Happy Electionpalooza | Hour 1

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to the Pete calendar show.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. As we do every Tuesday at noon, we chat with Andrew Dunn, Andrew is the publisher of Longleaf Politics. You can read it at longleafpol.com. And he's also the author of the book, The Change Agent, Pat McCrory's Rise, Reckoning, and Legacy. Hello, Andrew. How are you doing on this election palooza? Oh, I'm doing well, but I'm about ready for this election to be over. Why? It has been the most Some election cycle I can remember in a long time, and not because of who's up and who's down in the polls. It's been an election about nothing, right? It's been very issue light. Nobody's talking about elections. It's all vibes and turnout. And that gets me depressed. Well, didn't you watch the very substantive, meaty debate between the U.S. Senate candidates here in North Carolina? It was like a seven-hour debate, like a like the Lincoln-Douglas debate style, if I remember. Right. No, not a single debate in a United States Senate race. That blows my mind that that didn't become a bigger deal in this campaign, but I guess that's where we are as a country. So why do you think that is? Why hasn't that been a bigger deal? Well, I think a lot of it has to do with the media environment changing. You'd have to. Think 10 years, 20 years ago when we had a more robust debate political reporter core in North Carolina. There would be more demands that there is a debate, but that doesn't exist anymore. And a lot of the folks who are left in our newsrooms are rooting for Roy Cooper and didn't want to put him in a position to have to answer questions about a potential debate. Yeah, I think you're right. I actually was talking to a friend who said that the Cooper campaign was would not give them a heads up. If they're sending out a press release or just like a media heads up, hey, we're going to be in Charlotte tomorrow. And they wouldn't tell everybody what time and they wouldn't tell them where. And so you can't, like today's media environment, shrinking newsrooms, you have limited personnel. How do you plan for something like that? that you have no idea when and where this event is going to occur. And that's obviously intentional because they did it repeatedly. Yeah, that's interesting. I hadn't heard that. I'm certainly not on the Cooper campaign press list, but it doesn't surprise me. The mainstream media has been declining in influence and sway over the last decade or so. And I guess if you're the Cooper campaign, you're trying to minimize your potential variables and want it carefully orchestrated, like everything in Cooper's orbit tends to be. Yeah, sure. I mean, well, it's sort of like, what was the old joke when the West Coast offense was first introduced? I remember hearing this axiom from an NFL coach that was, you know, only three things can happen when you pass the ball and two of them aren't good. And that's sort of the debate idea, right? Like, if he gets up onto that stage and he, you know, mops the floor with Michael Watley. than. He should have. Of course he should have. He's a 40-year career politician, right? So there's not a lot of juice for that squeeze. Or it's a. Draw, and that's a negative to him because why didn't he do better? Or even worse, he loses or makes some catastrophic flub or gaffe, and that then helps Whatley close the gap. So there's no real good reason for him to run. He's basically running as an incumbent, it seems. Yeah, I think you're exactly right. Limited upside for Cooper on doing a debate and unlimited downside. So I think their campaign should give you a consultant contract because you've got it nailed. Well, to be fair, they beat me to it. They had that in the works, I think, for a long time. In your piece at Longleaf Politics where you talk about the most depressing thing about politics today, which we've kind of been chatting about how this, you know, this whole election cycle, particularly in the Senate race. I mean, there have been, I think, some issues in other states that have gotten more, I think, more coverage. But at least here in North Carolina, it really hasn't. And you make a point, though, that voters used to switch sides more often in the past, but that does not occur now. Why do you think that is? I think a lot of it has to do with both geographic polarization and party polarization. You know, not that long ago, you had blue dog Democrats, you had more conservative Democrats, and you had more liberal Rockefeller Republicans. And all those have been. Purged through the primary process over the past 10, 20 years. So, you know, these days, there's more information comes to you via party label, where you kind of have a better sense of where an individual candidate stands. And thus, people feel less need to actually research independently what the candidates are and are going more strictly by party label. And I think that's, it's sad for our state of affairs. Well, and you know me, I try not to ever miss an opportunity to talk whip up on K-12 education. But the, I mean, to me, and I try to reinforce this point, like, there is a minimum sort of, I don't want to say requirement, but a responsibility for Americans. Like, this whole project is based on the idea that we are supposed to participate in our governing, right? Like, this is what we're supposed to be proving