What do the exit polls say about the GOP defeat? | 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. I am not here to tell you what to think. I am here to tell you what you do think. No, I'm kidding. I'm just kidding. No, I'm going to look at, I'm going to look at the exit polling. Okay. Cause we've spent the last two days now, right? Getting feedback and listening to people. I mean, I have at least, and I think I've been pretty consistent in saying this. I said it on election night during our coverage here on WBT. And I said, that the defeat of the Republicans at that scale, it will allow everybody to say that the reason they lost was because of their pet reason. In other words, if I didn't like the Iran war, then I'm going to say that did it. If I didn't like the tariffs, I'm going to say that did it. If I'm going to say Trump is terrible, he's a meanie, mean tweets, I'm going to say that did it. If I was a never Trumper, I'm going to say, aha, finally, never Trumpers are victorious yet 10 years late, but okay, whatever. Like everybody is going to project their prior bias, their prior opinions, and they will cite this as proof. When, in my opinion, the truth is all of the above. It's all of the above and more. You also have to factor in that Democrats really, really, really hate Donald Trump. Their base is literally terrified of Donald Trump becoming a king. He's literally Hitler. You have the rise of the acceptance of political violence. And what that speaks to on the left, what that speaks to is a mindset that of othering. They are othering people. They're saying, you don't deserve to participate in the public square, in speech. That's why we celebrate Charlie Kirk's murder, right? Your ideas are all of the isms and ists, and so you don't get to hold those. That's why you have a state lawmaker now in North Carolina, elected despite the fact that she posted that MAGA supporters deserve to be genocided. That's what she said. Now, she didn't say genocide, because that's a term only reserved for what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians, right? Of course. But she stood in front of the ovens at Auschwitz and said, this is where MAGA belongs. Saying we should bomb... Or that, yeah, that bombs should go off in Alabama and I think Louisiana is where she said. That's the only thing that's going to bring us all together is blowing up some red states. She's going to be in the legislature. So it's a culmination of a lot of things all hitting at the same time. You also have the historical norm that the president's party loses seats in the midterms, right? That's been going on for decades with only one which was George W. Bush after 9-11. So you have all of these different factors. You also have movement of different demographics that voted for Trump and people on the right, I think, or in the Republican camp, in the White House, Republican campaigns, a lot of people thought that after Trump's victory, that there was somehow a durable shift that would last there. And that was probably a misread. There was more of a backlash against Joe Biden and the terrible economy and, you know, all of the excesses, the open borders, like all of these things all contributed to this massive repudiation of the Democrats. And misreading that, right? then that leads to this and like the pendulum swings back and Democrats I see are already misreading it. They're seeing it as a mandate, much like Republicans saw their victories in 24. They're seeing the Democrats are seeing this as a mandate to do all of the things that they want to do, that the base is actually clamoring for. But a lot of the voters that voted Democrat are not as, uh, exemplified by all of the ballot initiatives, right? Virtually all of the ballot initiatives for conservative policies, they all passed. And like, that's what Democrats will ignore because their ideology requires them to do so, right? It doesn't matter. Like in North Carolina, we're hearing now they're going to go after the opportunity scholarships, right? they're going to try to cut all of the, um, uh, school vouchers. And like, we knew that, that they would do this, even though vouchers are popular, they're popular among every demographic. They're popular among poor people, among minorities and among Democrats. But the, but the ideology does not allow them to do anything else. And their union backing does not allow them to do anything else. The same thing is going to happen in Texas. Um, Also, the Texas governor now is no longer probably going to because she was anti-border control when she was in the legislature. Hina Hosa, I think is her name. She is now probably not going to help protect the Texas border, which means border security will fall only to the border patrol. And there will be no backstop of like the Texas Rangers and the National Guard. They won't be helping. And so that means more border crossing. So more illegal immigration coming in. Right. That's what Texas is going to get. And by, you know, downstream effect, we will, too. We will all now suffer for what happened in Texas because this is what the ideology requires. And Democrats don't care because they are on a long term project. Right. The long term project is to fundamentally transform America, as Barack Obama promised in 08. That's the point. And they are they are more patient. Not all elements, obviously, the more radical fringes. They want revolution now, and they're not particularly huge fans of the Fabian socialist approach of going slowly. But they understand, for the most part, in order to fundamentally transform, you get your victories, you then rule for as much as you can, as hard as you can, you suffer the defeats, and then you regroup and you come back, and you just keep transgressing. You're seeing it now, for example, that, you know, let's not talk about the culture issues. That's what we keep hearing from some of these Democrats, right? Oh, the Republicans always fighting these culture war battles and the voters don't want that. What's the first thing that the Democrats in Congress are looking to do is to give access to the transgender congressperson