<Music> Welcome to Party Politics, where we prepare you for your next political conversation.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina, a political science professor at the University of Houston.

And I'm Brandon Rottinghaus, als a political science professor.

Very tired.

Coming to you from the University of Houston campus.

We're drinking coffee because we are exhausted from a long night.

We're recording this the day after the election, so we've got a lot of details to get through, but obviously there's still a lot of fast moving entities that are happening all across the country.

But we can talk a lot about what we know and what we think that that means.

Let's start at the top.

This is a very expensive election.

$10 billion on ads, on ground game on consultants.

That is a lot of money.

Just let me break it down for you.

The way that I know you're going to like.

And it's about hamburgers.

Okay.

You could place 25 million orders of double meat, water burgers.

With the amount of money that was spent in the U.S. Senate race in Texas, $165 million.

The most expensive Senate race in Texas history.

What did all mean?

What do we get from it?

I don't know.

No Whataburger, though?

No water.

There.

That's one thing.

And, you know, I would rather have them Whataburgers at any time.

I think maybe the Democrats and Collin Allred are thinking we could have had a few more Whataburger for the election night party, and just everybody goes home happy because they went home.

Pretty sad.

Obviously Donald Trump wins the presidency Collin Allred, loses the, Texas Senate race.

Ted Cruz wins.

Although by a slightly less impressive margin than Donald Trump.

Let's talk about the presidential.

Okay.

The Trump quake is what I'm going to trademark it.

So keep that in mind.

Fair enough.

Trump basically swept all seven battleground states.

He won almost everywhere.

He won among almost every demographic.

Yeah, it's hard to see this as anything other than a remaking of American politics.

The juggernaut that was Donald Trump saw a surge in Latino support for Trump.

Saw a surge in, black vote for Trump.

Women didn't break the way Democrats had hoped to.

Is this a realigning election?

When we talk about this in political science?

Talk about these durable electoral changes like that happened once a generation, maybe two generations, right.

It is a fundamental reshaping of the electorate.

Is this the case now that the Republican Party is the party of a multiracial, working class America?

I don't know.

Yeah.

And and it's hard.

I don't know if this election is a fluke.

It, it's a very odd election.

You have the, sitting president quitting the race, having the vice president entering the race at.

a quarter to 12 There's a lot of money.

You have inflation, so you have a lot of confounding factors that make very hard to know.

Also, when you look, at, the realignment and basically what I'm trying to say is that we need to wait to see the data.

We don't.

Find the.

Data several cycles.

Right.

On the one hand.

On the other hand, you know, we have, of course, exit polls, but exit polls are based on the number that people that turned out and the selection, although the numbers increase.

Also the denominator, that is the number of people that are registered also increased.

And it was not, the growth was not similar growth.

Yeah.

So is our sample too small to make these, particular, assessment in terms of their alignment?

And then the other part of it, I think, and we discussed last week, I think that the general electorate is tired, the general electorate is angry, and the general electorate wants a solution regardless of what it is.

Just give me something.

New, anything different?

Yeah, I think that's right.

It seems to me that if there were any miscalculations here, and I think actually a lot of these campaigns will run like the ad campaign was well run.

We can.

Oh yeah.

And nitpick it to death.

Armchair quarterback it right right will.

But maybe it's not fair.

But that's what we do.

The Trump campaign ran, like, a terrible campaign.

Like, let's be honest, Trump is not a good campaigner.

Right.

And they didn't have a ground game at all.

They don't have to spend any money, but they still win, right?

And that is because of what you're saying that the Democrats didn't prioritize the issues that people cared about, and that was the economy.

So Carville is right.

It's the economy, stupid.

And I think it really had an impact.

But as we said earlier and last week, is the inflation issue isn't something that's just a U.S. issue.

We've seen incumbents across the globe lose in stunning fashion.

And so this is really just a kind of continuation of things.

We could talk about Donald Trump and Kamala Harris and Colin and Ted Cruz, but the fact is that these are global forces which are really making the public concerned about the issues that it seems like Democrats aren't really penetrated on.

Oh, absolutely.

And the fact that the Democrats, rhetoric or this core during the campaign was, I guess, as we said last week, you know, above reality and it didn't, as you say, dwell on those particular issues, why the economy is getting better.

