In this episode, Ryan and guest Armin Thomas analyze the challenges facing Democrats and Republicans ahead of the 2026 U.S. Senate elections. They discuss historical trends, demographic shifts, and increasing polarization, highlighting how Democrats struggle to maintain their coalition in changing states. The conversation explores the impact of candidate quality, ideological divides, and the nationalization of politics on both parties’ strategies and prospects, offering insights into the evolving dynamics of American electoral politics. It's a Numbers Game is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Monday & Thursday.
Check out Armin's Research HERE
Welcome back to a Numbers Game podcast with Ryan Gardeski, and I'm your host. Happy Monday. I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. Right now, in Washington, d C. Republicans and Democrats are very busy actively recruiting candidates for the twenty twenty six US Senate election. Democrats have to defend two Senate seats in states that Trump won Georgia and Michigan, as well as a handful of states that we're closer than expected in places like New Hampshire, Minnesota, New Mexico, Virginia, and New Jersey. Republicans, on the other hand, have to only defend one incumbent in a blue state. That's Susan Collins and Maine. The only other Republican even running in a swing state is Tom Tillis North Carolina. And remember that's the state that Trump won three times. Every other state where Democrats have to try to compete in is basically a long shot. Iowa, Florida, and Texas. Democrats have a very slim road to the majority in the Senate. And it's not just this year. See and I want to go back in history for a second. I want to show you how difficult it is for Democrats to win majorities and large majorities. In twenty twenty two, Republicans really screwed up and they fell a little short. In twenty twenty four. They nominated bad candidates, They were caught flat foot and an abortion, They were outspent and outgunned, and voters in Arizona fell in love with the crazy con artists named Carry Lake two too many times. In twenty twenty two, Republicans lost Senate seats in five competitive races, six if you count the special election in Georgia. Had they won those races, it would have taken the Republican up to fifty five Senate seats. Now, in twenty twenty four, Republicans did do better. They happened to win four seats, but they came within just a few points of picking up four more in states that Trump won Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Had they won those four plus the five that they should have won in twenty twenty two in a competitive year for Republicans, it would have given them a filler buster proof majority, something that they have not had. Republicans have not had a fillbustproof majority since nineteen twenty one. Those are all states that are within reach. Those are all states that Republicans compete in for the presidency. These aren't long shot elections that they'd have to win, not like when they won the Senate seat in Massachusetts in two thousand and nine, for the Senate states in Illinois or Colorado in twenty ten. Now it's been one hundred and four years since Republicans won a Senate supermajority. That's not the case for Democrats. Since nineteen twenty one, Democrats have held the super majority in the Senate fifteen times or thirty years. Thirty years out of one hundred a third has not only had a Democrat majority, but a Democrat super majority. The Senate has essentially always been a Democrat institution because they were able to win with a grand coalition of Democrats. They had Prairie populace, they had Southern Conservatives, they had New Deal Democrats in the north West, East, Progressives in the Northwest and in the Midwest. But as Democrats and Republicans, to be fair, both became more ideologically rigid, they were electoral map in the Senate and the White House changed, and for Democrats it became smaller and smaller. In twenty twenty four, it was the very first time in one hundred years that Republicans controlled every Senate seat in a state where the Republican presidential nominee won by double digits. That's twenty four states, or in forty eight Senate seats. The other five that Republicans hold four in swing seats seats, one in Pennsylvania, one in Wisconsin, two in North Carolina, and won the blue state of Maine with Susan Collins. But as long as Republicans hold on to every state that Trump won by double digits, it means that their basement number is forty eight. For a comparison to Democrats, if they just hold on to every Senate seat in the state that Harris won by double digits, they only have twenty six. That's why Democrats are demanding they massively reformed the Senate because they can no longer use the same winning playbook they've had for the last century. Think about it, not many Democrats were very upset that North and South Dakota had as many senators as California when most of those senators from the Dakotas were Democrats, which Democrats by the way controlled most of the US Senate seats in the Dakotas from nineteen eighty eight to twenty ten. Democrats are also facing a similar structure to the electoral College in twenty thirty two going into the