to the world, that this project can work and it can last. And when you have turnout, I think I'm seeing turnout numbers, you know, in the mid teens, maybe we get up into the twenties and thirties by the end of it all or whatever. But, um, like that's, to me, that's an indictment on the entire, not just K-12 education, but the entire society where it's like people just don't, they, it's like they don't care enough to vote or to pay any attention whatsoever to. Uh, to any of this stuff. They just like to complain about the politics or complain about some, you know, Oh, My taxes are too high. My cost of living is too high. But then not do anything to participate in in solving those issues. And I do trace a lot of that to, you know, raising up the next generation because K-12 is where we pass along the generational values to the youth. Right. And if we're not doing that, then that's on us, I think. Yeah, I think you're exactly right. And, you know, that was one of the two primary reasons for public education in America to begin with. Number one was so folks could learn to read the Bible and number of which that's completely gone at this point, obviously. And then number two was to participate in our republic. I generally don't say our democracy. I say our republic, but, you know, democratic processes in our republic. And I fear, you know, even though North Carolina has made some good steps in requiring a high school course in civics, you know, it's clearly not working. Yeah. I say democracy. I say it like that anytime I say it, democracy. So, This is the you wrote in another piece, are Democrats actually favored to win the North Carolina House? You say this is the stage of an election when everybody becomes a kid shaking presents under the Christmas tree. We're desperate for any sliver of information that could help us see what's coming in a week's time. And this is something I abandoned making predictions. We've talked about this because I'm not good at it and I find little value in. For myself, because like if I'm wrong, then people just beat me up when I'm wrong. But but it got me thinking when I was reading your piece, I started thinking, like, why? Why is all of the focus on this on the on the elections? Why is this the focus? Why is everybody trying to predict how it's all going to shake out? Like everything is the horse race from the media coverage about who raised how much money, what are the polls show? It's all just horse race. Why do you think this is and why is there this kind of hyper focus on everybody trying to make a prediction about what the election is going to bring? Yeah, I think it's a whole whole host of things. You know, one of the things is there's so much money involved in so much money at stake. And there's a whole political consultant industrial complex, not just in North Carolina, but around the country. And this is where pollsters make their name is by accurately forecasting the polls. I mean, that's how you're going to get your business for the next two years. But also, people who are spending money on ads want to know what their return on investment is. And from a media standpoint, it's kind of the only game in town at this point. It's the only thing where there's actual numbers behind it, and it's a lot easier to report on. polls and early voting turnout than it is to go that extra step deeper and capture what's going on in the election on the ground. But I think another more modern component of it right now is the whole betting market. I was looking at who spent the most money on political ads in North Carolina. And on Facebook, far beyond any other company or candidate is CalSheet, has been pouring money into North Carolina and trying to get people to bet on all manner of things, including the election. And so I think that can't be discounted as a reason why there's so much of this. Yes, interesting. All right, so what of this State Navigate? I must admit, I've never heard of this before, State Navigate. They put out a forecast, and I've been hearing that people are very, very worried about the General Assembly flipping to Democrat control in. The House and maybe even the Senate, although I'm not so. Sure about that, but that the Republicans are going to lose control of the legislature. What do you make of this? And what is State Navigate? Who is this? So Sting Navigate is a company out of Virginia. They started in Virginia. Some political consultants put it together and they've been gradually expanding across the country. It's kind of a Nate Silver type deal where they're trying to put together models that predict where things go, where Nate Silver is primarily focused on the national level, where they're trying to make their name at the their methodology and all that. And I don't have any reason to believe that it's invalid. I think it's as good a model as you're going to get for state elections. However, those models are all only so good because there's just zero polling available on state legislative races. So basically all you have to go on is the prior year's elections and then the generic ballot polling and try to turn that into a stew that tells you something Even since I wrote that. Eric, go ahead. Yeah, no, finish your thought there. Sorry. I'm just going to say, even even bleaker. And if you're just going by early voting totals, then you would have to believe that the state house is gone for Republicans and even the