Inflation is at the lowest level since the pandemic.

Yeah.

Prices are going down.

Look at gas prices right now here in Texas are going down.

But people didn't get the memo.

Right.

And yeah, that's about it.

And you tend to remember those bad times every time you go to the supermarket it's like, oh man, this is more expensive.

Everything's more.

Expensive.

And the fact that it's a very complex issue in the sense that, well, yes, the executive branch, the president has to do a lot with the economy, but inflation is controlled by the fed, and there is a huge gap between the fed and, the president.

And by factors beyond the president's control.

Oh, absolutely.

And there's some factors they can take into account.

Right.

But it's obviously not the case that we're going to see, you know, that be the kind of one button pushing outcome that Joe Biden can accomplish.

But really it's hard to review.

This is anything except a kind of repudiation of Joe Biden.

Oh.

In fact, that, you know, the kind of elections which happened the way that it did was probably a benefit to Democrats.

Imagine how much worse it could have been.

But if you look at the storyline, I think that's the biggest thing, right?

The electorate just mad and they wanted to take it out on somebody.

But let me ask you about this, too.

Ezra Klein made an interesting comment about the kind of gender issue in this election, and that was that basically, there's this growing alienation between young men in the Democratic Party that's contributing to this gender gap that we've been talking about since the beginning of this.

That is to say that there's no way of talking about masculinity without adding toxic to it.

I think that this is a kind of backlash to the sort of Taylor Swift, phenomenon, right where it looked like that was going to be a plus for Harris, and it would have been if that had broken her way in terms of votes.

But it actually might have been a negative, because the number of men that came out to support Donald Trump definitely outweighed the number of women coming to support Harris.

And I think that's really a big factor in why it was the case that Harris couldn't win the blue states, that she needed the blue wall, right?

The Wisconsin, the Michigan, the Pennsylvania.

These are places that she could have run well if there had been a slightly different strategy.

But that's a problem.

That's a cultural issue, but also has serious political implications for Democrats.

Oh, absolutely.

And the implications are that the Democrats, we have said it many times, they play tonight.

And perhaps you.

Made this point last week.

Yeah, yeah.

Now it's time to take the gloves off like I think so.

And, and and and it's just because the way that American politics, the way that national politics, local politics, state politics is done since 2016, it's completely different.

Yeah.

So they're running a playbook of the 1990s.

And that playbook is not a playbook that you can, enact today is just simply, completely out of.

Yeah.

Any political reality.

Better music than today?

Well that's true, I mean, I love the 90s, but, yeah, I mean, some some of it is is better.

Some of.

It's better.

Yeah.

Look, let me ask you, this was Tim Waltz a bad choice for Vice Pres Governor Shapiro in Pennsylvania instead?

Maybe winning in Pennsylvania?

Maybe they're asking that question.

Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, maybe I mean, Shapiro it's very popular in Pennsylvania.

He's a more moderate choice, moderate to the to which a VP matters.

I'm not sure it matters.

Yeah, that's one thing I don't know.

I mean, yeah, yeah I have no, no, but I would say yes or no.

Yeah okay.

Well that would be.

Yeah.

To be a cover all your mistakes.

I think that's a yeah, it's a fair point and we don't know.

Right.

It's hard to know.

And the, the VP choice is never the one that's really the most dominant.

The fact is that there a lot something went wrong.

Right.

And the question is what went wrong for her?

Can you point to something that you think is problematic?

So I guess I, throughout the vice presidential thing was the case that she took over without being battle tested in a real primary fight.

Is it the case that, you know, her positions were very clear?

Was it the case that she flip flopped on some big issues?

Was it.

De okay, all of.

Them.

All of the above.

So yeah, I think that's my that's your default choice, right.

That's what I tell the kids you like just to just deliver.

Oh that's why they're giving you the option.

I think that it's a combination of issues.

Again, you are running a campaign in very complicated times.

Inflation.

The rhetoric surrounding immigration, abortion, rights issues and the way that the message the Democrats were trying to get voters out to vote was not clear.

And then what we said was that, first of all, you needed to have your base.

Yeah.

Here is a question in terms if Democrats were able to get their base ready and prompt, clearly Republicans did that right.

And that's where Trump win.