future looking forward. Even before COVID Democrats were seeing exodus from blue states, but the pandemic exacerbated those trends substantially. The Brennan Center, which is a fairly left wing organizational, oother nonpartisan, but they have a left leaning to them. They estimate that states that voted for Kamala Harris are set to lose ten electoral College seats, while Republicans states regarded states they voted for Trump are set to gain ten. Most of those are concentrated in the South. States like Texas and Florida are going to gain four each, while California and New York are going to lose six, four from California and two from now New York. Think of this. Had Harris won all the Blue Wall states Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, she did when Minnesota, don't know why I said that, but Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, she would have won the presidency. Two hundred and seventy to two hundred and sixty eight electoral College votes. Now take away the twelve electoral college votes, ten that the Democrat states are losing, and the two that the Midwestern states that are swing states Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are said to lose, and even had she won the Blue Wall, she would have still lost the presidency two hundred and eighty seats to electoral College votes to two hundred and fifty eight. That's with the entire Blue Wall enacted. That means for the next decade, for the twenty thirty decade, Democrats have to recapture the White House by basically winning the entire Blue Wall plus Georgia and Nevada. It becomes very very difficult. Maybe that will happen, but it becomes much harder where essentially they can't rest in their laurels institutional support among these historic blue states. And it means unless the sun belts switches in any capacity, which it's moving to the right. With the exception of Georgia, everything kind of relies on Georgia. For Democrats, there's really no path to the White House, and there's certainly no path to a super majority in the Senate. The coalition that every Democrat has basically count on since FDR all the way to Obama and even Joe Biden to a certain extent, is gone. And that speaks volumes of trouble for the Democratic Party, especially now as they recruit to claw back any chance that they have at winning the US Senate going forward. We have a writer on the show coming up to who talks about and writes about how the Democrats are trying to claw back their majority in the US Senate if they have a chance, and what would it take for Republicans to finally break through and win a supermajority for the first time in over a century. Coming up next with me this week is Arman Thomas. He is a writer for a great website called split ticket dot org, a split hyphen ticket dot org great website on electoral politics. They had a super interesting article called the real reason Democrats can't compete for sixty Senate seats. Arman, thank you for being here.
Thank you, Ryan, it's a pleasure to be on the podcast with you.
So armand now you look like a fairly young guy. When I was growing up, Democrats would regularly have seats in the Dakota's West Virginia. Obviously there were prairie, populous and Midwestern Democrats that would would be winning in states that went for Ronald Reagan and for George W. Bush. That doesn't happen with the exception of Susan Collins, right. Tell us why Democrats can't compete in places they used to anymore.
Well, I think there's a couple of factors. The first is simply the ideological positioning of the Democratic Party. Ever since the you know, the decline of the New Deal Coalition in you know, the sixty seventies, eighties, you know, the Democrats have been searching for a solution for who is someone who can bring together a winning you know, array of voters. And in the eighties Democrats got the clocks cleaned, you know, every election that happened. And in the nineteen nineties, you know, Bill Clinton and the Democratic Legislative Council made the decision to kind of triangulate and moderate and focus on winning you know, socially liberal suburbanites and you know, educated white people, and you know, you still saw enough of that more conservative rural, you know, Southern Dixie heritage that we used to be in the Democratic Party. Because Bill Clinton was a Southerner from Hope, Arkansas. However, all of this really started to take its current shape in two thousand when Al Gore was the nominee. Right, he was a Senator from Tennessee. He was Clinton's vice president, but he very much, you know, cast off a lot of his old southern heritage and his record that he ran on in favor of you know, big government, you know, Northeastern style liberalism. And that's kind of the where the party has been for the past twenty odd years.
Right.
And you know, West Virginia, which is a stal ward of the Democratic Party, voted against Gore in two thousand. You know, if he didn't you know, take policies that alienated his voters, he would have been president. And you know, every at every juncture the party has had an opportunity to make decisions about what ideology it wants. The side that has won out has always been the social cultural liberalism, you know, based in race and identity.
Right.