who is a man who thinks he's a woman. And so they're going to put him they're going to let him get back into the women's bathrooms and at the Capitol. So tell me again, who is the transgressor? Who's the aggressor in the culture war? And so when you hear Democrats, I've been fighting with people on Twitter today about this because they take umbrage at this assertion, but it is true. When Democrats tell you that Republicans should not be fighting the culture war and the voters are tired of these culture war battles, why do you guys always talk about these culture issues, right? It's not that Democrats want to stop talking about them. It's that they want you to stop talking about it. They want to keep doing it. And they don't see what they do as a culture battle. It's only when you object to their transgression of the norms. That's when it's now a bad thing. How dare you oppose us? That's essentially what they're saying. And so they're giving us this advice, you know, we should drop the whole culture war thing. And that includes every social issue that they transgress on, right? And it's hilarious because in the comments to my post about this earlier today, all of the lefties that are commenting, they're proving that point. They just want us to shut up. Just surrender. Let us have our way. And then we don't have to worry about anything anymore, which of course is not true because the issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution. We're going to take a look at some of the exit polling. We're going to see some interesting things. 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. There, they'll turn those memories into the story of your lives, memories from past family events captured forever to pass down to future generations. 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Okay, so if people are not citing exit polling for explanations to help inform their opinions of what occurred, this is why, like, in the immediate aftermath, like the night of the election, after the polls close and everybody starts... throwing out their ideas. Like this is why it happened. Like you don't know. And even the polling is going to be wrong to some degree, right? These are just estimates of what people are saying when they are leaving the voting booths. That's how this polling is conducted. Right. And so this is like the first run. Now the, this stuff will get more refined over time as more, uh, Surveys are conducted. However, this is the first snapshot is what were people saying after they voted and they're walking out and they meet a pollster and they're like, what do you think about these issues? And they answer the questions. You are free to dismiss all of this. If you want, it does not matter to me. Like I sincerely do not care if you believe it or not, but if you are trying to understand what you just saw, then this might, some of this stuff might be helpful rather than just making up stuff in your own head and then saying, that's the truth. So I prefer the first route, not the second route. So here's, um, the election day, uh, reporting from BBC. Uh, but this is a polling company called SSRS. They collect data on behalf of a consortium of news companies and And the survey is a representative sample of American voters. And it includes not just prior to the election, but also exit polling of both early and day of voters. Okay. So it's capturing a large group of people. I think it was something in the neighborhood of like, yeah, 80,000 people, somewhere around 80,000 people. That's a huge sample. And it's election day voters. early voters and people's thoughts right before they voted. Some, uh, dude, dude. Oh, the number one issue, the economy, not that, that should not surprise people, right? In fact, you've got, you know, the warring camps inside of the, uh, the right that are trying to say it's only the tariffs and, And then you got another camp saying it's only the Iran war. And they are both invested in one of those things being the correct answer because they object to or support the particular policies. Right. So people who were pro Iran action, they're going to say Iran didn't really have anything to do with it. And if people were pro tariff, they're damn sure not going to admit that that had anything to do with it. Right. Even though there's evidence to support both of those things, both of those factors, depending on which group of people that you're talking to, okay? So 39% said the economy was the most important issue. 32% put the state of democracy at the top. Those are Democrats, right? I think we can all pretty much agree that would be the Democrats. I guess Republicans don't ever talk in these ways. Following that, you know what was number three? Immigration. Yeah, immigration. Followed by healthcare, foreign policy, and crime. Those were the biggest issues in order. 75% of those asked said the economy was in not so good or poor conditions. 25% said it's excellent or good. Looking at their own family finances, 44% of people said they were in a worse situation than two years ago. 38% said about the same. 18% said better. So what does that mean? That means over half of the respondents said they're either the same or better. 65% believe that Trump's policies worsened economic conditions. That was driven mainly by Democrats. Because I've got the survey and you can actually see who is answering, Republicans versus Democrats, who's answering more for these different categories. People were also asked whether expressing support or opposition for Trump was one reason for their midterm vote. And 43% said expressing opposition was a reason, but a similar proportion said he was not a factor. It was 43% said, yes, this is a vote against Trump. 41% said no. See, so you got people that are out there right now claiming this was a mandate against Trump. People are so angry at Trump. Yeah, that's not entirely true. It's not. 43% said their vote was against Trump. Yeah, those are the Democrats. They're highly motivated because of TDS, right? Only 16% of those asked said expressing support was a reason for their vote. So it says like people who went out to vote for Trump, basically, it's a very small portion, 16%. That's the motivation for them voting to support Trump. So maybe that was higher than it otherwise would have been because Trump was saying, I'm on the ballot, go out and vote, you know? Maybe that's what that 16% is and it would have been an even worse blowout. had he not been out there stumping for a lot of these candidates. 