Transcript: Trump’s Support Among Minority Voters Has Collapsed

So Zohran won seventy-five percent among those eighteen to twenty-nine; he won sixty-five percent among those thirty to forty-four. Among those with no college degree, he won forty-two percent compared to Cuomo’s forty-seven—so about a tie. Among those whose income was below thirty thousand dollars, Zohran won forty-seven, Cuomo forty-four—so about a tie.

Among renters, which is a good sort of proxy for income but also a proxy for age, Zohran got fifty-nine percent. And then, ideology: Zohran won seventy-eight percent of liberals, but only thirty-three percent of moderates in New York. He won sixty-eight percent of self-identified Democrats.

So the reason I say all that—and also looking at the results in Minneapolis, where the socialist candidate lost, and in Seattle, where there’s a very close race—I’m not sure if Zohran has solved the Democrats’ challenges in some way with the working class or with lower-income people.

I do think he did very well with younger people and with people who are pretty liberal, and I think that might be a more honest take than he’s, by talking about rent freezes, won the entire working class. So I’ll stop there.

Podhorzer: Yeah, as in, he did, like, find one really important key to winning elections like that—which is running against a failed governor who was enormously unpopular and completely discredited. And it’s kind of a controlled experiment, because the other races you’ve talked about didn’t have that—didn’t have a Cuomo.

Bacon: Yes.

Podhorzer: So I think that New York’s a little different because it’s like—it’s just New York, right? And I think—I happened to be there the week before the election, not for the election—but to his credit, I’ve really barely, in the last twenty-whatever years, seen people actively just be happy that…

Bacon: He did a great job.

Podhorzer: Right. It’s like Obama-level enthusiasm. Exactly. Right. It’s like—those are the only two times I’ve really seen a thing where you just, like, walk up to people and say, “Hey, like, what about the race?” And they go, “Oh, I’m, you know?” Right.

So I think it’s, like, really a one-off in so many ways that trying to take lessons from it is tough. I’ll do one thing, though—in, like, pulling something out about what you were saying from the exits—that I think speaks to a larger problem with how polling is looked at to try to get underneath it.

Because if you, like, go to whatever, whichever exit poll sheet, and you look in all of it—really, almost everything is one-dimensional, right? Everything you listed was on this income, this age. And I don’t know about you, but, like, I’m a bunch of things together, right? And that explains me better than any of those categories.

And so one of the things—

Bacon: Well, I’m black as we noted, so you, so people went up and assumed that I voted for Harris last time.

But anyway, go ahead.

Podhorzer: Right. But one of the things I did notice that happened—actually to combine a few, but in a different kind of way—was by how long you’ve lived in New York.

Bacon: Oh, that’s interesting. Okay.

Podhorzer: And, and there it was that really sharp line. Right.

Bacon: Who does better among? I don’t actually, I didn’t actually look.

Podhorzer: Oh no. If you’ve lived there the longest you were least for Mamdani.

Bacon: Oh wow.

Podhorzer: Okay. Right. The more recently you arrived, the more you were for him.

Bacon: So that’s, that’s capturing age. That’s probably capturing immigration status. That’s…

Podhorzer: Capturing a bunch of things. Right.

Bacon: Renters probably. Okay.

Podhorzer: That’s—yeah. Right, right. In a way that, like, is sharper—you know, more lopsided in each category than the ones you’re talking about.

And for me, like, before I then think about whether we should look at a particular category as a serious thing, it’s really gotta be at least three-to-one one way or the other. Because if it’s less, then there’s lots of other stuff going on.

And so to then pin it on that name thing is just misleading yourself.

Bacon: Is there much we can learn from—so your point is, run against Andrew Cuomo, always good, right? If you’re in a Democratic primary. So there’s not—okay, so I worry there’s not…

Podhorzer: No, I do think there’s one really big thing to take away from this.

Bacon: Yes.

Podhorzer: That, that I think, when we listen to the sort of, you know, the moderate-industrial complex about all of this, what’s really important is that in cycles like this, you really have to be much more ambitious about how many races you put in play—because you don’t even know where this is gonna pan out at this point.

Right. And, you know, I keep hearing—and I wanna sort of, whatever—like, just how Democrats have to be like Rahm was in 2006. And that is such a misunderstanding of basically how he screwed up in 2006, in this way.

So, for folks who don’t know what I’m talking about, the basic idea in 2006 was Rahm Emanuel became head of the DCCC and said, we’re gonna go, and we’re gonna get these, you know, military candidates—we’re gonna get really conservative people—we’re gonna really be focused and disciplined. And Democrats had a great 2006, but what really isn’t understood is how he, by himself, narrowed the battlefield.