Obama beat Hillary in two thousand and eight, Hillary beat Bernie in twentyeen, Right. And so what that leads to is just, you know, this is where the party is, and people who have voted Democratic, their whole lives. They were Democrats because it stood for one thing, right, whether that's faith, a family and a country, or the unions. It doesn't stand for that anymore, and you know, so this kind of sorting is bound to happen. I think related to it is also the rise of you know, people just being more politically aware of what, you know, issues are actually going on. Right in the eighties, it was only really in the nineties that the top radio and cable news and Fox and all of this, you know, all of these things to keep people politically plugged in really became a huge thing, right, And in the nineteen nineties you saw the first wave of you know, working class you know, for lack of a better word, non cosmopolitan Democrats fall right in the South, in the interior West. You fast forward to twenty ten, you see a lot more of that happen. And now especially you're seeing a lot of those same shifts happen with non white Americans too, And so I think it's just a combination of people becoming more aware of what the parties actually stand for, right because in the old days you could vote liberally, but because there was a lack you know, there was an information gap. People didn't know about it as much because people don't pay as much attention.
Well, there also used to be more. There used to be Democrats that really fit the uniform of their state, right, Yeah, and in a lot of ways that is rare now.
Yeah, And so that's that's what I'm going to get into as well, which is that, you know, we talked about the choices that the parties have made ideologically, We've talked about the fact that people are just more aware of what's going on. Right. You know, people like Ken Conrad and Byron Dorgan, who were senators from the Dakotas, we're not that conservative, you know, relative that, I mean, they were more conservative, but not that conservative. It was still well to the left of the Median Republican on a lot of issues. It just matters now that a lot of people realized, Hey, I can actually see that this Democrat, even if he's a North Dakota Democrat, is liberal and I don't like that liberalism. And then the third thing is right with respect to education. Right up until about twenty twenty, the divide was very much urban versus rural, white versus non white. Right, that was a pretty useful heuristic for understanding where the parties were going. And it's why up until about twenty twenty, Democrats had a lot of hope for places like Florida, for places like Texas, you know, for you know, even the idea that you know, the rising tide of diversity was going to lift them up and you know, kind of cause Republicans to go extinct in their current.
There was the Obama coalition.
Right and well, now again because now what we're seeing is the choices that Democrats have made coalitionally have been to prioritize college educated white Democrats you know, over everyone else. Right, that that's the big cleavage and democratic politics today. You're seeing it a play out in the New York mayoral race as well. You know, that's why you're seeing the coalitions that you saw now. Right, If you went back to twenty twelve or twenty sixteen and told someone, hey, you know, Texas is going to go, you know, shift, you know, eight points to the right while Ohio basically barely budgets relative to the national environment, you'd be told, you know, everyone would.
Think you're crazy.
Now, when you talk about Democrats who fit their state, that was a lot more common, right, and I think that has to do with, you know, primarily point two of what I talked about with respect to the awareness piece. Right people, activists, the groups, as you know everybody on Twitter likes to talk about, they have a lot more influenced in terms of shaping a national discourse. Right, A Democrat from Alabama in the nineteen eighties or the ninety nineties could realistically get away with, you know, being pro life, pro gun, you know, anti abortion, anti gay, I mean, transgender stuff was not really a thing back then as a political issue. But you would assume that if it was Alabama, Democrats that could win statewide would not support that in any meaningful way. However, it's a combination of the fact that the Democratic Party's organizing muscle is often rented out to ideologically captured groups that do it, and so they have an incentive in making sure that what they want is featured.
Right, Yeah, they're not Harman. Can I can I ask you one thing about that is you write you guys write this on split ticket dot org. Polarization has caused the ban of plausible outcomes to shrink for any given race. Fourteen of the fifteen elections with candidates effects of twenty plus points. Those are people who outran their party. Tw points happened in twenty sixteen and twenty eighteen, and the remaining one happened in twenty twenty. Since then, no election is seen a candidate quality yield a twenty point electoral effect. And basically, what you guys say is that candidate quality, a candidate who really matched their state really didn't matter where you could outrun the presidential candidate by twenty points. You guys were in twenty sixteen that there were fifty nine candidates. I'm guessing this is house on cent fifty nine candidates that outran their They outran their party's presidentially by fifty nine, fifty or fifty nine by ten points.
Not the presidential lean, but the expected result because oh, sorry, expect the result. Placement score accounts for down ballot lag.
Okay, my missing fifty nine out round expected results by ten points, twenty four by fifteen points, and eight by twenty points. By twenty twenty four, that number had shrunk from fifty nine to thirteen from for ten points above twenty four to three by fifteen points, and eight to zero for twenty points. Does counter quality really matter at all, so, I.