state Senate is now in play. So things are feeling apocalyptic out there. However, it seems like every year we're in an unprecedented election cycle and there's really no telling how things are going to turn out. And You know, it all depends on I hope the listeners of the Pete Callender show who are in their cars right now are driving to the polling places as we speak, because that's the only thing left to do at this point. Well, as I always say, with every single election, it's all going to come down to turnout. And that that's that's my rule I live by. It's all about the turnout. You mentioned polling at the state level. Why? Why aren't there more polls for like legislative seats and stuff? Yeah, it's just expensive is really it. Some campaigns, some of the bigger campaigns will do some internal polling, and maybe that gets shared, maybe not, most often not. But it's expensive to do those polls, and it's hard to get a good sample, a good representative sample, because you really need to get 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 people, and that's hard enough these days. Even for a statewide race, trying to get that, you know, down into the size of a state house district where, you know, you've only got, you know, maybe 10, 20,000 people who are voting. It's almost impossible. So there's just little information to go on on that. All right. We will leave it there. Andrew Dunn, check out his work at Longleaf Politics, longleafpol.com. Also his book, The Change Agent, Pat McCrory's Rise, Reckoning and Legacy. Andrew, merry election palooza to you. Don't get too obliterated drunk watching the returns tonight, if you can help. I'm an election night pizza guy, so I've got my order in. All right, there you go. Andrew, good to hear from you. Appreciate it. Yeah, thank you. All right, take care. That's Andrew Dunn. The holidays will be here before you know it, and so now is the time to create precious and priceless family heirlooms that will last for generations. Take your old photos, slides, films, and tapes to create a video in Mint Hill. 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Okay, I will. Basic Bill asks, without a challenger to Gary McFadden, is it now my fault that he keeps on going? No, I mean, there were no Republicans that entered the race for the general election, and so the real fight was in the primary, and he had a stalking horse for him in there. So, Um, yeah, that's just, that's, that's the way that happened. Um, and by the way, I don't, like I voted in the, uh, early voting and I always leave that blank. If I don't have a choice, I leave it blank. I'm not giving people my support just because they're in the general election ballot. You know, and then I'll finish the whole ballot. Don't get me wrong. But if you're running unopposed, unless I like you, unless I want, you know, want to give you a vote of support, uh, I leave it blank. Um, so an interesting result out of Guam, uh, I guess, so, okay, Vicente Ara. I've not been following the Guam governor's race, just full disclosure. But now with 100% of precincts reporting, so they're done in Guam. And apparently, Vicente Ara, the Republican, has won with 51.5% of the vote, beating Terese Terlaje. she had 48.1%. So basically 52 to 48%. The Republicans flip the Guam governor. Okay, I shouldn't. Sorry, that is my fault. I should not. I should not be talking about flipping Guam because, yeah, Congressman Hank Johnson famously, remember, was very worried about Guam tipping over because there were going to be more people, more military personnel stationed on the island. He was worried about it tipping over and flipping over. So he won. So this Republican won Guam's gubernatorial race. What makes this interesting is that four years ago, it was a D plus 11. Huh. Weird. So I guess Guam's not going to be entered as a state under the Democrat-controlled rule. Government at the federal level. All right. Sorry, Guam. You guys, you guys went for a Republican for governor. You're not getting statehood. All right. Real quick. Every government number gets revised, right? Every projection gets walked back. Gold does not file corrections like GovCo. Revelation Gold Group helps families hold physical gold and silver, including in a tax advantaged gold IRA. It's real. It's in your name. And 10 minutes tells you if your retirement account qualifies. If you want to learn more, go to calendarmetals.com. That's calendarmetals.com. There is a link in the podcast description. Or if you want to talk to somebody, you can call 888-465-3049. I want to welcome to the program now, Andy Jackson. He is the director of the Civitas Center for Public Integrity at the John Locke Foundation. Welcome back to the show. Andy, how are you doing? Oh, doing all right. It is a lovely, lovely day up here in Raleigh. I'm sure it's election palooza, right? So what could go wrong? This is like your Super Bowl, right? It is. At least the championship game of the conference, because Super Bowl's got to be those presidential years. Oh, that's true. And actually, it's the big game. I don't think we're legally allowed to call it that. So Yeah, that was my bad. That was my bad. So first off, because we're going to be talking about some numbers here. Tell us, what is the Civitas Partisan Index or the CPI? This is not about the price of goods, right? No, no, no, no. The Civitas Partisan Index is a baseline measure of the voting