Pod Save America - Black Voters’ Views on Biden

Episode Date: April 17, 2024

Tommy is joined by Terrance Woodbury, Democratic strategist and pollster, to talk about President Biden's standing with young Black men and other groups he'll need to win the White House a second time. Plus, highlights from the opening days of Trump's criminal trial in New York, Biden's promise to tax the rich, and what new data says about the influence of third-party candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Terrence Woodbury. We are very excited to have Terrence with us today. He's a Democratic strategist, pollster, does million-in-one focus groups, the founder of Hit Strategies, and he is someone who has a deep understanding of the 2024 electorate and what it will take for Biden to win, how we can reach these voters. So it's so great to have you.

Thanks for having me. Glad to be here. We got a great show today. So we're going to talk about how Donald Trump just cannot stop dozing off during his criminal case in New York City. Meanwhile, sleepy Joe Biden is barnstorming Pennsylvania and selling his new economic strategy, which is taxing the rich. Feels familiar. We're also going to dig into some recent polling, whether the industry itself is broken, what

the impact of third party candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West might be, and why President Biden seems to be struggling with young voters and voters of color and what he can do to fix it. So we have like six episodes to do. Let's do it. We've got time. Okay, we have the studio until 8 p.m., so that's 11 a.m. now.

Real quick, just a selfish plug for me, Terrence. So the foreign policy show I do with Ben Rhodes, it's called Pod Save the World. We got nominated for a Webby Award. And I'm trying to juice the stats here. It's nominated for best news in politics podcast. The hardest part about this podcasting world we're in is figuring out how to help people find your show because there's a billion of them and most of them suck. And the discovery process is bad. So these awards kind of help. Voting closes April 18th. If you have a minute to spare, go to vote.webbiawards.com. Search for Crooked Media, vote for Pod Save the World, vote for Crooked Media's social media videos. We'd appreciate it. Again, that's

vote.webbiawards.com. All right. Let's start with some of the highlights from Trump's time in court this week. Judge Merchan swore in seven jurors on Tuesday before adjourning until Thursday morning. It's an interesting kind of eclectic group. The jury foreperson lives in West Harlem. He's originally from Ireland. He says his media diet includes the New York Times and the Daily Mail, which is weird. He likes to watch Fox News and MSNBC. So I bet a lot of our very probably polarized audience hears this and says, this guy doesn't exist in the real world. He's lying. You listen to real people all the time in focus groups. Did this media diet surprise you? This doesn't surprise me. You know, people that do

not consume politics endlessly the way many of us do, they just don't live on these partisan ideological lines the way we do. They don't. Many times they're not making decisions based on hardened ideological positions. I heard someone compare it to like, you know, if you don't watch hockey and you're picking an MVP, a most viable player in hockey, you're picking it based on factors that an actual hockey fan would not consider important. Like, I like their name, they sound familiar. I like their mascot. You know what I mean? And that's a lot of what's happening with some of the less engaged folks. And so how are they going to find an impartial jury in Manhattan? They find guys like this that are consuming MSNBC, Fox News, and Daily Beast. Right, right, right. I love there's a write-up by Just Security. There was one juror posted a lock him up meme on Facebook.

He got excused. There's another who posted an AI video of Trump calling himself a dumb fuck. They got rid of that guy too. One juror called himself the repost king. So interesting, fun to watch all this. So we're all trying to figure out how this trial may or may not impact the electorate's views of Trump. A new poll from AP NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that Americans are less convinced of Trump's guilt in this first criminal trial, the hush money trial compared to the other cases.

believe Trump committed a crime in the hush money case. Almost half think he's guilty in the other three cases. However, half of Americans would see Trump as unfit for the White House if he is convicted of falsifying business records related to this hush money case. So the verdict really matters is the point here. Has anything in the polling or focus groups jumped out at you about how voters feel about this trial and what they might need to hear during it to influence their opinion when they actually vote? Well, I am relieved to hear that half of America would see these convictions as making Donald Trump unfit. I'm concerned more about the other half. Yeah. I wish that was higher. Right. That's right. Look, I have seen Donald Trump suggest that this is going to endear him to some voters, specifically to black voters that see him as a victim or being unjustly targeted by the criminal justice system.

I have not seen any indication of that in any of our focus groups or polling. benefit him, you know, when we're talking to some of these cynical voters that don't, that believe that the system is the problem, this appears to be a distraction. You know, it appears to be they want us focused on these meaningless crimes so that we're not focused on what really matters. What really matters, insert the blank, depending on who I'm talking to. And so, you know, there is some of that, that just endless coverage of Donald Trump and hush money allegations from years ago seem like a distraction from what people would rather be talking about. And so in that case, it does kind of validate the system is broken message and does could could appeal to some voters that believe that. He's also hammering like the system is rigged. This is a Biden prosecution. This is my opponents coming after me. Do you think, do you,

is your sense that people are receptive to that kind of messaging? No. Um, the people that are receptive to Trump as a victim and Biden as a bully are the half of people that are already, uh, that are already kind of in bed with Trump. What concerns me about the, about this 50%, this half of

folks that don't think that this makes him unfit, is that he doesn't need 50% to win. He doesn't need half of America to vote for him to win. He needs 46, 47%. And I think that he's well within those margins of folks that will discredit all of these trials. Now, I do think that the subsequent trials are going to have a different kind of impact, and we see that in the polling as well. Yeah. I was reading about this polling experiment that YouGov did.