Think it absolutely does. I think there's two reasons why this decline has happened. The first is just the nationalization of everything, right in the age of the Internet, in the age of social media, right to more extent, you know, to a greater extent for the Democrats, but even for Republicans too as well. You can't really run as independent of a campaign anymore because everybody has the Internet. You know, if you're a Democrat running with a D next to your name and you're trying to flip a seat in you know, I don't know Wyoming you're gonna have, You're gonna still be tired with the same brush as the insurrection rioters in Los Angeles right now. You know, I don't even know if the Democrats or not, but everyone is associating them with the Democratic Party, right, And the same is true for Republicans, right because look at someone like Larry Hogan, objectively a very very qualified public servant who's won elections in Maryland before, but people associate him with Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz and other Republicans, and the median voter in Maryland has died in the world, liberal Democrat and even if they liked his low tax policy, they're just not going to vote for someone who will vote for Republicans.
He did very well, I mean he outperformed substantially, so, right.
He still was a great candidate. The problem is if he ran in two thousand, he probably would have won the election because polarization was just not as vague as so. That's the first thing, right, It is just people are more aware of what ideology actually means, and they're much more able to connect that to whether or not that lines up or goes against their own values. That's the first. The second is that because of the incentive structure for the parties and who's going to fund them, the types of people who would be able to generate those kinds of overperformances are less likely to actually be drawn to run. Right, I'll start with the Republicans. Right, If you look in twenty sixteen on the massive overperformance side, right, it was you know John Katko, Tom Price, you know Bob Dold. Right, these are all very moderate Republicans whose whole shtick was, you know, I am a Republican, but I am you know, independent, and I have my own brand which is just you know, I am not all about doing whatever Donald Trump wants, right, you like it or not. That's what the GOP is is whatever Donald Trump wants. This is what everyone is going to support. Right. The only Republican today who really still has that kind of brand around is Susan Collins.
Right, what about Thomas masseying?
I mean, I can check, so Thomas Massey is independent from Trump, but from the other direction.
Which yeah, is so much more right wing. Yeah, okay, yeah, no, I agree. Susan Collins does have the brand of being at Susan she marches the beat of her own drum, and I think that she is unique. I think Cinema would have been there if she could have held on, but she couldn't.
Yeah, right, And you see it more with Democrats, just because the nature of the way the electoral map, with the Senate bias and all is is that Democrats have to find more right wing people relative to the party who run to be competitive. But still, just because of how ideologically polarized everything is gone, you wouldn't be able to get pro oil, pro gun, anti abortion, anti gay, anti trans Democrats, you know, elected, right. I don't know if you remember there was a guy called Charles Graham from North Carolina. He was a Lumbee, Indian state representative from North Carolina. He was a Democrat, and the Lumbies are conservative leaning group of voters, and historically they've been very, very Democratic, but now because of Trump, they've gone towards the Republicans. And Graham was their state representative for a long time. And when he was in the House, in the state House, when they were doing all of the bathroom bill stuff, I think he was one of two Democrats to vote for that anti transgender bill. Naturally, as you would expect, you know, when you're trying to get national donor money, he had to repudiate a lot of those votes that he took which were representing, you know, the authentic beliefs of his community. And so that just goes to show you that, you know, there are some things that no matter where it is, the Democratic Party, I mean, both parties have things that you that they just will not compromise on. Yeah, the Republicans it's fealty to Donald Trump and for Democrats it's you.
Know, children is I'm just kidding about that, Yeah, what you said, But the main thing transing children.
But the reason for being in the Democratic Party is that Democrats view themselves as the party that will expand civil rights right right, since nineteen sixty four and all that when they started to lose the white vote. That's kind of been the whole thing is we're going to expand the moral arc of the universe bends towards right. You taught when you see this debate now, right, whenever there's people who say we need to moderate on some social and cultural issues, the go to response is, who do you want to throw under the bus? Right, because the idea that you can make a strategic retreat on anything is viewed as retreating from civil rights.
That's a great point. That's a greeting on.
Civil rights is anathema to you know, the religion of politics. That is how Democrats view everything.
