The following is a lightly edited transcript of the November 3 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Charlie Cook has been forecasting elections for 42 years. His first political predictions were offered during Ronald Reagan’s reelection campaign in 1984. He created the Cook Political Report, which is now an institution in D.C., and he’s been talking about this election in surprising terms, as something unlike he’s ever seen before. So now that this election is upon us, we’re talking to Charlie about it. He recently retired from his life’s project, but now writes his own newsletter called Charlie Cook Politics.
We’re just going to dive right in. Charlie, it’s really good to have you on.
Charlie Cook: Thanks for having me on, Greg. And you’re right, I’ve been calling this the unicorn election. I’ve covered what, 11 midterms, 11 presidentials, and this election has dynamics I’ve never seen before. It’s some really, really unique things, of places acting like, you know, we’ve never seen before.
Sargent: We’re going to dive into all of it. I think we should start with the latest New York Times polls. They find Abdul El-Sayed up by 53 percent to 42 percent in Michigan, James Talarico up 50 to 43 in Texas, Troy Jackson up 51 to 45 in Maine, Sherrod Brown up 49 to 44 in Ohio, Adam Hamilton up 49-44 in Kansas, Mary Peltola up 48-46 in Alaska, and Josh Turek up 48-47 in Iowa.
Charlie, I and many others have a hard time believing those numbers. They seem too good to be true. That’s like wipeout proportions if those polls are right. On the other hand, it’s not implausible that they’re directionally indicating something. Charlie, do you think the Times polls are close to right?
Cook: Yes, I think they are gold standard. Absolutely. And the thing is, when you read their articles, when they have doubts about their own poll, they’re pretty clear about it. I mean, it’s like, if they are not sure these are right, they basically tell you that. And if they don’t tell you that, that means they feel very comfortable with it. But no, they’re as good as it gets.
We kind of sensed that this was headed this way. It was kind of a bifurcated election, that starting about July, August, you could—the whole nature of this race changed. It went from sort of a fairly typical midterm election, not that bad for an incumbent president’s party, but not horrible, and then it went completely in the crapper for them in August and September.
Sargent: You raise a really good point, which is that the Times write-up of these numbers didn’t signal that they think that these are outliers. And that’s, I think, probably a pretty critical tell.
Just a quick word about Texas. If you look at the Times poll, Talarico’s winning Latinos over Republican Ken Paxton by 65 to 27. Talarico is actually slightly up among non-college voters, which is a proxy for working class in our polling. And he’s winning independents by 59 to 29. That’s 30 points. That’s astounding stuff.
But Charlie, that’s how Talarico wins. He gets numbers like that among Latinos and independents and working-class voters. But that’s where the capacity for real error comes in. When you’re counting pro-Trump Latinos, those might be hard to find. Pro-Trump working-class voters, those might be hard to find. Do you think Talarico’s up seven points in Texas right now, as the Times says?
Cook: You know, I think he’s up five, six, seven. Yeah, I mean, anything above seven I would raise an eyebrow at, but I feel quite sure he’s up by more than three or four.
But no, you’re absolutely right. Now, I think a lot of people, though, their frame of reference is 2024, when that was actually kind of a low ebb for a lot of these groups for Democrats. And they were angry about inflation, they were angry about interest, they were lashing out at Biden-Harris. And so it went down in ‘24, and now it’s snapping back. Looks like it’s snapping back towards normal.
Some groups are harder to reach than others, and those are particularly hard. But for everybody that’s talking about polling error, keep in mind, the last two midterms, the two elections that Trump’s name was not literally on the ballot, the midterm polling was actually quite, quite, quite good. And the problems that we have seen in ‘16 and ‘20, ‘24—pollsters are painfully aware of it, and there’s probably just as much or greater danger of them overcompensating than there is for repeating the same mistake again.
But there are very few pollsters that don’t despise being wrong. And being wrong in the same direction in consecutive elections makes them borderline suicidal. So I would not expect to see—they may make new mistakes, but they’re not going to make those again.