So in 2018, they did a survey, and they asked everybody, the respondents, if it would be a crime for a candidate to pay someone to remain silent about an issue that might impact the election. Clearly, the context at the time was the hush money case. 56% of responded and said, yeah, that'd be a crime. 2023 comes along. You go up, does another poll. They asked the same

question over again. This time, more than 70% of Americans said it would be a crime, including 73% of Republicans. What changed? Well, the first time the context was obvious. The second time Republicans who answered didn't realize that they are basically being asked about Trump. I think you can hear that experiment and view it two ways. You can say, okay, that's hopeful. Voters know right and wrong when it's based on the facts and the merits, or you can find it to be depressing and say, okay, political polarization is driving every opinion about everything. Do you have a reaction when you hear that experiment outlined? Definitely the latter, you know, that this is just indicative of how both political polarization and the Trump indoctrination, that anything associated with Trump is changing how people even view the realities of

the world. That's what's changing the dynamics of our conversation. You know, it's not based on a truth or a fact that we all believe. It's based on what you believe about Donald Trump. Right. So frustrating. Trump. Okay. So, you know, he's trying to own the narrative. His first campaign event since his trial started was a visit to a bodega in Harlem that had been the site of a fatal stabbing in 2022. Very subtle. He seems to have a two-part message strategy here. Part one, attack Democrats is soft on crime. He especially likes to talk about his new category of migrant crime where he's demagoguing immigration. Part two is he wants to go after Alvin Bragg for prosecuting him and not

focusing on crime in the city, violent crime in particular. A couple of days ago, the Wall Street Journal had a big story about how homicides in American cities are falling at the fastest rate in decades to basically pre-pandemic levels. I'm wondering how salient you think the crime message is with the general electorate and whether the fact that things are getting better is breaking through. You know, I missed this bodega visit, maybe because it was lost in the Chick-fil-A visit, but I am glad that he's making his way through, you know, local establishments. Burger King's next. Right, exactly. I hope he bought a few chopped cheeses at the bodega since he bought a few milkshakes at Chick-fil-A. The challenge with crime, look, we all know this, perceptions of crime are very different than people's experiences of crime. Over allows us to broaden the conversation to things that Democrats actually do thrive on, like preventing the root causes of crime,

like leaning into addiction counseling, violence prevention and alternative responses. And so I think that the Democrats do have a winning message here. I think we have to lean into that message and begin to broaden the conversation. And of course, what we've seen the president do effectively, including in previous State of the Union addresses, is including in crime gun violence. Yes. Which is a top issue of voters of color and of young voters and where Democrats have an overwhelming advantage on how we would handle guns. I think that's a really important point.

We sometimes talk about crime in terms of just like sentencing or how many police on the streets, but yeah, obviously getting gun control or getting guns off our streets would help reduce violent crime. So while Trump's, again, snoozing away in court, Biden was in his hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania to kick off his three-day campaign swing through Pennsylvania to talk about taxes and the economy. The swing marks the eighth time the Biden-Harris campaign has made it to Pennsylvania this year. Biden used his hometown to frame the election as a race between Trump, who's this out-of-touch Mar-a-Lago billionaire, and himself, Scranton Joe. Framing is very similar to anyone who paid attention in 2020 to that race. During his speech, Biden said he wanted

to keep a majority of the tax breaks that Trump had signed into law in 2017 in place in 2020 to that race. During his speech, Biden said he wanted to keep a majority of the tax breaks that Trump had signed into law in 2017 in place in order to keep his promise not to raise taxes on people earning less than 400 grand. But he wants to raise $4.9 trillion in revenue over the next 10 years and place higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations. He also got a few jokes off on stage. Let's listen. You know, I've already been delivering real results in a fiscally responsible way. But I know not everyone's feeling it. Just the other day, a defeated looking guy came up to me and asked if I could help. He was drowning in debt. I said, I'm sorry, Donald, but I can't help you.

I like that petty shit. Keep it up. So Terrence, the numbers on the economy have been stubbornly bad for Biden. According to a recent CBS poll, 65% of voters rate the economy is good under the Trump presidency as compared to 38% who say it's good under Biden's presidency. What do you think explains Trump's strength there? under Biden's presidency. What do you think explains Trump's strength there? So first, look, I also like that petty shit. I think that Joe Biden being able to get off some of these jabs does a couple things. One, it continues to refute this idea that he's losing his marbles.

It shows that he's witty, he's quick, he's still, he could swing him as much as he could take him. But the other thing is that Trump can't help but to respond to this you know it takes the bait every time that's exactly right leave the bait for him get him off the message keep him uh keep him responding look economy is the number one issue of every election cycle um but what we have seen is that what voters are saying when they choose the economy as their top issue is different each time. In 2008, you would remember when they were saying economy, what they were really, this is at the height of the recession, right? They were talking about jobs and foreclosure. In 2012, during the height of the Tea Party movement, they were talking about taxes and spending. Well, now when voters are saying economy, and once again, it is the number one issue across demographics, across geographics.

But what they are really talking about is cost and price. Overwhelmingly, the economic anxiety that voters are expressing is about the cost of things, cost of health care, cost of education, cost of food, cost of gas. I had someone in focus groups talk to me about after her father died, his Social Security and VA benefits were taxed so much that the cost of dying is too damn high. And so, you know, we have this is exactly why we are seeing indicators like lowest unemployment rate, record job creation. None of these things are changing them or moving the needle because the challenge is cost. I think that the Biden-Harris administration has a good track record on the efforts they're doing to reduce cost. Things like reducing late fees from $33 to $8, reducing insulin costs, capping the cost of insulin, capping the cost of prescription drugs, and increasing Pell Grants to reduce the cost of education. increasing Pell Grants to reduce the cost of education.

But we have to continue to make the economic conversation a cost about cost and price, and not just a conversation about jobs and wages. That's such a good point because, you know, people assume economy means the same thing to everybody. And no, of course it doesn't. It means different things at different points of time and different people. And you're right. I mean, some of the things you just laid out there that Biden has done for seniors in particular are like discreet and easy to describe, like capping the price of insulin.