That's very well put. And I actually want to go up one little history lesson before that. There was a guy named Bob Connelly and he ran the the US and in South Carolina against Lindsey Graham in two thousand and eight. South Carolina was not as deep a red state in two thousand and eight as it is today, but Bob Connelly was a conservative Southern Democrat more right wing than he was more right wing than Lindsey Graham, and the Democratic Party of South Carolina endorsed Lindsey Graham for reelection over the conservative Democrat. But I want to go into the article back for one second. You mentioned something that was really interesting. Democrats since twenty sixteen have done a better job with quality flips. They've won more quality flips than Republicans have. What is it about Republicans where? And if you look at a map right of super Republican states, states that Trump won by ten points are greater. There are twenty four states. They all have two Republican senators. For the first time in one hundred years that every state that elected the Republican nominee for president by double dig just has two Republican senators. That's forty eight. There's only fifty three Republicans. So in all the swing states, which there are a number, they've only elected five. Why are Republicans and two come from North Carolina, which is vote a regularly Republican for a long time? Now it why do Republicans have such a hard time winning senates? Getting the Senate seats in Nevada or Michigan or New Hampshire or all these other places that are purple states, and Democrats almost can typically rely on that.
Well, I mean, I think it comes down to a few things. The first is incumbency, right, So a lot of there's just a lot of Democratic incumbents, and while candidate quality is not as much as it used to be, it's still something. Right. So it might not get a Democrat like John Tesla to win a state that Trump won by sixteen points, but a state like Pennsylvania Wisconsin that Trump won by two you know, if you have an incumbent that's well like, Yeah, that is the difference between you know, winning and low for a Democrats. That's the first. The second is that well, I mean, you know, Lacia has said this a little bit in stronger terms than me, but frankly, a lot of Republican candidates come across as crazy people. If you look at the war scores, voters are practically begging what is war explans the reason wit above replacements?
Okay, Right, voters are.
Practically begging for Republicans to nominate people that demonstrate some amount of independence and likeability. Right. When they do, it's basically impossible for them to lose. Right, If you look at John Katco in twenty.
John Kaco is a congressman from New York by the way.
From the Syracuse area. In twenty sixteen, he did twenty two points better than the average Republican would have been expected to and Democrats tried for years to beat him and they never did.
Right.
It's it's a similar effect with Susan Collins right on paid it's a very blue district, right, the district state right, and the median voter is a Democrat. But if they like you for reasons that go beyond ideology, because at that point you're voting against what you believe values twise, you're saying, I think this is a good person, I'm going to vote for them. It's very difficult. It's very difficult to find someone who can break that permission structure, right, And it's why someone like Larry Hogan did really, really, really well. Like if you go down the list of you know, right, Republican overperformances for war, right, there's plenty of Republicans who are like, you know, just you know, bog standard. I support Trump, but I'm going to be kind of quiet about it. Republicans, there are plenty of those who do well. But you would be very very hard pressed to talk about somebody like Matt Gates or Marjorie Taylor Green. But you know, the people that a lot of people you know, identify as avatars of the Republican movement who are going to get more votes because of their you know, for lack of a better word, slavish devotion to Donald Trump. And these are the types of people that increasingly get selected for in Republican primaries.
What about so name for a name for people, some Democrats and some Republicans who besides Susan Collins, who are just extraordinarily likable to the point that they can vastly outperform their district. Someone who comes, in my mind is like Brian Fitzpatrick, who represents Bucks County, Pennsylvania, easily overperforms Frump by fifteen points in every election.
Yeah, so Fitzpatrick is a good example because Fitzpatrick is not even particularly moderate, right.
Like, he's pretty liberal from my standards, He's very liberal.
But okay, yeah, at the very least he's not Susan Collins like he represents that Trump one district. Now, at least on policy he votes mostly the same way. And even if he hashes out some moderate versus conservative policy differences in committee. Right, he certainly no, he's certainly know Larry Hogan at least I write that way. And just because of the fact that his whole brand, he's had a brand in the area, which is that, you know, I represent a historically blue leading district. I'm not gonna just come out loud and say I support Donald Trump on everything, you know, and he's been able to do that in a way that's not off putting and not ideolgical. That makes things very easy for you know, Democrats, especially not you know, died in the wool on Twitter, blue Sky Democrats right to say, oh yeah, like I'm going to vote for Biden, but you know, I'm an independent guy. This Fitzpatrick dude seems like he's got some smart ideas. I'll send him back to DC. Right, So Fitzpatrick is another person like that. Let's see, I actually have the database right here, we can look.