Sargent: OK, so Charlie, right now, what do you think the most likely outcome in the Senate is? Where do Democrats win and where do they lose? What’s your general ballpark prediction here?
Cook: I have gone from a net gain of two or three, maybe, going into the summer, to now I’d be a little surprised if it were only four. I think it may be five, which five is the key number, because you’ve got to have a Fetterman-proof majority. And I think they’re going to get there.
And it’s a combination of Trump and the political environment on the one hand, but on the other side, you’ve got some Republicans that are really mediocre candidates. And they are running in places that they didn’t have to be any good to get there. And they’re, you know, decent enough to be fine in anything other than a really ugly year. But in an ugly year for Republicans, a Cindy Hyde-Smith is in trouble. And under these circumstances, a Roger Marshall in Kansas is in trouble. And Darline Graham.
Sargent: Democrats obviously have to net four Senate seats in order to take the majority. That would put them at 51. When you said that you expect Democrats to net five seats, you’re essentially saying that you expect them to end up at 52 seats. That’s what makes them Fetterman-proof. Earlier this summer, you thought they were going to just get into the high 40s, but now you see them getting to 52. And 52 seats and not higher, or what?
Cook: Yeah, well, I get nervous at about seven. And I’ll tell you why. I mean—but how much of this is just superstition or something, I’m not sure. Because I mean, it is absolutely true that the really close ones almost never break down the middle. They all fall—the dominoes tend to go in one direction, which would argue for a bigger number.
But at the same time, the footprint of races this year—you know, it’s not just that 20 out of the 22 Republican seats are in Trump double-digit states. But you’ve got what, six? Six are in states that haven’t voted for a Democrat for president since LBJ in ‘64. Five of them haven’t voted for a Democrat for president since Bill Clinton in ‘96.
Sargent: What you’re saying is that with the undecideds generally all kind of breaking in one direction in a lot of states at once, it’s unlikely that you see some states go one way and other states go the other way.
So if they’re going to get to 52 seats, they have a real shot at getting to 53 or 54. But on the other hand, if I understand you correctly, because they’re in such tough territory, and so many states that Trump won by double digits, you can kind of see those dominoes falling, but maybe just still not quite getting up to 53, 54 seats, right?
Cook: I guess, because this is such a red, red, red map, I get nervous trying to treat them as if they’re all purple states, because they’re not. And these are places that, you know, Democrats haven’t won since Moby Dick was a guppy. And these are people that haven’t voted Democrat in a long time. They may never again. But they are in the mood to send a message.
They are really angry, disappointed—now getting into anger at President Trump about attacking Iran and the price of energy and diesel and fertilizer, all that, and tariffs. And it’s like, they disagree with him on some big policy things. These things have hurt me and my family. And he seems to be totally preoccupied with issues that have nothing to do with me. And I think that is coming down on some people—they expect a Democratic president to screw them. They don’t expect a Republican president, this one, to screw them. But they’re feeling screwed.
Sargent: Right. These are major forces that are at work here, and really unique circumstances that have a lot of force and power.
I want to just get your bottom line. You think Democrats probably get to 52 seats, and possibly to 53 or 54. Is that right?
Cook: Yes, yes. I believe that. And I should say, these are my numbers. They’re not the Cook Political Report. You know, I’ve been gone for five years, but I agree with most of the ratings there. But yeah, these are mine. They shouldn’t be held responsible for that, for me. But yeah, I think that’s right. I mean, I think they’ll get to 52 or three. But again, that’s pre-Fetterman.
Sargent: Yeah, well, 52 gets you Fetterman-proofed, which is important.
Cook: At least, yeah. It makes you Fetterman-proof.
Sargent: So right now, let’s talk about the House. Cook Political Report has 13 GOP-held House seats as leaning Democratic, and another 14 GOP-held House seats as toss-ups. That seems astounding.
