, Democrats are over-performing by double digits.

On today’s podcast we also discuss Friday’s job numbers and whether they’ll add to Americans’ pessimism about Trump’s handling of the economy. It’s a very different dynamic to Trump’s first term, when Americans approved of Trump’s handling of the economy even if they didn’t like him overall.

Plus, a recent New York Times analysis of population trends paints a dire picture for Democrats Electoral College math next decade, with red states gaining electors and blue states losing them. Is it “Good Data, Bad Data, or Not Data?”

Joining me are two trusty hands: Nathaniel Rakich and Mary Radcliffe.

The full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player by following the directions here.

It’s hard to open the news these days and not get the sense that American democracy is on the fritz. And I’m not just talking about if you’re mainlining MSNBC. Within the past week, a headline at the Financial Times reads: “US sliding towards 1930s-style autocracy, warns Ray Dalio.”

The Wall Street Journal reads: “In Trump’s Second Term, a Bolder President Charges Ahead Unchecked. Trump is frequently riffing on authoritarianism and ignoring caution from advisers.” The New York Times reads: “Historians See Autocratic Playbook in Trump’s Attacks on Science.”

President Trump has tested and – according to the courts – exceeded the bounds of his power while in office.

He’s deployed the National Guard against governors' wishes, levied tariffs of all manner, frozen funding to universities, cut off law firms from federal contracts, fast tracked deportations using the Alien Enemies Act, fired a Fed governor and heads of independent agencies, installed allies at the Department of Justice… the list goes on.

Some of this may fall into the category of “things that Democrats don’t like,” and the remedy for that is to win elections. Some of it may be illegal. And in those instances, the remedy is the courts.

One of the most important tests of our system is whether the courts recognize breaches of the law when they happen and whether involved parties comply with court rulings once they’re made.

So on today’s podcast I want to get beyond what can sometimes feel like a nebulous freakout and talk about the cases asserting that Trump has exceeded his power and check in on where they stand.

According to Just Security, there are at least 390 legal challenges to the Trump administration's actions, so we don’t get to all of them, but we touch on some key ones. With me to do that is Professor of Law at Cardozo, Jessica Roth. She’s also the co-director of the Center for Ethics in the Practice of Law and a former federal prosecutor.

The video version of this podcast is available to paid subscribers at gdpolitics.com

Even before the mid-decade gerrymandering wars began, the 2026 midterms were on track to feature the fewest competitive House districts in modern elections.

According to Cook Political Report’s ratings, 84 percent of House districts are solidly in one camp and another 7 percent are likely Republican or Democrat. That means 91 percent of districts aren’t particularly competitive and 30 states don’t have a single competitive election for the House. Current gerrymandering efforts are likely to take more competitive districts off the table.

It’s a tricky moment for – well, the country – and also for good government groups that have long pursued election reforms like independent redistricting commissions. Common Cause, which has frequently sued over partisan gerrymandering, said it won’t fight California over its proposed gerrymander.

According to the nonpartisan group Unite America, which has also pursued independent redistricting reforms, this makes reforms to primary elections – where the vast majority of the midterm elections will essentially be decided – all the more important.

Unite America advocates for “open primaries” in which all voters (Republican, Democrat, and unaligned) can cast a ballot, and candidates from all parties compete together. They also advocate for instant runoffs in general elections, known as ranked choice voting.

Joining me on today’s podcast to make the case for these reforms is Richard Barton, a fellow at Unite America and political science professor at Syracuse University.

We’ve got a podcast full of election updates today. We kick things off with the latest in the gerrymandering wars. Both Texas and California approved new maps in their state legislatures. For Texas, that makes it pretty much a done deal, pending lawsuits. For California, that means the maps now go to the voters to approve and we have some new polling on what they think at the start of all of this.

Now eyes are turning to Missouri, Ohio, Indiana, and Florida for more Republican gerrymandering and to New York, Illinois, Maryland, Oregon and Virginia for more Democratic gerrymandering. Although, much of the Democratic gerrymandering may have to wait a cycle.

Next we look to the New York City mayoral race, one of the hottest items of the fall’s off-year elections. It’s getting about as New York as you can imagine. There’s more scandal surrounding Eric Adams, including one associate trying to bribe a reporter with cash stuffed in a bag of Herr’s potato chips. Zohran Mamdani led his supporters on a city-wide scavenger hunt and got panned online for failing to do a bench press rep solo at a campaign event. And Cuomo is attracting big money from Mamdani-skeptic New Yorkers, with his super PAC raising 1.3 million in a single week.

We also check in on the national environment, lest we get to Texas, California and New York-centric. With me to do it all is my former colleague and newly minted Chief Election Analyst at Decision Desk HQ Geoffrey Skelley.