Okay, so name like, name the top three Republicans and top three Democrats Susan Collins and Brian Fitzpatrick.
Aside, so from the twenty twenty four cycles, let's actually look at this because John Hoven won insanely large margins.
He's the Senator from North Dako. Former governor then turned senator from North Dakota.
Ilhan Omar also is terrible as candidate. For some reason, it's unclear.
She underperforms. Elizabeth Warren is a terrible candidate. She under performs if they were not. You know, the funny thing is, and this is the frustrating thing for Republicans while you look it up. Republicans have these deep red states like Wyoming, North Dakota where they elect these very moderate middle of the Republicans, and then Democrats will have these blue, deep blue states where they will have foaming at the mouth progressives and will run our most right wing candidate in swing states and lose, and they'll run moderates in swing states and win. And that's always been the frustrational Republican Republicans is why aren't conservatives actually representing Republicans super conservative districts?
Well, it's fair, Okay, So I got your answer here. Okay, So four leaving a side, Larry Hogan and ilhan Omar and Prime Ila Japaul and all the other You're in a really blue district, but you're you know, you're a communist, so you're gonna underperform by like twenty points, right. Okay, So Michael Bombgardner from Washington, Right, you know.
Her name on the on the tip of everyone's mouth, Michael Bombard.
I don't know much about him, but I couldn't.
I wouldn't knowhim if they hit him in the car.
I don't know much about him, but I remember when he won. He was very much seen as right wing, but not you know, like a die hard far right pariety alg right. He did what was it, like, nine points better than average, Brian Fitzpatrick nine points better than average? Right? If you look at Mike Turner nine points better than average.
He's from Ohio.
Yeah, and Mike Turner is someone who's definitely like known for being a little bit more moderate than the Median Republic. You know, Jamie Herrera Butler is well back when she was in Congress Washington moderate. Dan Newhouse not a moderate. He just decided to impeach Trump and.
He's he's You and I have very different terms the word moderate.
But at the very least Dan Newhouse is what would have been before the Trump era. He would have been considered a.
Concert typical Republican yeah what. Okay, So who are some Democrats who very well overperform expectations.
Okay, well let's go through this so Democrats okay, yeah, this list? I okay, So Joe Manchin obviously obviously, yeah right, okay, Doug Jones, Well that's because he ran against Roy Moore. Yeah, so Colin Peterson even when he lost in twenty twenty. There's the sugar beet farmer from Minnesota.
Right.
Then let's see in terms of twenty twenty four.
Yeah, I'm talking about the last election.
Oh yeah, Dan Osborne, right, not really a Democrat.
Oh he's in Nebraska. He ran as an independent with the Democrats support in Nebraska.
Okay, yeah, so not really a Democrat, but everybody got the message that he's not a Republican, he's anti immigration, he's not exactly a woke guy, because he's basically told the Nebraska Democratic Party that, you know, to f off right, you know, so that that that was the highest one for them. Then if we look here ed Case and Hawaii, who aggressive really disliked. One because he's a white man in a majority Asian district. That does not go over well with them, but two because he's very much a blue dog right, very he's a very old school blue dog Democrat.
He voted for I think the Lake and Riley Act and other stuff. He does have some surprising votes at case. I think he would have for that one. But he votes for some legislation.
He's a very moderate person relative to the area. He represents. Brian Shatz in Hawaii, but that was twenty two.
Let's see, he's a Senator for Hawaii.
Okay, So yeah, Jill Takuda from Hawaii as well. I don't know what's in the water in Hawaii.
I don't. Yeah, I couldn't they Maybe it's the heat. I don't know. So that's in. That's all very interesting stuff. So Hawaii, you liked a lot of people that were more moderate than than the party than they would have represent otherwise. And for Republicans it seems like it's I mean, Hawaii is a very blue state, although it's moved to the right substantially.
But to be fair, there's some more the Hawaii is like four people, but like Steven Lynch is here right in. Yeah, the old school Irish white guy Democrat that you know, the progressive wing in Boston has been trying to get rid of for years. Let's see Cleo Fields, right, you know establishment.
I don't even know who she is. Who is she? He is? He is?