If Democrats win just the GOP-held House seats that are leaning their way, not even the toss-ups, without losing many of their own seats, they win the majority somewhat comfortably. And if they take a chunk of both those categories, of the lean-Dem category and the toss-up category, you start to see the majority getting pretty big. Can you talk about that?
Cook: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. And that’s why, having been on the inside and now on the outside—when you’re a newsletter, when you’re somebody that everybody’s watching everything you do, it tends to make you more small-c conservative.
You know, I mean, it’s like, wow, the brand’s there, it’s important, I don’t want to damage the brand. And so you don’t make a lot of willy-nilly changes.
Sargent: If you work at Cook Political Report or one of these prognosticators, you’ve got to be conservative. You can’t really go too far out on a limb, because the political world just comes down on you like a ton of bricks if you’re wrong.
I want to ask you about your piece the other day, which was very good. You identified disaffected Republicans as a key demographic to watch. These are generally reliable Republican voters who disapprove of Trump.
And a big question is, do they stay home? Do they hold their nose and vote for the Republican rather than protest Trump? Or do they maybe cross over to Democrats, right? Can you talk about this demographic and how their actions could impact the outcomes?
Cook: That says it well. We normally see—what’s the swing group perennially? It’s suburban voters, right? And particularly, like, college-educated white men, where the college-educated pulls Democrat, the male pulls Republican. Or non-college white women, where it’s exactly the opposite. That’s where we know.
But what we’re seeing here is, they’re specifically Republican, and they skew heavily rural, small town, farther out from cities. People that drive long distances in not-so-fuel—they’re not driving Rivians, OK? They’re not doing Teslas. They’re doing fairly fuel-inefficient, they use up diesel for farm equipment. But I mean, it’s all that whole energy constellation. And then the tariffs. They feel like they’re getting it straight between the eyes. And so it is a different profile.
And when you look at where these Senate races are that are behaving so curiously—Kansas, South Carolina, Mississippi, I mean, these are, even Nebraska to a certain extent—they’re not the places where you expect incredibly competitive races, and they’re not the people within those states that you usually see. So that’s why I call this a unicorn election.
Now, I don’t want to jump too far ahead, but Democrats, if they have the kind of night that I think they’re going to get, I wouldn’t want to be chair of the DCCC in 2028, having to defend a bunch of seats in places that God didn’t necessarily intend for a Democrat to hold, or the DSCC in, say, ‘34. And that puts it in more of a negative light.
Democrats have got to figure out—I mean, given the Electoral College and the U.S. Senate, they’ve got to connect again with people that live in, people call it flyover country. Rural, small town, folks that go to church regularly. These are groups that Democrats used to do pretty well with.
Sargent: And now there’s this big opening to reconnect with them right now.
Cook: Yeah, yeah.
Sargent: Charlie, where do you see the House coming down? Two hundred thirty seats, 235, 240, higher? Where do you think?
Cook: I think if you want to be conservative, you’d say 230, which Democrats are at 215 now, so 230 is 15. I frankly would take the—I’d take the over on that. I think it’s going to be over 230. But I get squeamish saying 240, 250.
Sargent: Two hundred thirty-five?
Cook: Yeah. I mean, it’s just—we’re going big, and the question is, you know, it’s like, Republican turnout is going to be low. It’s going to be really low. But how low? And Democratic turnout is going to be high, real high. African American turnout, particularly the South, I think is going to be, like, off the charts. And the extent that these things happen is where you get to really, really, really big numbers. But we’re talking about stuff that we haven’t seen in a long time. So I get nervous. I get nervous even saying it.
Sargent: Just to be sure I know where you stand. You think 230 seats for Democrats, maybe 235 seats for Democrats—
Cook: —is the realistic floor. I would be very surprised if they don’t hit that. I’d be very, very surprised.
Sargent: And then when we start talking about 240 seats for Democrats, that’s where you start to get squeamish.