tendencies of districts. So it's kind of one piece of the puzzle that you have, like how likely, if everything else were equal, the candidates were equal, the environment were equal, if everything else were equal, how would this district go? And we update this every two years based on the latest available data. And you can use that combined with other data to kind of give yourself an idea of how districts are going to go. So by itself, you can't really predict anything, but over 90% of the time, if you use nothing else but the CPI, you're going to correctly call how the district's going to go. Right. And you mentioned one of the keys there. I say this every election cycle. Candidates matter. The individual candidates matter. And their records, their campaigns, they do matter. So it's not just a straight-up numbers thing, but also population, demographic shifts over time, all of that stuff factors in. So All right. Let's get a lay of the land right now. You got the House and the Senate in the General Assembly. The House has 120 seats and obviously a majority of those seats would give you would have to win 61. Right now, the Republicans hold 71 of those seats. That's one seat shy of the veto proof majority in the House. All right. So in the House. What would we need to see? What do Democrats need to do in order to gain that majority? They they've already, quote, broken the supermajority. Right. They did that a couple of years ago. So what what do they need to do and how likely by the CPI, how likely are their chances? Well, they do need to pick up really especially some of these suburban districts that ring around Charlotte and over into Cabarrus County. Same thing in Wake County and the Triad. Those are where your relatively competitive House districts are. If you go by the past indications in midterm elections, because the party out of the White House usually does well, The seats that are competitive are the ones that we rated as toss-up districts. It's one or two percentage points difference between them, and also the lean Republican districts. Districts that normally go Republican, but because of that midterm environment, they've become competitive this year. And just look at the CPI, and assuming you have an even split, you're looking at Republicans having a 63-57 majority. Now, the way, if you also factor in the way that this early voting has been going, which is pretty similar to 18, a little bit bigger, though, and we have a lot more unaffiliated, which is If you trust polls are leaning more towards Democrats this year, you're probably looking at something close to an even split or maybe even a 61-59 Democratic majority. It really comes down to what Republicans and Republican-leaning unaffiliated do today. Right. So the turnout for Republicans on Election Day, which they usually do make up a lot of ground on Election Day, preferring to vote on Election Day rather than vote early. However, like I see I keep seeing like, oh, the percentage of, you know, the ballots returned are Democrats versus Republicans versus unaffiliated. And but that doesn't really help me because the percentages, they're not raw votes. I mean, yes, I understand the percentage and why that's a useful metric. Right. But 10 percent of, say, a million votes and then you have population growth, 10 percent of one point two million. that's going to be a bigger gap, right, if there's a 10 percentage point difference. So the raw vote count matters. Right. And a raw vote. Democrats started this morning roughly with a 350,000 vote advantage that Republicans are going to have to claw back today. And we're going to see that tonight because It looks like we're going back to the old way of reporting. And so we're going to get those early votes released first before the Election Day results. The absentee by mail ballots is only about 100,000. So, I mean, it's still important, but it's a relatively small part. That'll probably come out about 30 minutes or so after polls close because they've got to keep counting through the time polls close. And then the precincts will come in later. And so we're going to get back to kind of our old red ship days. You're going to be looking at statewide. Democrats are going to start the night with 300, 400,000 votes. And then Republicans will gradually claw that back. And if they're going to win, they'll, they'll, that'll cross over sometime between nine and 11 o'clock. Okay. All right. So the, so over in the house, the Democrats will need to flip, right? 12 Republican held districts, right? That's the House side. All right. Let's look at the Senate side here. We have 50 members in the Senate, 50 districts of the Senate. And right now, Republicans have 30 of those 50. So what do the Democrats need to do there? They obviously need to pick up, what, six seats over in the Senate. Right. And look at the CPI. There's really only six seats that are competitive, and one of them is already held by Democrats. This is this district out in Granville and Wake. So they'd have to pick up all of those and then get an unexpected gain somewhere else. in the state. An outside shot maybe would be Senate District 2. That's way, way out on the East Coast. Norm Sanderson, he's normally expect, Norman Sanderson, I should say, he's normally expected to win, but he had a driving while impaired conviction last June. That may pull his numbers down. We'll see how that goes tonight. I think