He was in Congress in one of those majority black districts in Louisiana. You know they redrew so he came back to run. He's very much, you know, a main stream, middle of the road, you know, black candidate with you know, established in the area. John tested ten points better than average this this cycle, right, Angus King is an independence, so that one doesn't. It's kind of weird. Okay, Yeah, Mary Peltol she lost, but she was nine points better than average.
She represented Alaska, the whole state of Alaska and the House representatives. And wait one more, one more for the road.
Are we talking? Incumbents are just people in general?
Just people in general?
Oh well, then Lauren Bobert, Scott Perry, and Marjorie Taylor Greens.
Those are all people who didn't terrible. I mean, Lauren Bobert almost lost in twenty teen. Scott Perry, I can I tell you. I'll tell you something really interesting. I never said this on my podcast. I'll give you guys a little scoop. I was in a meeting with some NRCC and RNC people. This is a few months ago, and there's this one congressman, I forget who it is. In Pennsylvania. He represents like an R plus forty C, like a super Republican seat, and he's allegedly considering running for governor, so he would have to vacate the seat.
What Dan Music?
Yes, Dan Music is considering leaving the seat to go run for governor.
Yeah.
And I said to Dan, RCC and the RNC, ask Perry to switch districts, ask him to run another southern state where he won't be able to lose.
Does he live there?
Does anyone live anywhere in Congress? They all live in Washington.
Okay, see, I would say that, but remember the last time Republicans tried running someone in Pennsylvania who didn't live in the place.
He lives in the state of Pennsylvania. It's the House of Representatives. It's not he doesn't, he's he lives in Pennsylvania. Anyway. I pressed very heavily. Lauren Bobert moved across the state of Colorado run for reelection. I pressed very heavily.
Like eight points worse than she should have.
But she did. But she won because she wouldn't have won, probably in her old district. But I insisted, like, hey, do that and have him run in a seat that he can't lose. I mean, any glass of water with an R behind their name is going to win. And hit that kind of a seat in the User seat and the Perry seat. It's very like it's Harrisburg area. It's getting bluer and bluer and bluer. And I said, you know, get Scott Perry to switch seats. And he apparently.
Perry was not Scott Perry. He would not have any problem winning it. You could put a replacement Republican and they'd probably.
Right, but they probably would win, right, all right, But Scott Perry's took up anyway. The point is I said this to them. Someone relayed the message to Perry that this was an idea, and Perry said, f off, I've always won the seat and I always will. I think he won by half a point last time, very very close. We'll see. So anyway, okay, Arman, you've been a fantastic guest. We have to get going. Where can you read your stuff and read more about split ticket?
So obviously you know we're on Twitter. I think it's at split Ticket Underscore. Our website is split dashticket dot org. And you know we have articles that come out in the Washington Post. You know, we have stuff in the New York Times, you know, so you know when.
You're slumming it with me today. So it's really exactly no.
I love talking honestly.
All right, man, this has been so great. Everyone check out split ticket for more stuff. Thank you so much for coming on my podcast.
Of course, hope to be back soon.
You're listening to It's a Numbers Game with Ryan Grodowsky, We'll be right back all right now for the ask Me Anything segment of the show. I love this segment. I love getting questions from you guys. Email me if you have a question for me to answer. Ryan at Numbers Game Podcast dot com. That's Ryan at Numbers Plural Numbers Game Podcast dot com. Okay, this one comes from Mike. Ryan, I have a suggestion for a future podcast. One of the most interesting things you have mentioned on your past podcast is you're feeling that Elon was not in doged to save money, but alternative motives. Playing off of this, why not do a podcast on Doge's successes. The Real Numbers it's future and who will lead it going forward? For instance, what was the real deal with the VEC leaving? What were Elon's real motives? I don't want to get you banned from X. That's very nice that you, Mike. And what about all the high level people Elon Burdon's a Doge with big balls, continue to work for the government. How can we get DOGE or the Doge principles integrated in our government process permanently. Thank you, Mike for that wonderful question. I don't know if it warrants an entire show episode. So here's the thing with the numbers. The problem with trying to figure out the numbers of how much DOGE has saved is a lot of it is estimates that Elon has come out with with very little hard numbers attached to it. So he has said he saved on one hundred and fifty billion dollars. Other estimates have it to thirty nine billion dollars, and they're already doing some other rehiring. So I don't, I can't. It's hard for me to put an exact figure on what they actually saved. As far as you know, pen to paper. Let's look at the books and really see a deep dive into you know, what the actual costs were. I think the problem with DOGE has always been people are looking for easy, painless solutions to very