Because—and this is a great story, sort of the arc of things—so I, as Perry said, I think at the beginning I was being politic… Before I retired, I was political director of the AFL-CIO, doing this for a very long time. Anyway, in 2006, there was a candidate that the labor movement was supporting in Minnesota that Rahm was just ripping us for, telling us not to waste—he actually said his money on—even though it was our union members money. Yeah. And that Minnesota candidate was Tim Walz.

Bacon: Yes.

Podhorzer: And the—right—and there were about thirteen Democrats who came within three points in 2006 and lost, which is very unusual in a wave year. Right? Most of the close races go to the party that wins—and half of ’em won in 2008.

Right. I mean, he actually reduced the number of races Democrats could win in 2006. And so if there’s a lesson, it’s like, don’t let that happen again. Right. Don’t, like, try to suppress folks. Don’t try to drain them of resources. Because what we’re gonna find, if this continues—and if the elections aren’t subverted and all those kinds of things—is that it’s just gonna happen all over the place.

Bacon: In other words, if we’re having a wave election, an anti-incumbent, anti-president wave is gonna hit a lot of places—some of which are gonna be surprising to us. Right. And it won’t necessarily—and, and a quote-unquote lefty might win, or a moderate. The kind of people who will win will not—you know, actually, my congressman here in Louisville for a long time, his name’s John Yarmuth.

Yeah, he also won that year. He also faced the Rahm-wants-to-have-some-kind-of-veteran one. He was more progressive—he had run a newspaper before—and he also won that year. He won the primary, won the general, despite Rahm, too, in the same way. ’Cause it was a wave—and the wave hit everywhere.

Podhorzer: Right, and in a way I hadn’t really thought of, Tim—or talking about Yarmuth, too.

I mean, one of the things that we, like, really learned from this last election was that Democrats—the problem was they couldn’t reach people in the media they were in. And so the people who were checked out and all of that—and we also know just how little local media there is anymore. Right.

Well, that just makes it even more likely that people are gonna vote for the “D” down ballot. Right. Because they don’t even hear about whether he’s a left “D” or a—oh, you know, whatever. Right. They know nothing, but they know, sort of, that they’re mad. And so, yeah, it becomes candidate attributes one way or the other not gonna make much of a difference.

Bacon: Well, I guess that makes me ask our last question here. So, I guess Zohran got a lot of credit for being innovative in media—videos and et cetera—and I think people have talked about that being essential.

Is that essential in New York, or is that essential—these sort of, can-you-go-on-a-two-hour-podcast kinds of things? Like, I’m dubious of the idea that the average House candidate needs to be going on a two-hour podcast—or that they even get booked on a two-hour podcast—because Joe Rogan is not interviewing random House candidates.

But do you think—how important is this sort of media-skills part of it, in this world where I agree local media is declining or dead in a lot of places?

Podhorzer: I think it’s one of those things where—and this is sort of the problem with, like, looking for lessons—is that there are some things that, if you’re in the top one percent of doing something, it’s not about that particular channel. It’s about you.

And so the fact that he can do that is—yeah, he understands TikTok. He also has a natural ability, right? That means that, like, if you or I tried to run a race and just really knew how to do TikToks, it wouldn’t help them.

Bacon: Or Abigail Spanberger’s staff does not have great TikTok strategy.

Podhorzer: Right. And so, like, it’s hard—you shouldn’t confuse it. And the other thing that I think is really important, because this is a mistake I’ve seen made since, like, 1973, is that tacticians confuse the power of novelty with something inherent in the tactic.

Right. So, in 1972, the McGovern campaign, right, did really well because they sent letters to voters that were, like, two or three pages. And that really worked because no one ever got letters from political candidates. Right.

And you remember how, like, the first time you got an email—a long email—about this stuff, you thought, Oh my God, email really works! And then texts, and then whatever. No—it’s that you basically ambush people who aren’t expecting political content in that channel. So they pay attention for the first X times the—

Right. And then everyone else does—it burns out the channel—and then the next thing comes along. But really, the through line is novelty, right? It’s like showing up where you’re not expected, rather than the channel itself.

Bacon: I’m gonna reflect on that.

‘Cause I know all my friends complain, I get text messages from the Democrats constantly and it’s annoying to me. And I think that tactic was innovative.

Podhorzer: Oh my God. The first time you got texts—the ROI on the first, like, year cycle of text messaging was enormous, right? And then it just gets burnt out.

Because it isn’t that you’re texting—it’s that, at the beginning, you didn’t expect to find that text on your phone. Right? Now you see even things that ought to get your attention, and you just roll your eyes and hit spam, right?

Bacon: Any final thoughts about the election results? I think that’s a good, you know, just wanna let you go here.

Podhorzer: Yeah, it’s great talking and, hope folks really follow you, at The New Republic. You do great work.

Bacon: Thank you. And thank you for joining in Michael. Good to see you.