it's a much tougher row for the Democrats to hold in the Senate because a couple of those competitive districts are out East, They're districts held by Buck Newton and Danny Britt. Those senators are, by reputation, very good campaigners, popular in their districts. Even though those districts are They're relatively close by, you know, past turnout. They're also trending Republican. So I'm still thinking that Republicans are going to hold the Senate even if Democrats flip the House, which will make a very interesting situation in Raleigh when we start the long session this next year. All right. And what are you watching? What counties or races are you watching as sort of an indication to give you an early read on where things are going? Well, we have that one district out in New Hanover County. That's Michael Lee out in Senate No. 7. New Hanover County is kind of a bellwether county for North Carolina, and it's been for a couple of decades now. So that's one. In your neck of the woods, both of the Cabarrus County House Districts, 82, and what is that other number if it comes to me? Both of those Cabarrus, 73 is the other one. Those are the ones that are kind of like the outer suburbs of Charlotte, if you will. And if those go, then you could see a whole cascade of districts fall. So I would definitely be looking at those Cabarrus County districts if I'm in the Charlotte area. All right. That's Andy Jackson, the director of the Civitas Center for Public Integrity at the John Locke Foundation. Thanks so much for your time, Andy. We appreciate it. All right. Thanks. All right. Take care. Colin on Twitter. Says, I've never understood people who are politically aware, but only vote in presidential elections and rarely or never during primaries. Is it really that hard for you to drive five minutes, stand in line for like another five minutes? It's literally harder to get groceries. It is. It is. It takes less time to vote than it does to grocery shop. That's true. Um, also I just saw that apparently the non-voting delegate to Congress from Guam is, um, is now a Democrat. So it's weird. So they, they, they voted for a Democrat over the Republican to send to Congress, but to run the state or sorry, the territory, um, they picked a Republican. It was like a 14 point swing. It's like, I don't know what's happening in Guam. Are we sure it hasn't flipped over? Are we sure? Hank Johnson may have been right. Yeah. Chicken fried sassafras says Hank Johnson was right. The island can flip. Who knew? He's never a prophet. You're never a prophet in your own land. Hank Johnson. Jefferson says a report from the street. Matthews. 45 minutes to go and vote at the downtown location, 45 minutes there and back, including the 4,200 steps. No lines, but most machines were in use. That is all. Gary says, I voted early and I made sure that I brought my voting consultant with me, which is a plastic straw in its wrapper. Before I vote, I ask my voting consultant, who am I voting for this time? I move it next to my ear to hear its response. I then ask, are you sure? And then I listen to its response. In the meantime, the staff where I vote have a very confused look. And I look at them and I say, what? I'm taking a straw poll. Took a while to get there, Gary, but I'll allow it. Jeff with a G says, very much look forward to the political ads ending. The annoying one that's playing at every break on the app today is one stating. Republicans tried to weaken our vote. If by that they're referring to the cleaning up of illegal aliens and deceased Democrats from the voting rolls, requiring voter ID and all the other measures to prevent cheating and fraud? Yes, that is what they are referring to. If that's what Democrats consider weakening our vote, then I guess every accusation is indeed a confession. Yes, I actually, I took a look just because I like the laughs. I went over and I looked at the. Charlotte Observer. You know, they always publish their endorsements and then on election day, they're like, You know. Here's all of our endorsements. And that's really where you can see their lean, you know, because when they do it throughout the, you know, the month or so before the election, they, you know, they're doing like a couple of races. They'll do here's some, you know, here are the county commission races. Here are the state legislative races. Here's the Senate race. They kind of they just like it just dribbles out, you know, so they can they can have multiple stories over time. Uh, but on election day, they do a recap. And when you read the recap, you see it's, it's like every single race they're endorsing the Democrats. And they're also saying vote no on all of the ballot amendments. I am vote yes, by the way, vote yes. Like they're opposed to voter ID. They're like, you're seriously still opposed to voter ID guys. Come on, like, give me a break. Um, Yeah. Vote yes on all of the amendments that just like put it in the Constitution. So Democrats, if they win back control of the General Assembly, they're not going to be able to undo all of the reforms Republicans have put in place. All right. That'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support. and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast. So if you'd like, please support them, too, and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to ThePeteCalendarShow.com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.