You feel that in your life. You see that in your pocketbook at the end of the month when you're paying bills. It's really well said. Over the years, a lot of Democrats have been attacked for being tax and spend liberals. We've lost elections. You know, Al Gore was accused of class warfare. Right. And it sort of scared him off in an economic message at times. Biden is obviously leaning into this fight. He's talking about taxing billionaires more. Do you think that's smart and popular in this case? Yes, always, always. I think you made the joke at the top of the episode that taxing the rich is the latest and greatest new policy. I mean, this has been popular for a very long time. I think this is a part of what propelled Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in previous primaries.

It is obviously very, very popular in the Democratic base. It is one that we should continue to lean into. I don't think that that is people's top priority unless we can connect it to how does taxing billionaires help make their lives better, help pay for the things that they need, help pay for the services that they need, help bring, you know, fix the roads in their communities. We got to, there's a, there's a next iteration of that conversation that's, yes, we tax the billionaires, but to do what? Right. That's a really good point. And also the context I think is Trump is going to these

fundraising events at Mar-a-Lago and other places in Palm beach. And he's raising money. He's like raising like $900,000 checks from a whole bunch of billionaires to fund his campaign. And clearly Biden is saying like, he's going to wake up in the morning thinking about those people who's funding his campaign and do favors for them. I'm focused on you. All right. So let's geek out on some polling for a bit. We talk a lot on the show about the accuracy of polling, what we can and cannot learn from polls. According to the Real Clear Politics average, Biden and Trump are neck and neck, with Biden polling at 45.4% and Trump polling at 45.6%. Trump is beating Biden by 0.2% in that average. Biden's standing seems to have improved on average since the State of the

Union. Do you think that's accurate? And do you have any sense of why he's moving the numbers? I do think that's accurate. This is my favorite segment. We joke that after every election, we have to defend the credibility of this entire industry. Why does polling even exist? People get real mad. They remember that one poll that was wrong and they get big mad about it. That's right. That's right. Look, we have seen this uptick in Biden's support

since the State of the Union. I think it is one thing that he did in the State of the Union was to undermine his greatest challenge. And that is, is he up to the job? Right? Does he have the stamina? Does he have the job? Does he have the stamina? Does he have the strength? Does he have the longevity to do the job? And I think he addressed

a lot of that, especially in the sparring back and forth with Republicans. That's right. That's right. They laid the bait and he didn't fall into the trap. He walked them into it. And so I think that's a lot of what's contributing to the uptick in Biden's numbers. I would also argue that being ahead 0.2% means that he's not ahead. Right. We're going to lose that election. That is a tie. And that's a part of the challenge that we're seeing in polling.

We're going to talk about what is polling here to do better. But that's a part of the challenge that we're seeing in polling is the way it's being reported. You know, a change in 1% in either direction is a trend. Right, right. But it's not indicative of who's going to win. Yeah. So if there's a listener out there who thinks polling is broken, I don't trust it. I don't know anyone's been polled. I've never been polled. What do you say to them? Like, what are the real challenges for pollsters getting accurate data in the year of our Lord 2024? Well, look, one of the biggest challenges right now is being able to reach the folks whose opinions we're measuring. At Hit Strategies, we've moved away from simply doing what used to be the gold standard of phone polling.

We're doing a lot more online and text polling. That's because we prioritize the opinions of young people and people of color that may not sit on the phone for 15 minutes. Yeah, they don't have a landline. On a landline. That's exactly right. I've actually never had a landline in my life. And I think that's true of most people in my generation. I had one that hurts.

I did not have one. I definitely had one. So, I mean, that's something that we got to do better. The other thing that we have to do better are sample sizes. You know, anytime I see a poll that includes 100 black people, well, that means that if 10 or 20 of them are a bit weird, then your poll is off by 10 or 20 points. That's a lot. That's a lot. That's huge. That's exactly right. We don't do any poll of black voters that's less than 400

to correct for some of that, to mute some of that noise that can come from just 10 or 20 people being weird. The three candidates that have a highest chance of swaying the election are Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West, and Jill Stein from the Green Party. Kennedy is the most well-financed third party candidate in history. He has enough signatures to be on the ballot in key states already like Nevada, New Hampshire, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan. We were talking before we started recording, it seems like he'll probably get on every ballot by the end. Cornel West just announced his running mate. The Green Party is already on the ballot in Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, and will probably get on the ballot in all of the swing states. So if you're the Biden campaign, which third party challenger

worries you the most? And do you think any of them have a shot of beating Ross Perot's aggregate vote record where he got 8 million votes in 96? So what would concern me the most, if I was on the Biden campaign, what concerns me the most is not any of the individual candidates. It's the collection of all of them. Donald Trump did not get a majority of votes in 2016. He won with 46%. In 2020, he got 47%. In 2024, he does not seem to be making any effort to get to a majority, to reach across the aisle, to attract new voters.

He is expecting this to be a base election. He's expecting his base to do better than Biden's base. And a part of how they're doing that is by juicing these third party candidates, namely Kennedy. Right now, Kennedy is surging in the polls. He's in double digits in some of the polls that we've seen. Kennedy is also going to be the best resource and will likely be on all 50 ballots. That does make him the greatest threat of the three. But the collection of the three, the ability of Joe Stein, Cornel West, and Kennedy together to get more than 5% or 6% of the vote that is a that's a threat that i know the biden campaign and the dnc are are leaning into that said cornell west is not registering nearly

as much in a lot of these polls i think that's because he has a much lower name id but cornell west as voters get to know him especially the voters these like double haters i want to talk a little bit more about the double haters this new new term of voters that doesn't like Biden or Trump. Well, in fact, I think that these double haters are a little bit broader than that. They are just cynics that don't like Democrats, Republicans. They don't like politicians. They don't like vaccines. You know, these are all the same folks.