On Trump's greatest hits and solidified the base.

And then you needed a coalition of undecided nonvoters independents or whatever that are also affected by these issues, particularly the economy that were motivated to go out and vote.

And you don't see that motivation in the, Democratic Party.

And again, was it part of the of how the Democrats are in in this case, the Harris campaign tried to, get into voters and say, hey, like, I think we can do these better.

And Trump is is, you know, this and that, etc., etc.. Yeah.

While Trump was, you know, attacking, attacking, attacking, attacking, you were having a different type of conversation that simply voters were not receptive to that type of conversations.

Yeah, this is going to come up a lot, right?

In terms of why it was that Trump won.

And a lot of people are asking, how can he win given the way he talked about the world, given the way he talked about women, his opponents, immigrants?

There's a lot.

And I have a list.

There's a list, I won't even look at it because it doesn't bear repeating since it's something it's on to everybody.

But the real question is, how can this kind of candidacy, how can this kind of rhetoric sell?

I think the answer is in what you're talking about, which is that people don't care because they're concerned about the bottom line, their pocket.

Absolutely.

They can't afford to go to the grocery store and get the cereal milk.

Absolutely need to feed their kids.

They're finding wage stagnation.

They're not able to dig out of these debt holes that they're in.

This is a real problem with people in a way that like talking about like the enemy within and saying how like liberals are ruining America.

People don't care about that stuff.

So I think that's worth considering, because definitely people are worried about this.

And a lot of people like who are anti-Trump or scratching their head saying, how can this work?

That's why, in part, the diploma divide, I think, comes into play, where we did see that effect, at least in some way in some states, not so much in Texas, but in some places.

So that's definitely, I think, a concern.

And the Democrats have and a strategic, let's say, opportunity going forward.

Right.

They got to think about how they're going to prioritize issues.

Right.

So let's talk about Texas.

Texas was very, very red.

Actually.

The map of the 2024 election looks a lot like the map of the 2000 election.

Yeah.

Turnout was really low.

This is a problem in big urban counties.

Harris County that had the lowest turnout since 2000.

Actually, to me, the Democrats are like Dallas Cowboys fans, no offense.

They're always saying this is their year and it never is.

Right.

Is there a problem for Democrats in that they're continuously claiming that they're going to win an election?

Right.

The polls are close raising a bunch of money.

You've got the right candidate issues work for us.

And then not being able to deliver his margin, that is, Cruz's margin was bigger than it was in 18, which yeah, shouldn't be true if the demographic story is what Democrats are hoping to see in terms of political change.

So what's going on?

Well, I think is they do the homework, but they didn't they don't show up to the finals.

Okay.

Yeah.

Right.

Right.

It's I did all the homework.

What student would do that?

I, I don't know.

How long have you been teaching?

Like.

They do the homework, they show up to class, they take notes, etc., etc., but then they forget about the final.

That is 60% worth of their grade.

Yeah.

So the mobilization issue is extremely important.

And mobilization is something that is not, something that they're doing.

I think that Republicans were, more efficient in terms of delivering that message.

And that message is, once again, because of the issues behind these, election.

And people are simply fed up.

It's like your car keeps breaking down, breaking down, breaking down you go.

You have two mechanics, and one says, well, we need to change that.

Transmission is going to change you this or that, and it's going to take six months.

Yeah.

You need your car tomorrow.

Yeah.

And the other mechanic comes by and says, you know what, I'm going to put these, potty here.

Right?

And, he's going to work and he's going to he's not going to cost you, my friend.

Yeah, I'll do it for free.

And maybe it's a temporary fix, but at that point you're like, who cares?

Yeah, who.

Cares?

And this is what happened.

Yeah, I don't care.

I don't care if, you know, Democrats are saying this or if Republicans are having with these big laundry list about, yeah, women or migrants or people or these I don't care.

Yeah.

I just I do not care.

I want to go and buy my cereal.

Yeah, baby.

You you make a great point.

And I think that that the turnout problem for Democrats is very real.

We've seen it in a bunch of different ways.

The fact is that the Democrats didn't show up to vote.

If you look at the margins in Harris County, the already won it by less than Beto did in 18 or in 20.

El Paso County, which used to be an 80% plus Democratic county, is only breaking about 55% for Democrats.