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. Remember what I said. People have their own biases, their own prejudices, right? Their own preconceived ideas about why Republicans should lose, why Trump should lose, be punished, whatever. And because of the size of the Democrat victory on Tuesday, everybody gets to then say, I was right. So people are projecting ideas. onto the results, the thing that they think is the reason. What I have been saying is there are a bunch of reasons. To wit, here is Jacob, I assume a Democrat, on the text line. What are talking about? I think he meant to say, what are you talking about? I assume. Anyway, even Republicans have voted for the blue during the midterms. At least own it and admit Trump is failing Americans. And don't be surprised the Democrats take the White House at the next presidential elections. There you go. This is him projecting onto the results the thing that he believes occurred. And this is the thing. I'm actually discussing all of the different factors, the exit polling as to what motivated people and where we saw shifts occur. this idea that even Republicans voted for Democrats. Now, there were Republicans. I've heard enough anecdotes to know there were Republicans who voted for Democrats for various reasons. But there were a lot of, particularly North Carolina, a lot of unaffiliateds who were not Republicans. They were unaffiliated, and they went with Republicans and Trump two years ago. as a backlash to Biden and the Democrats' transgressions. They're overeating. their insane policies and cumulative 20 percent inflation that they drove. Right. So it was a smackdown, a repudiation of that. And I think a lot of people on the right assumed that these were our voters now and they were not. that's the, like, that's the thing is like you made these promises to improve things. And then people felt like they were not being improved upon. And so then they smacked you down. And now we're going to have to suffer years, maybe a decade or more of, uh, permanent damage to our society because of the empowerment to the degree that they've been empowered. The, um, the, the left. For example, 90% of the people, 90% of people voting said that government corruption was a crucial or major factor in their vote. See, part of the problem with this question is that we don't know who they're talking about, right? If they are Democrats, we assume they're talking about Trump. If they are Republicans and, Some of them are talking about Trump, Trump's family, the administration, whatever. But they could also be talking about some other types of corruption. Because most people, when you ask them, like, is corruption a major problem? Is that a crucial reason for your vote? Most people are going to say yes to that. Because, like, of course you're concerned about corruption. I'm against corruption. Like, who's for corruption? I guess corrupt people would be. But they probably wouldn't say that, right? 79% said inflation had caused them and their family a severe or moderate hardship in the past year. 79%. Okay. Why, why I went over this yesterday. What causes inflation? It's the spending. And we had the inflation during COVID and the Biden administration that drove up all of the spending that drove up inflation, as I mentioned, like 20-something percent cumulative. That doesn't go away. But note what happened, right? You have increased costs from tariffs, and this was a big fight at the time. And I said at the time, you better be right. On Liberation Day, when Trump came out with the tariffs, I said, you better be right. Everything that all these economists have taught us for all these years about tariffs being a tax. And they were like, no, no, no. It's going to, you know, reshore all the manufacturing. It's just going to take time, whatever. And I said at the time, maybe I'm the fish that doesn't know it's wet, but you better be right. Because if you're wrong, this is not going to go well. Right. So, okay. That's going to increase prices. Let's say then you got the Iran war and oh my gosh, gas prices. Okay. And I'm going to get into the gas price comparisons as well. But if you are, let's say you're in the JD Vance camp and I'm going to throw in Tucker Carlson, right? These influencers, Megan Kelly is in there. Matt Walsh is in there, right? The people that were opposed to the Iran war, but were okay with the economic populism side with the tariffs and that stuff, right? And they're in J.D. Vance's corner. They like J.D. Vance. He's going to be their guy, whatever, okay? I'm not saying, like, making no judgments, right or wrong on that, just saying that to me is a pretty obvious camp. So, okay, you cannot come out and say, then, that the tariffs are driving any of the concerns about cost of living and affordability. You can't say that. Along comes the Iran war. Gas prices go up. aha, now you've got, right, no foreign wars. He broke his promise. By the way, there are people in that camp that are now starting to say that Trump should step down and make J.D. Vance the president. And surprise, surprise, the people who are saying that want J.D. Vance to be president. So you got that, that movement's occurring over there. And you then also have the Democrats and the media, but I repeat myself, They see what's happening on the right. They see that the gas prices and the anger at the gas prices that's bubbling over on the right. Well, let's just use that. We'll just talk about that. This is why when you're looking at like the Democrats saying we're going to bring down gas prices and anybody who has like a memory longer than a flea, we remember all of the ways the Democrats have sought to increase gas prices. This idea that they're going to be the champions for