The double hater is the same as the vaccine hesitant. They don't like 5G. You know, they don't trust any of this shit. Well, for that voter, Cornell, who doesn't know Cornell West yet, he is going to speak a lot of their language. You know, he's going to criticize Joe Biden's performance, I'm sorry, position in Palestine. He's going to criticize the two party system. He's going to adopt a lot of the Bernie Sanders populism. And this is how a voter can go from voting for Bernie Sanders in 2016 to voting for Donald Trump in 16 is because they were voting

against the system. And as soon as Cornel West begins to raise, if he is able to raise his name ID to get in front of these candidates to get on college campuses where he really knows his way around quite a bit. Yeah, he does. Then I do think that he can pose a different kind of threat. And I also think it's a little bit harder to disqualify him on some of his positions as it is with some of RFK's crazy shit. Yeah. And he has real political talent and he's a household name and a lot of households and has almost been around a while and has a track record and is a compelling speaker. So yeah, I could see Cornel West being compelling. I mean, I imagine Jill Stein will draw from a lot of people who are primarily, I mean, she's Green Party candidate, so primarily focused on climate change in particular.

I think you're right. Cornel West will get a lot of double haters. Bobby Kennedy Jr. will probably get some double haters too, or just the kind of, I hate everybody, burn it down, burn down the system folks. And I don't know that people, I mean, he's got a famous name, but I don't know that people know much of anything about him. It seems like his voters are extremely low information at this point, right? I mean, that is often right of many third party voters, right? We talked about how a non-hockey fan is going to pick an MVP of the Hockey League, right? A lot of non-political fans, folks that aren't consuming this stuff every day, are making decisions not based on partisan and ideological factors. And if they don't like either of the...

Look, for a lot of these cynics, the only thing less popular than Joe Biden or Donald Trump is the rematch of Joe Biden and Donald Trump. And a part of why that's so unpopular is because it's indicative of a system that's broken, right? This all comes down to the broad narrative that the system doesn't work for people like them. And I think Kennedy, all of them, Kennedy, Stein, and West will all represent options for folks that are shopping. I don't think that many of them have counted Joe Biden out. I don't think that they are never Biden voters, right? They're just shopping for a better alternative.

And we have to show them that the best alternative is Joe Biden, as opposed to showing them what's wrong with some of the other alternatives that they're considering. Yeah. Ben Rose and I talked about this this week as well. I don't think voters realize how hawkish Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is on Israel in particular. I was going through some of the things he said. When he talked about the war, he says that Israel, quote, does not have any choice except to eradicate Hamas. Back in December, he denied that there wasicate Hamas. And back in December, he denied that there was a siege on the civilian population in Gaza, even though the Israeli government had announced it. He said, quote, the Palestinian people are arguably the most pampered people by international aid organizations in the history of the world. That certainly cuts

against my understanding of the treatment of the Palestinian people, especially since there was a blockade on Gaza put in place in what, 2006, 2007. He opposes even a temporary ceasefire in Gaza. More broadly speaking, he, in 2023, he said he opposed Biden getting back into the Iran nuclear agreement and he kind of regurgitates Trump's lies about it. So, you know, if you have progressive friends, if you have leftist friends who are taking a look at Bobby Kennedy Jr. and they feel like he is saying the things they want to hear from sort of a leftist or more progressive candidate, maybe walk him, that person through Kennedy's record on Gaza, because I don't think they're going to like what

they see. I think that's exactly right. Look, I think broadly, Democrats have and progressives have to do a better job of messaging the Israel-Palestine conflict. A part of that is talking about what Democrats are doing better to avoid some of the violence and shit, carnage that's happening in Gaza. Yeah, civilian casualties. Efforts like opposing Israel's retaliation to Iran, opposing Israel's invasion of Rafah, you know, putting sanctions on people that commit violence in the West Bank, that we are taking steps to reduce the violence. And the other part of that message is how much worse it is for Donald Trump who, you know, move that move the American embassy to Jerusalem, effectively ending the two state solution and especially how much worse RFK would be. I think we do have to continue to make that contrast. Again, the contrast has to include what

we're doing better and how much worse the other, the alternatives are. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. There's a, there's a real policy problem that we got to fix. They got to get to a ceasefire, get the hostages released, got to end the war as soon as possible, President Biden does, but also tell a story about what Trump did while he was in office and all the political favors he did for Bibi Netanyahu, because you're right, he took a number of steps that made a two-state solution less likely during his four years in office. So let's talk about what Biden will need to do to win back young voters and voters of

color. Both groups showed up for him in record breaking numbers in 2020 and helped him win in key battleground states. But that support seems to have softened a bit. More black male voters say they plan to vote for Trump this year than did in 2020. According to the Wall Street Journal, they did a poll of seven swing states. 30% of black men said they would vote for Trump compared to 12% who did in 2020. So Terrence, you guys do your own research. It hits strategies and not in the Joe Rogan way, but in like you actually do real research. You have found that the growing

generation gap between black voters is something that's not being focused on enough. So 15% of black voters under 50 identify as Republican while 2% of black voters under 50 identify as Republican, while 2% of black voters over 50 identify as Republicans. So let's talk about voters of color first. There seems to be this consistent trend of black and Hispanic voters leaving the Democratic Party, especially men. Is that narrative accurate? And if so, why do you think it's happening? Yeah, so there's two things happening here, right? There's a gender gap between women voters of color and men voters of color that has gotten a lot of attention. You know, there's been a lot of attention about men of color. There has been erosion there. And this erosion is not just a Biden effect. This has been an erosion from Democrats more broadly.