This is not good for them.

They need those numbers.

And either it's the case the Democrats aren't showing up, or it's the case that Republicans are out voting them.

But whatever it is, the margins are changing.

Here's the other thing.

There's this sort of concept of the blue spine.

Jeremy Wallace or Buddy at the Houston Chronicle penned this.

Basically, this is sort of the elements that connect together the big urban phases of big urban counties in Texas.

Right, Dallas to, Austin.

So all these fast growing counties, Collin County, William, Sin County, these are all part of this sort of blue spine.

But I think the fact is that Democrats are hoping the blue spine would be the kind of driver of their success, but the blue spine has slipped a disc, right?

They didn't get the kind of numbers from these places they needed to Collin County, Fort Bend County, Williamson County, all much more red to the tune of 55 or 56% that Democrats aren't getting.

And that's a real issue.

The other issue is, if you look at a place like Harris County, there's a tremendous amount of non-voting, down ballot Democrats simply are not voting to the bottom of the ballot.

Yeah, it's a long ballot, I get it.

There are a lot of candidates on there that you just don't know what they do.

And what about the Third Circuit Court of Appeals does?

But they're really important.

And Democrats haven't gotten the message to their voters that these are definitely races worth considering.

So that's another big problem.

Well, absolutely.

And once again, is you cannot rely on I think it's a combination of not having a very punchy message that motivates people to vote.

Yeah.

Individual.

Lee.

Yeah.

Then you have to go out and knock on doors.

And that is a key strategy.

And if you're relying in Dallas Fort Worth, Austin, Houston, Fort Bend, etcetera, etcetera, you need to have 99.9% of your ground game in those counties if you don't do that.

Yeah.

One thing I'll read is going to get a lot of heat for is not having a sufficient ground game, or one that really was the driving kind of motivator for the race.

That was something that O'Rourke did really well.

Oh yeah, of course didn't work out for him ultimately, but he got a lot closer than I did.

Like a lot closer.

Oh yeah, spending about as much, if not slightly less.

That's a definite problem for Democrats.

The infrastructure of how to get this done is one thing, but the issues are another.

So let me ask you about the abortion issue.

This we've been talking about for months as the kind of cornerstone for the Democrats.

Kamala Harris came here to talk about the issue on the national stage.

Right?

Beyonce introduced her, for goodness sake.

Yeah.

This is a motivator for women in particular, but it didn't work out that way.

Why not?

What happened?

Well, I think there was a lot of cross, voting, I guess, cross issue voting.

People in some states supported abortion rights while voting for Trump.

Interesting.

You saw that it.

Yeah.

In places like Montana.

Yeah.

Yeah.

In places like Arizona.

Just.

Yeah.

I was kind of like, yeah, what's going on?

So I think that issue voting is important.

Once again, we're coming back to not a single issue voting.

Yeah.

Pattern.

So we have people saying, well, maybe Trump is better for the economy.

Who knows?

We'll see.

His economic policy is up in the air.

We don't know what's going to happen.

Tariffs this and that.

And we don't know that's going to trickle down tax cuts.

Oh yes.

Trump tax cuts are going to go to to to you know middle class.

But we don't know.

Let's say we don't know.

We just don't know exactly.

We'll see what that's for.

That's for tomorrow.

Party politics actually not today.

And then abortion issues on a very different box.

Voters were able to box issues in such a way and say, okay, I'm going to vote for this one, going for that one.

And as you say, that issue stopped at the middle of the ballot.

Once you pass, congressional, races, you stop in case of Democrats.

That's a good point.

So that, I think, is what, happened in this election.

Yeah, yeah.

The border issue was another one.

Yes.

I'll read, try to stake out a kind of moderate position, which probably was good for him in his House district.

But to be honest, statewide, it was going to be hard for him to sell that.

He was a moderate and or that he had similar positions to, say, the Republicans and Ted Cruz on this.

It actually, I think, muted as an issue to some degree, even though of course, for some areas it definitely was still a issue.

But that I think was a strategic mistake to, he really tried to sort of have it both ways.

And Democrats have not been successful at doing that.

So that's another kind of problem I think, that they ran into.

But let's look at some of these demographics.

And then I want to talk about South Texas, which looks like, for all intents and purposes, is becoming much more red.