complex and sometimes painful problems. And I was on the Megan McCain show a couple of maybe a week ago, and someone came on and his nonprofit was being cut and funding and his wife worked for a head start, and YadA, YadA, YadA, and youep was saying, these are free services they send of, these are tax payer funded services, and should they receive some cuts. Probably if we're concerned with our budget deficit and our debt, as we should be, because you go back to two thousand when I was a kid and we had a balanced budget. They were saying we're going to pay down the entire debt by twenty twelve. That's what they said in two thousand. That's inconceivable now inconceivable. But if we're going to have a hard conversation, which we'll have to involve Denmark as well, because you can't get through this with just a one party vote, and you sit there and say, hey, how do we balance the budget and reduce the deficit ultimately eliminate the deficit over a ten year period. That will involve Medicare, Medicaid, social Security, and the military and tax increases. Like you're going to have to go all in on everything. Everyone will have to hold a hand together and say, I'll give you this if you give me that. What's something you're willing to give in too. And maybe it won't start with a ten trillion dollar cut. Maybe it starts with a five hundred billion dollar cut. Maybe it starts with just saving Social Security, which is really not that hard to do. To reform Social Security, it's a fairly easy, simple plan. Medicaid and medicare get very very difficult. The military is very difficult. Servicing the debt is very difficult. It's hard to work these other parts of the budget out. But republic I mean, listen, Donald Trump put on and offer a couple of times closed the carry just loophole. Increase taxes for people who make five million dollars a year. That's probably very and I know it's not probably that is politically popular. Saving social Security, if they frame it in a certain way that's bipartisan, would be probably very popular. Looking into the waste for an abuse from the Pentagon would be popular, although it's hard because a lot of congressional districts have servicing the Pentagon as part of their economy. But still that's very very important. Medicare and Medicaid gets really really really tough, really really really difficult, and I think that cutting illegal aliens off to Medicare and Medicaid is a good start to saving the programs. But yeah, I mean, you have to put everything on the table, and we're still not willing to have that conversation. And the only way you incorporate doge into the government is you either change Congress or you get Congress to have serious players, or you passing little individual bills which allow a presidential linemind in Vedo, and you make a president like Trump who is not running for reelection unless they change the constitution, make him the bad guy because Congress hates doing their job, and have him do line on and vetoms to reduce spending one way or the other. But they're not due. Congress is not taking this job seriously. For Republicans, does was a branding issue and and that was it. As far as vek Vivec is just annoying. No one likes Veak, absolutely, no one can stand him. He's a complete I already said Connor artist once in the show. But allegedly con artists look up to his look up. Look up his mother's connection to his healthcare company and how and how she helped him make a billion dollar business. You will be very surprised. Look out how he moved his companies to Texas before announcing that he was running for governor of Ohio. He's just oh, he's horrible. But I mean, basically, lo and behold. What I had heard, and this is alleged, was that the vech was creating his own plans for doge out of Ohio. He had his own Ohio team separate from the Elon team. Elon basically caught wind of all this and was just very dismissive over Elon over a vek and thought of him as a joke, which is true he is, and said to him something to the effective like, you can't run for office. If you're using this to run for office, then just run for office and just like get out of our hair. And then he ran to the governor or. His team ran to the governor asking for the appointment in the US Senate, which he did not received, and so he's now running for governor of the state. I wish the state of Ohio best because he's very likely the Republican nominee. Unfortunately, but that's what happened. I mean, the Vek war on everybody that was around him, because that's who Vivek Ramaswami is. He wears on everybody. So I think that's all your questions. I hope it was. If there's information on numbers, like a really bring you once it comes out. But as of right now, everything with Doge is very complicated because the numbers are a lot of he said he said in the White House right now. So when there's hard numbers, I'll give it to you. And as far as wanting to reduce spending and reduce the debt and balance the budget, it's all Congress, baby, gotta get Congress get more serious about it. Anyway, thank you again for listening to this Monday episode of my podcast. Follow me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, wherever you get your podcast. If you like this show and the work that I'm doing, please give me a five star review and give me a like or a follow. It really means a lot to get the show out there. I appreciate you all. I'll be back on Thursday. Thank you.