It's happening up and down the ballot. It has been happening since Barack Obama exit the political stage ever since 2012. We have seen 2% to 4% more men of color voting, supporting Republicans in every single election, midterms, down ballot. It is a gradual increase. But the other thing that you're right, hasn't gotten enough attention is the generation gap between older voters of color and younger voters of color. While the gender gap between men of color and women of color is closer to four or 5%, a notable gap that could contribute to some differences in outcomes. The generation gap between younger voters of color and older voters of color is more than 25%. That is where this erosion

amongst young people, I think, is where the greatest threat is. And I do think we have a lot more work to do there before November. I know you guys took a look at the state of Georgia, especially the 2022 elections and black turnout there. What did you guys find in Georgia? Yeah. So, you know, what was so interesting in Georgia is that in 2020, we saw that David Perdue had gone from 7% of black men's votes to 17% of black men's votes. David Perdue did? David Perdue, right? In the same election, Tom Tillis in North Carolina went from 5% of black men's votes to 10% of black men's votes. And so we see this not just a marginal increase, they're doubling their support amongst black men. But that didn't happen in 2022,

namely because of Stacey Abrams' campaign, who saw, you know, Stacey runs a very data-driven campaign. She saw the impact of that gender gap from her previous campaign, and they effectively closed it, that black men supported Stacey at almost the same level as black women, but that that gap amongst younger black voters persisted. And we see that across the South.

I mentioned Tom Tillis in North Carolina, but we also saw in Florida in 2022. And look, I worked for Andrew Gillum in Florida in 2018, where we lost that election by less than one point. Four years later, when DeSantis won the same race by almost 20 points, I was very curious to see what is the erosion, what's happening there. Man, Miami-Dade, 45% of Miami-Dade voted for Ron DeSantis. 45%, almost half. That's our strongest stronghold of Florida, right, is Miami-Dade. And so what we're seeing is that it's not because DeSantis is switching, is flipping the votes in Miami-Dade. It's because a lot of the Andrew Gillum voters just stayed home. And so that is what is contributing to a lot of the

increase that we're seeing Republicans get is erosion. It's not increasing their margin, it's eroding our margin. And the other thing that we're seeing more than anything, increasing their margin, it's eroding our margin. And the other thing that we're seeing more than anything, contributing to increase support from black voters towards Republicans is that they're spending money trying. They are, for the first time, Republicans are investing heavily in targeting men of color and young voters of color, and they are seeing a return on some of those investments. Man, that's worrisome because this is, a lot of people thought that this appeal to black men might be a Trump-specific phenomenon, but clearly what you found is that it's not. So you guys did a focus group in 2023 of men of color who supported Biden in 2020 and now are considering voting third party

in 2024. Let's take a listen to a clip from that. The numbers, I'm not going based off the numbers. I'm going to based off what I feel like that person is going to bring to the table. Even though I know the math, Donald Trump's probably going to win. I'm still going to vote for who I feel like would bring something to the table. Anyone else in Howard's position say, I would still vote third party over Joe Biden if that third party person aligned with my policy positions better than Joe Biden does. Anyone else that would do that, given the calculus we talked about with President Trump possibly running? So one, two, three, four, five, six, so all of us are saying, who are on that side are saying that as well. So tell us who we're hearing from there and what your takeaways were

from this group. Yes, look, it's shocking to hear six out of seven men of color who previously voted for Joe Biden say that they would vote third party here, even when presented with the outcome that that could mean that Donald Trump wins. But what's important is who we're talking to here, right? This is a group that hit strategies recruited specifically of men of color that voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and were undecided in the summer of 2023. The nature of them being undecided is what, you know, it doesn't surprise me that they are, that they're, that they're shopping for alternatives. A couple of things I see in that clip. One, they didn't name, many of them couldn't name the third party candidate that they were voting for. What they were really saying is not those two. The other is that this was in June of 2023, where many of them did not believe that this would be a rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. And they certainly did not believe that America would nominate Donald Trump again.

That has changed. He's now the presumptive nominee. He's now the existential threat that he was in 2020, or at least we can make him the existential threat that he was in 2020. I'm afraid that that's a lot of what we're seeing right now is that many black voters don't think that he is as much of a threat as he was back then, especially because they survived it. It wasn't as bad as they expected. They survived it. We got to remind folks of just how bad it was. And then the last thing I think is important is that this is these again, these were not never Biden voters. They were they are voters that are shopping for alternatives. The best way for Biden and for Democrats to prevent that erosion, again, is not going to be by telling these men not to spoil for Biden. It won't be just by disqualifying the other third party candidates. It's going to be by telling them why Joe Biden is the best option. Because what these men are saying is, regardless of the outcome, I'm going to vote for who I think is best

for me. Even if that means Donald Trump wins, even if that means Joe Biden loses, I'm going to vote for who I think is best. How do we convince them that Joe Biden is the best option for them? I think that the way to do that is by talking about the progress that he's made over the last four years, by connecting them with that progress from the last four years before making promises over for the next four years. Right. And because you guys, you hit strategies, shared some more data with us where you found 52% of black voters say their lives have not improved since Biden became president. And 28% of those polled under the age of 50 say their lives have gotten worse. So yeah, of course, if you feel like things haven't gotten better for you since Donald Trump left office,

why would you view him as a threat? That's right. That's right. Look, again, I am laser focused on this third of the black electorate that is the cynical voters, the double haters, the folks that don't believe the system works for them. For folks like that, man, the hope is such a fragile thing, you know, that when we inspire them, when we, and you worked for a guy that did a lot of this hope work, a lot of this convincing folks that they can change their system, that they could change their system. Well, once we do that and convince them that if they vote, things will get better for them, and they don't feel that material difference in their lives, it creates this hope deficit. And that is what Donald Trump is betting

on. That's who he's talking to when he says, what the hell do you have to lose? It's folks that have felt that erosion of hope, that tried one way that, you know, this is from a focus group of a voter who said to me, my hood didn't get any better under Obama. It didn't get any worse under Trump. So what does Biden have to do with me? That's the cynicism that Republicans and Trump are trying to lean into. And that's what we have to combat with the progress that has actually improved their lives. And it's understandable cynicism, right? Because presidents have a lot of power, but they don't have unlimited power.