lower pricing for fossil fuels is absurd. But why are they saying that? Why? How could they get away with saying that without the media? They couldn't. But why would they latch on to that and amplify that message, a message that is antithetical to everything that they have been saying for the last 25, 30 years, right? Why would they do that? Because they know it'll fracture the right. Because it already is fracturing the right. And the right is fracturing over what? Over the Iran war? Is it really the Iran war? For some it is, to be sure. But for some it's foreign policy, quote-unquote. It's Israel. So let them have this fight. We'll amplify that fight. We'll ignore the inflationary policies that we did. We'll ignore all of the spending and stuff, and we'll just talk about affordability. I went over this yesterday with Governor Josh Stein's comments. Well, yeah, health care is too expensive. Housing is too expensive. Electric rates are too expensive. Those are all government-regulated industries. That's why they're expensive. And who's the one, what party advances more regulatory impacts? The Democrats do. Apparently, Brett Weinstein just dropped a bombshell announcement. He's launching a new America First party. He says the idea is to take over the Libertarian Party and rebrand it the American Liberty Party. Yes. Uh-huh. That's going to go very well because, look, I know libertarians. Capital L, full-on, full-blown libertarians. And the one thing that these capital L libertarians love is for people to stand up and say, I'm going to lead you. Oh, they love it. They do so well when people do that to them. They're not contrarian in the least. Also, slight problem. His name is Weinstein, and that might pose a problem. Too soon? Jeff, welcome to the program. Hello, Jeff. Hi, Pete. Yeah, thanks for taking my call. Yes, sir. And happy Friday to you. And to you as well, sir. Yes. Hey, help me understand something on, you know, one of the reasons that people didn't vote red this past election on the tariffs. So if it's my understanding, there were no tariffs before Donald Trump came along and he created all the tariffs. Is that right? I don't know if there were no tariffs, but he, you know, he slapped tariffs on every country on the planet. Right. And then and I mean, you remember, like the rollout of that. Right. It was like, here are all the countries. Here are all of them. He called them reciprocal tariffs, but they weren't actually reciprocal. And then they had to make some changes to some. And then he was like, I'm going to add more tariffs onto this country and whatever. It was chaotic, let's say that. But the amount of tariffs he was doing on the number of countries, that was unprecedented. Okay, so like Canada, they didn't have any tariffs on us, right? I don't know what all the tariff situation was for every single country. If you have an assertion, Jeff, just make the assertion rather than wasting my time with the questions. Well, my assertion is that I thought that we were under the North American Free Trade Agreement, where there were no tariffs for anybody. But yet, when the list starts coming out, yeah, Canada, Mexico, France, and England, they all had tariffs. tariffs against U.S. products. Okay. Okay. So what's the problem with putting tariffs on their products? Right. So they were doing like Canadian lumber, for example. Like that's the big one from Canada, right? Like there were restrictive trade policies with regard to Canadian lumber, right? So does that then warrant a tariff on every single good going into Canada, rather? Well, if you don't negotiate, then yeah. But again, I thought everybody– that there were no tariffs for anybody. Now you're saying that Canada had lumber tariffs on us. What do you mean now I'm saying? You just said that. You just said there were tariffs. See, so this is what I mean, Jeff. Stop asking me questions. That you know answers to in order to try to– I don't know what the game is that you're playing, but it's just a waste– it's wasting time. So, like, the assertion is, first off, NAFTA got renegotiated by Trump in his first term, right? They did a different deal, right? So NAFTA went away. They replaced it with– I forget what they called it. But Trump did that in the first term. but there were certain sectors that different countries erect protectionist barriers around. And that's like to the point where you want to say, I'm going to use a tariff against Canada in order to get a better trade deal with regard to lumber, right? So if you want to do that, that's one thing. But the sheer volume of tariffs on everybody, on everything– That was unprecedented. That was blowing up the existing order. And you can say that was a good thing and it needed to be blown up or whatever. However, tariffs increase the cost on the end user because it increased the cost on the producers. Right. So it's sort of like sales taxes. The consumer ends up paying. All of that. Right. Correct. Yeah. It gets passed on. And this is why I said at the time, that's been my understanding of what tariffs are and what they do. And when this, when Trump made the announcement and I said, you know, they're saying, no, no, no tariffs can bring back all the manufacturing and can do all of these things and it'll replace the income tax. I heard all of these things and it's going to take time, whatever. And I said, you better be right because if you're not right, then all you've done is increase the cost to consumers. Right. So then, contrary to that, then we should move all manufacturing offshore, and then there won't be any tariffs, and then we'll all be better off. That's just silly. No, that's just silly, too. Yeah, okay. Yeah, it's just silly, yeah. And I don't know anybody that's advocating that you offshore all manufacturing. All right, Jeff, I would advise, when you're having these discussions, and I've got to go, I'm on a hard break, having these discussions like, avoid the absurd, you know, extremist. 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 the Pete calendar show.com again. Thank you so much for listening and don't break anything while I'm gone.