Cook: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s asking a lot. But I mean, I was doing my column and I scratched out the word “biblical.” I mean that in terms of describing, like, the kind of losses that Republicans may be—but I did stay with, it would be the worst political environment for Republicans in at least a generation, and maybe since Watergate.
Sargent: I want to push a bit on an idea you’ve articulated, which is that this election will be decided by what you call a “red undertow.” That’s the idea, I think, that what Democrats do matters less than whether those Republicans we discussed stay home. And if they do stay home, that would pull down these GOP senators in red states. That’s the force, the red undertow you’re talking about.
But I want to ask you about this. If you look at the polling, right, the Democratic candidates are outperforming their party, and I want to ask you about that. There are these lopsided numbers among independents we talked about, which means these Democratic candidates for Senate especially are getting independents to support them.
And then, in the Times poll, Talarico is, like, running four points above the generic ballot number for Democrats. If you look at the seven Senate races the Times polled, the Senate candidates are getting around 50 percent, while the generic ballot number is a couple points below that, right? So they’re a couple points over the generic number for Democrats.
You take that plus the lopsided performance among independents, there is something happening with these—and these are some remarkable candidates as well. It seems like, Charlie, there is something happening where Democrats are winning a lot of voters to them, right?
Cook: On an individual candidate basis. You know, you could look at Adam Hamilton in Kansas and say, damn, I don’t know where the hell Democrats could have come up with a better candidate than that for example.
But it’s not—I mean, when I say it’s not a blue wave, blue wave implies Democrats, we love you and we are for everything you are, and all is forgiven for 2021, ‘22, ‘23, ‘24. That ain’t happening. This is really more about pissed off at President Trump and at Republicans who enabled him.
And so it’s a lot of that, and some Democrats in specific, running in specifically red states, that are uncannily good, and against incredibly mediocre incumbents who underperform what a potted plant might get in that state. So it’s a combination. It’s really a combination of factors. But Democrats shouldn’t—I mean, the Democratic Party’s brand isn’t any better than it was two years ago.
Sargent: Maybe the way to reconcile our positions is to say that people like Talarico and Peltola and Ossoff and Sherrod Brown, and maybe in some ways Abdul El-Sayed, and maybe a little less so Troy Jackson, but possibly Josh Turek—they’re creating an opening to fix the brand problem. Maybe that’s the way.
Because they are really staking out new territory with a new kind of voter that is generally hard for Democrats to get. And maybe that provides the opening we’re talking about for Democrats to start to reach these people in a bit more of a concerted and, I guess, salutary way.
Cook: I’m with you on each of those, except not El-Sayed, not Jackson. I’m not there. I mean, I think they’re underperformers. And not that you’ll catch me saying any good things about Haley Stevens, but had she won the primary, we wouldn’t be talking so much about Michigan right now, to be honest. And had Democrats nominated Governor Mills, we wouldn’t be talking about Maine. She would have a comfortable lead, I think, over Susan Collins.
And it’s interesting. It’s where Democrats were playing on the road, they played more small-c conservative ball, and they’re doing actually very, very well. But it’s where they had, and they knew they’d have, a home field advantage, that they started behaving in a risky way.
Sargent: So let’s just close this out. You didn’t want to use the word “biblical” to describe what you expect is going to happen to Republicans. So let’s suggest some words and maybe you can tell us what you think.
Do you think there’s going to be a big defeat for Republicans, or a modest defeat, or a rout, or a bloodbath?
Cook: What? What did Obama say, it was a thumping, and what was George W. in ‘06? How about an ass-whooping? Is that a good one? I mean, it’s more than a beating. It’s a hell of a beating.
Sargent: Right. You expect a real rout. You expect a big crushing defeat.
Cook: Yeah. Yes. Yeah. There’s no putting a smiley face on this thing.
Sargent: Charlie Cook, really, really awesome to talk to you. Thanks so much for spending that time with us.
Cook: Thanks, Greg. Anytime. Take care. Have a good one.