Sometimes there's broader economic forces that impact your ability to improve the lives of the people you're working for. Sometimes Congress blocks you from passing things. Sometimes you do a bad job. That's right. I was in the White House for four years. I saw us do a little of both.

So context to remember there. Real quick, before we go to break, if you are in Los Angeles, this Sunday, April 21st, Pod Save America is live at the LA Times Festival of Books. Come see us. Hysteria's very own Aaron Ryan is going to be there, Jon Favreau, Dan Pfeiffer, and me. We're going to have a great show.

Go to kirka.com slash events if you want to get a ticket and come see us. Also, if you're a listener, you want to give us a piece of your mind on everything from merch to digital content, the podcast to love its outfits, which are questionable often. Help us get better by going to crooked.com slash insiders. Fill out a survey. Please be as bossy as possible. We want to know your opinions. That's crooked.com slash insiders. So let's talk about young voters. So we've seen this trend of young voters hesitating to come out and support for Biden. One reason is clearly the stance, the war in Gaza. Only 12% of adults under 30 say they think Biden is striking the right balance in the

Israel-Hamas war, while 36% say Biden is favoring Israel too much, according to the Pew Research Center. We've seen a bunch of voters, significant numbers in key states, vote uncommitted, particularly in Michigan, as a protest vote. I recently watched a focus group on uncommitted Democratic primary voters in Michigan for Sarah Longwell's, uh, the focus group podcast. And it was clear that Gaza was a driver for many of them for their uncommitted vote, but it wasn't all of it. There was this broader frustration with Biden and the democratic party, kind of like what you were just talking about. So big picture. I mean, what I'm struggling to figure out is whether young voters are actually more Republican, um, and agree with the Republican

party on policy or whether they just don't want to identify with Democrats right now, don't want to identify with Biden or any political party at the moment, sort of like a not pox on both their houses, like let's burn down the whole city kind of feeling. What is your sense of what's driving this sort of change in sentiment with young voters? So there is a bit of this hasten the revolution that we all remember from 2016, right? Post-Bernie, the Bernie movement, that there was this feeling amongst young people that the only way to change the system

was to hasten the revolution, was to burn down the two-party system. As dramatic as that sounds, that is a lot of what's driving this, right? Young people do believe that the system isn't working, that is a lot of what's driving this, right? Young people do believe that the system isn't working, that this message of like defend democracy, that's not going to work for young people that have had mixed results from democracy. This is a part of why HIT has been recommending shifting from defending democracy to fixing democracy.

For the messaging. For the messaging, yeah. You know, democracy is one of the top three issues that we spent on in 2022 was economy, abortion, and democracy. I expect democracy to be a top three issue that Democrats spend on again. So I'm not saying that we stop talking about democracy. I'm saying that as long as we're talking

about defending democracy to a group of people that don't want to defend a system that doesn't work for them, then we can't mobilize them. But if we switch it, make this slight pivot from defending democracy to fixing democracy, it allows us to, one, acknowledge that it's not working for everybody the way it's supposed to. And two, it allows us to include a bunch of disparate policies that we already agree with, getting big money out of politics, automatic voter registration, election holiday,

with, getting big money out of politics, automatic voter registration, election holiday, in order to make democracy work better for everyone. And a part of that is going to be including more options than the two-party system, even if that only happens down ballot. Yeah. So this is more of a vibe, it's not a data question, so I'm curious to hear your take. And maybe this comes from the fact that I spend too much time on Twitter. I consume too much sports media. But I feel like there's like a cohort of young men that think it's cool to be for Trump. Like you see Trump at like ultimate fighting events, right? And like friends with Dana White.

They're sort of like that group of people. He seems to have become counterculture. He's the one they think will burn the system down for them. And that is very new for me because like when I was younger, being a Republican wasn't cool. Maybe being for Reagan was cool in the early eighties, but I don't remember that time, but like being for Bush wasn't cool. McCain was respected, but it wasn't like cool to be young and a pro McCain person. Maybe I'm overgeneralizing from my time as working for Obama and on those campaigns and his ability to kind of tap into the youth

cultural zeitgeist. But do you pick up sort of this kind of sentiment in the focus groups you're doing? Absolutely. Look, there is a cultural phenomenon of Trump that he's just existed in popular culture, hip hop culture for a very long time. And I do think that he does represent the counterculture, you know, the problem is the system and I am your champion against the system. I think a lot of young people agree that the problem is the system

and some of them agree that he's the best person to challenge it. But there's also these other, you know, personality traits that are appealing to some of these young men and that's this hyper-masculinity, right? That some of this patriotism and spirituality, some of these are traits and values that Democrats have largely ceded, that Democrats have to reclaim in order to maintain the coalition of men and of

young people and of people of color. Masculinity is very important to men of color. Machismo is very important to Latino voters. My father is the head of his household, whether Democrats like it or not, right? He believes that. And so it's not all masculinity is toxic. We do have to reclaim some of these values. And I think doing so is going to help us reclaim our coalition. Yeah, it's a very, very good point. Okay, this is a little bit wonky, but stick with the audience. So we're seeing more and more polls that use a different type of survey method called online opt-in web panels. These are surveys. They're not randomized. You basically opt into taking them usually because you get some sort of incentive, maybe cash. Some pollsters like

