GD POLITICS

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From 2016 to 2024, Latino voters shifted roughly 32 points toward Republicans. According to early estimates, that entire rightward shift was undone in a single election last Tuesday.
On today’s podcast, I sit down with longtime friend of the pod Carlos Odio, co-founder of Equis Research, to unpack one of the biggest stories of the 2026 midterms. Even Carlos, who expected Democrats to recover some ground, was surprised by the magnitude.
Of course, a 32-point swing doesn’t mean the same voters moved right and then back left. The Latino electorate is growing and changing, and who turns out matters alongside who switches sides. One striking finding from early voter-file data: In Georgia and Texas, young Latina women voted at higher rates than young white women, reversing the usual turnout gap.
We dig into how those forces reinforced each other, why the economy and immigration contributed to Republicans’ losses, and why Democrats’ recovery looks different in Texas and Florida. We also ask a broader question: What makes Latino voters so open to changing their minds?
After 2024, there was plenty of talk about a lasting Republican realignment. After 2026, it may be tempting to declare that Latino voters have “come home” to Democrats. Carlos explains why both parties should be wary of treating one election’s results as a lasting arrangement.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.com

The full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.
Well, that was quite an election night.
Democrats have won control of the House and Senate, making inroads into territory that would have seemed wildly out of reach two years ago. After seven hours of live coverage, Mary Radcliffe and Lenny Bronner join me for a late-night podcast to make sense of it all. We brought drinks and a few functioning brain cells.
We discuss the collapse in Republican turnout, a surge in Black turnout, Hispanic voters’ swing back toward Democrats, and why the wave hit some regions harder than others. A central question: How much of this result reflects voters changing their minds, and how much reflects who showed up? There’s still plenty of counting and analysis ahead, but the distinction matters for understanding what happened.
We also consider what Democrats’ sizable majorities could mean for Trump’s final two years, and why tonight’s results tell us less about 2028 than you might think.
Thanks to everyone who spent election night with us. We’ve got plenty more to talk about. First, some sleep.

A note on our election-night plans: I’m teaming up with Silver Bulletin, The Argument and Slow Boring for a livestream and live blog at gdpolitics.com, starting at 5:30 p.m. Eastern. You’ll hear from many of your podcast favorites throughout the evening, including Nate Silver, Clare Malone, Nathaniel Rakich, Lakshya Jain and Lenny Bronner.
The livestream will be open to everyone; the live blog will be for paid subscribers. That’s where you’ll find all of Nate’s hottest NSFW takes! I’ll send subscribers a reminder email when we’re live on election night. We’ll also have a late-night podcast for paid subscribers once we have enough results to draw some conclusions. It’s an exciting week ahead!
Happy election eve! Pollsters are releasing their final surveys, the forecasts are hours away from being frozen, and tens of millions of Americans have already voted. We’re about to find out whether all the pre-election data we’ve pored over actually painted an accurate picture of the 2026 electorate.
On this final pre-election episode of GD POLITICS, Mary Radcliffe and Lenny Bronner join me to assess the last-minute polls, answer your remaining questions, and register our final takes before the results come in.
A central question: Are Democrats’ surprisingly strong numbers in red states evidence of an unusually favorable electorate, or a warning that pollsters are struggling to reach Republican voters? We discuss what survey response rates can tell us and why weighting polls by voters’ recollections of 2024 introduces its own complications.
We also examine why this election might produce an uneven map. Candidate quality, regional differences, and shifting coalitions could mean very different results in states experiencing the same national political environment.
Finally, we offer three perspectives on the story that might emerge: Lenny explores how modest polling misses among particular groups could reshape the Senate outcome. Mary focuses on regional shifts and their implications for 2028. And I consider how this election differs from 2022 and whether it might come to be seen through a lens of betrayal.
Hope you enjoy the episode, and we’ll see you on election night!


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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.com

A note on our election-night plans: I’m teaming up with Silver Bulletin, The Argument and Slow Boring for a livestream and live blog at gdpolitics.com, starting at 5:30 p.m. Eastern. You’ll hear from many of your podcast favorites throughout the evening, including Nate Silver, Clare Malone, Nathaniel Rakich, Lakshya Jain and Lenny Bronner.
The livestream will be open to everyone; the live blog will be for paid subscribers. That’s where you’ll find all of Nate’s hottest NSFW takes! I’ll send subscribers a reminder email when we’re live on election night. We’ll also have a late-night podcast for paid subscribers once we have enough results to draw some conclusions. It’s an exciting week ahead!
The full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.
We’re just three days out from Election Day, and we’ve got another weekend bonus episode for you. When it rains, it pours, my friends.
Today, Nathaniel Rakich joins me for an hour-by-hour guide to Tuesday evening, from the first polls closing in Indiana and Kentucky to the long wait for Alaska. Which races will tell us whether we’re watching a blue tsunami or more of a ripple? How quickly does each state count its votes? And when will we know who won?
Florida could give us our first substantial answers. It counts quickly and has enough competitive House races to tell us something about the breadth of a Democratic wave. Texas and Kansas should also report relatively quickly, giving us a look at two of Democrats’ biggest Senate targets. Michigan and Maine will require more patience.
Nathaniel and I debate how early we’ll be able to tell who won the House. I’m inclined to stick my neck out; he brings his wet blanket (yes, I’m editorializing). The Senate could keep us waiting a week or more if control depends on Maine or Alaska. If either party secures a majority without those seats, we could know much sooner.
So sit back, enjoy your morning coffee in bed, and get ready for Tuesday. As Nathaniel puts it: “Get in. We’re going electioning.”

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.gdpolitics.com

Are you excited for Election Day? Well, get even more excited, because GD POLITICS is teaming up with Silver Bulletin and The Argument to bring you live election night coverage starting at 5:30 p.m. ET. There will be numbers, maps and probably an upset or two. Mark your calendars and join at gdpolitics.com!
The full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player here.
We’re five days out, and the national environment looks rough for Republicans. The generic ballot sits at around D+9, and forecasters broadly agree that Democrats will take the House. The Senate is where the real argument lives, so that’s what I wanted to dig into on today’s episode with two pollsters who read the same data a little differently.
Patrick Ruffini, a Republican pollster and co-founder of Echelon Insights, sees the race for the Senate as a coin flip, with Texas as the potentially decisive pickup. His caution comes from the map and the track record: The median Senate battleground voted for Trump by about 12 points, and polling misses have clustered in red states and the Midwest, including Ohio and Iowa.
Lakshya Jain of Split Ticket and The Argument puts the median outcome at Democrats winning 52 Senate seats. His case: In a D+9 environment, Ohio plays like an even state, and Sherrod Brown and James Talarico tend to run ahead of the generic ballot.
Both expect Democrats’ biggest gains to come among Hispanic and Black voters, which favors the Sun Belt over the Midwest and prairie states. But both are skeptical of the late buzz about Mississippi and South Carolina.
We also get into what the early vote can actually tell us and whether this election is a test of the GOP’s multiracial working-class coalition. Patrick, who wrote the book on it, says a 70–30 Democratic split among Hispanic voters would put his thesis in trouble. And we talk about why religion may be an underrated dividing line in American politics.
Plus, each names a race where the consensus is most wrong, and we take a listener question on why rural voters are still so hard to poll.