these panels because you can get a big sample for a relatively low cost and you can do them very quickly. Critics of online opt-in surveys say they're not statistically sound. You're more likely to get crappy data because someone's just going to pocket your cash and say whatever, and they don't care if it's accurate. To test the accuracy of these kinds of surveys, an organization called Split Ticket recently did two youth polls one was done with more traditional means the other was an opt-in online web panel that i just mentioned so the results were super different so the traditional poll had more traditional poll it was still like sort of text based but it was more traditional they had biden beating trump 35 to 25 with a big

chunk of the vote going to rfk jr undecided. The online opt-in poll had Trump narrowly beating Biden 34 to 32, so completely flipped. What do you make of that split and the accuracy of these opt-in polls, but the fact that we're seeing them more and more? Yeah, look, this is why his strategies use a mixed methodology. Most of our polls include three ways of collecting data, online, panels, text, and live phone calls. And that is to try and mute some of the noise that we see, the variance that we see across each platform. The other thing I would say is that the online panels serve, they're faster, they serve a purpose. Because the online panels serve, they're faster, they serve a purpose. They are not going to help us get to the most accurate horse race because we can't validate each of those respondents to a voter file.

Right. Right. And so a lot of the variance that we see, even in some of the most traditional polls, is the difference between a likely voter, a registered voter, and an unregistered voter. Well, on a panel, you can't verify any of that the way that we do in text and in phone polls. And so when we can look at vote history over time, not from self-reported vote history, but look at the actual voter file, it allows us to make some, getting into the weeds here, but to weigh some of those quotas to make sure that this is the most reflective of the most likely electorate. And we've seen that change the outcome of a horse race by 20 points. Massively, yeah. That's right.

Yeah, yeah. So be wary of these things is all I would say. So let's close out by talking about what the Biden campaign needs to do to win and win back black and young voters in particular. Biden has been on the road a lot. He recently went to Arizona and Nevada to reach Latino voters. Last week, he did an interview with Univision, one of the largest Spanish language news networks in the country. He's done rallies in every swing state. He's talked about key issues like organized labor, border policy, and abortion. This week, he is in Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh. He's got one more stop in Philly tomorrow to talk about tax cuts again.

And he just unveiled this new student loan forgiveness plan that could help about 30 million borrowers erase their college loans. Let's go. I wrote down 30 billion. I was like, damn, that's a lot of borrowers. Let's start with young voters. What message do you think, like, what are they looking to hear? What wins them back?

Is it like policy stuff? Is it vibe stuff? Is it age? Like, what are you hearing from voters that they want to hear? The vibes suck, man. The vibes are bad. It's a bad vibes election. Look, I get this question from Democratic operatives every single day.

What is the message that we need to win? And there's two things wrong with the question. One is that it implies that there is a message. A thing, yeah. Yeah, right. As opposed to thinking about which message works and which message doesn't, we only think about which message works for particular groups of voters, right? Talking about young people, the message that is going to be most effective is, one, it's going to be a message about progress. What have we actually gotten done? And look, I want to be clear here. The way to deliver this progress is not just telling them how much we've gotten done.

It is giving them access to it. It's their ability to access student loan forgiveness, to access the infrastructure jobs, to access $35 insulin. We call it click here messaging. When we needed their votes, we put in the palm of their hand, click here to find your ballot, to request your ballot, click here to find your polling place, click here to make a plan to vote. Hell, click here and we'll come pick you up to vote. When we needed something for them, we knew exactly how to get them to do it. Well, now they need something from us and they need to be able to click here to access student loan forgiveness and click here to see a list of pharmacies with $35 insulin or click here to see thousands of jobs created by the infrastructure bill. Because the absence of that, Tommy, means that we are only telling them about how much we've done and it validates their cynicism that this is a government that's working for everybody

but them. Everybody else got tax credits and I didn't. Everybody else got student loan forgiveness, but I still got debt. Trump sent me a check during the pandemic. Maybe two. That's right. You also did a focus group on student debt relief in particular, right? Well, what did you hear in that group? The frustration that young people have around student loan debt, it's pissing me off. Because we know that this president has forgiven more student loan debt than every previous president combined. They are very critical of him and the progress that's been made. And I think student loan forgiveness is indicative of the problem in connecting that progress and the opportunities that we have to solve it. One, look, I have tried to, I've been on studentaid.gov. I've been on the

White House website. I can't find out how to apply for student loan forgiveness. This is a messaging problem. I do this for a living. I can't figure it out. We can't expect the cynics to. But the other is that it's a messenger problem, right? The best messenger for all of this progress are people that have their shared experience, that live their same walk of life. forward. Can, you know, that Joe Biden can continue to sit on the couches of people whose student loans he just paid off or can be introduced at these rallies by people who's, you know, like, and we see the Trump campaign doing that, centering the voters that they want to win, even the Proud Boys and the white supremacists, right? Like saluting them before

every rally, you know, we have an opportunity to start showcasing the people whose lives are getting better and who look like the audience that the voters that we're trying to go in does it matter if you tell a voter who's frustrated that there was all these there was big expectations about student debt relief that the reason it didn't go through is that the republican supreme court struck it down because of a bunch of lawsuits from republicans does that context make a difference? Or are they just like, nah, I'm pissed? No, I don't think that that makes as much of a difference

as after the Supreme Court struck it down, Joe Biden said, fuck it, watch this. You know, like that, that's exactly right. That's the shit that shows he's fighting for us. You know, he's willing to do what it takes. You know, that's the other appeal of Trump is that regardless of what the system says, regardless of what systems try to stop him, he's going to do what he thinks is in his voters' best interest. And Joe Biden defying the Supreme Court and finding

other ways to get this done reflects that. It reflects his willingness and his ability to fight for us. That's great. Yeah. That's always the message, right? I'm fighting for you. Here's the obstacle. Here's what I'll do about's always the message, right? I'm fighting for you. Here's the obstacle. Here's what I'll do about it. You also had some interesting recommendations for how to persuade black voters based on a ton of surveys and research and focus groups. Can you walk us through some of those key messages

and how to convince people? Yeah, so we've covered a lot of this. I think there's three things that we got to do to win. And this is probably true of most incumbents. You have to talk about the progress you've made. You got to talk about the threat of your opponent. You got to talk about your promise for the future, right? I don't know that we're going to get a lot of the third one.

I don't know that they're going to believe a lot of the promise for the future if we don't demonstrate the progress that's been made. And so we got to keep connecting them to that progress. The most important thing we could do with the message is to continue to change the messenger. We're spending a lot of money talking about the progress and more and more I'm seeing the campaign put out validating voices. But again, for the cynic who doesn't trust politicians and doesn't trust pastors and doesn't trust athletes, even the ones they like, you know, they like Barack Obama and they like LeBron James. If they both showed up in their

community and said, if you vote this time, we're going to, you know, get rid of these student loans. They're not going to believe that either. They know that there's a system that's bigger than that, including the Supreme court. Right. Um, and so continuing to change those messengers and putting forth people that look like the audiences that we're trying to talk to is going to be the best way to break through. We were talking earlier about needing to make the voter the hero of the story. Can you talk about that, what that means and how to make voters feel powerful and why that matters? Yeah, that's right. And so, you know, we pollsters are often looking for proxies to determine who's going to actually vote.

That proxy that most people are familiar with is voter enthusiasm. How enthusiastic are you about the upcoming election? Well, not a lot of people are enthusiastic about this election, especially voters of color. I had a black man tell me in Philadelphia that voting for him was like taking out the trash. He didn't always want to do it. But if he didn't do it, shit starts to stink around here. That's a good metaphor. You know, that's a guy that's going to vote. I like that guy. Yeah, that guy's going to vote. He might to do it, but if he didn't do it, shit starts to stink around here. That's a good metaphor. You know, that's a guy that's going to vote.

I like that guy. Yeah, that guy's going to vote. He might not do it enthusiastically. Expectations are in the right place. Just get the trash out. That's it, you know. Well, for folks like that, right, we got to, the proxy that hit strategies has found that's most applicable to who's going to vote is perceptions of power. We ask the question,

regardless of how often you vote, how much power do you believe your vote has to make a difference? The higher they rate those perceptions of power, the less likely they are to waste that vote. And so that's the messaging that's most effective is our messages that make the voter feel powerful. And the way to do that is to make them the hero of the story because of our votes. We are our votes are making our lives better. That requires taking the cape off of politicians, taking the cape off of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. But it's it's not just them. It's it's every politician and making the hero of the story, the voters and their ability to stand together and make the change that they want. That's such a good point. I mean, I feel like Stacey Abrams really effectively did this in Georgia, even though she wasn't able to win the race and become governor.

But in 2020, you could look directly at Georgia voters and say, you elected Joe Biden president, you got him a Senate that allowed him to do X, Y, and Z, named Katonji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, passed bigger sort of stimulus checks, right? Sort of making the voter the hero of the story. It makes so much sense. But we don't do that in our political debates enough because it's, well, Trump's a cult of personality. That's right.

Right? And we just focus on, you know, it's like Joe Biden's age versus, you know, make America great again or whatever. And we're never talking about what the voters can do to make their own lives better. It's about what these politicians do for you, which to your point, people are cynical about

and they don't believe it's going to happen. That's exactly right. One of the organizations that Podsafe has been supporting is New Georgia Project. And they did a thank you campaign to black voters in Georgia of voters from around the country thanking black voters in Georgia for tax credits and thanking black voters in Georgia of voters from around the country,

thanking black voters in Georgia for tax credits and thanking black voters in Georgia for, um, for the, for the two senators that they sent, um, that, that, that allowed, you know, the infrastructure reduction act. And it, again, it's, it's, it is empowering the voters and showing them that because of you, this mother in Philadelphia and this student in Milwaukee and this, you know, the single parent in Arizona, all of their lives are better because of your votes here in Georgia. It is so empowering.

And we, and it, it leads to the outcome that we want. That's so smart. You got to close the loop. You get to show up on election day and say, vote, you got to say six months after election day,

here's what your vote did. That's right. Terrence, thank you so much for much for doing the show, for being here, for the work you're doing. How can folks find you if they want to harass you more or learn more? You know, Hit Strategies puts out a lot of data.

We believe in data for public good. And so we're giving a lot of it away. Please follow us on Twitter, HitStrat, H-I-T-S-T-R-A-T, or go to our website, www.hitstrat.com. Excellent. Well, everyone should give him a follow, and thank you again. Thank you so much for having me. I'll come back anytime. If you want to get ad-free episodes, exclusive content, and more,

consider joining our Friends of the Pod subscription community at crooked.com slash friends. And if you're already doom-scrolling, don't forget to follow us at Pod Save America on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube for access to full episodes, bonus content, and more. Plus, if you're as opinionated as we are, consider dropping us a review. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Olivia Martinez and David Toledo. Our associate producers are Saul Rubin and Farrah Safari. Kira Wakim is our senior producer.

Reid Cherlin is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Thank you. Andy Taft as our executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Mia Kelman, David Toles, Kiril Pallaviv, and Molly Lobel.