Trump wins among white women 60% of the vote.

He wins among Latino men, 64% of the vote.

These are from exit polling, by the way, which I know you hate.

So I'm going to keep doing.

Just keep keep.

Peppering you with.

Yeah, caveats.

I'm going to caveat swap off.

I just yeah.

Check your email on your phone like, white women with a college degree.

He wins 55% white women.

Without a college degree, he wins 53%, people who are born in Texas, 61% say that they supported Donald Trump.

The only wins that Harris had were among college educated voters, where she won barely 50% of the vote.

To me, this is a stunning change.

And if you look at the Asian American vote, yeah, which is also hard because exit polling, you don't have like tremendous numbers to be riding on.

It broke 58% for Trump.

This is basically I got 180 in terms of where things are.

So are we seeing this demographic realignment and is it a Trump thing?

Is it a border thing.

Is it an economy thing?

And then it'll swing back, you know, if, if, if and when Trump can't kind of close the deal on this, is it just going to change back.

And Democrats are kind of business as usual.

Back to the 2020 map.

D there you all of the above, but end of sho Right.

Let's wrap it.

Oh, I think.

Look, when, when when you're looking at exit polls, the numbers that you're, showing, it's, if I remember correctly, around, Latino turnout is between 12 and 14%.

So that's very small to.

Low for what's real.

To to say this is a realignment.

That's one issue.

The other issue is obviously, since we are professors, each time, it's not a logical issue.

Exit polls targeting minorities have always been very, very complicated because the sampling of voting places is tricky, and especially when you're thinking about, for example, votes an issue in Texas that adds an extra layer of complexity when you're designing a sampling frame like that.

But stop this nerdiness on this issue.

I know I'm going to, but I need another drink of this.

So.

Yes, there seems to be a requirement.

And those that surprises me.

Not necessarily because the Latino vote has never been monophyletic.

Like, never, ever again.

Right.

And, before in 2019 90s, Latinos voted for Republicans.

Yeah.

I have a paper, 2000 and something paper talking about how Latinos are the actual real constituency of the Republican Party.

And that's 20 something years ago.

I make this case on my Rick Perry book.

And this is something that Senator Latka.

And if you told me, she says that these are Republican voters, they are, like, culturally conservative.

They dress like George Strait.

Right?

They love their guns.

Don't take them away.

And they care about things like the economy because they, are invested in their communities and in their families.

I think that's a great point.

And the fact that this went the way it did could be something it's not tangible.

It's not durable.

Right.

But if it is, Democrats are going to have to find some other place to get votes to be competitive because, there's no other way here.

Let me give you another stunning outcome.

And that's that.

Trump both won 18 to 24 year olds by 54%.

Yeah Texas is the second youngest state in the nation behind Utah.

If this continues, then you'll never see a blue Texas.

Absolutely.

That change is problematic for them.

So they've got to find a different way forward.

And so obviously South Texas is maybe not the key, but it's certainly worth noting, that there are a lot of races that were down ballot in the legislature that the Democrats didn't blow.

Right.

They were able to hold the line.

The Republicans are likely to grow their majority by about two seats, which in the grand scheme of things, considering how things worked out statewide, is not that bad.

We talked about a lot of these races, but Representative Lujan, beat a Democratic challenger, Kristen Carranza, in Bexar County.

We saw Representative Placer, though, in my home county of Collin County, a Democrat win, which signals a kind of change in Collin County, too.

So this is a pretty good night for Republicans, but not a great night for Republicans, though Greg Abbott is having a rally this week to promote school choice.

Yeah, he says he's got the numbers.

He probably does.

How are we going to see this outcome manifest in the next legislative session?

Oh, it's going to be fun.

From a political perspective, from what we do, he's going to be very we.

Love good floor fights.

I mean, he's going to.

Be he's going to be very interesting to see how these potential realignments and when we think about the scho why.

Because, if the school voucher strategy changes in terms of, bringing those Republicans, especially from rural areas back to the fall, then I think he will have it.

But they need to have very important tweaks to that approach.

And we'll see if, Governor Abbott is going to say that in the next, rally.

And there may have some explaining to do because school funding is being cut.

People like Representative Dustin Burrows have written public letters to the media saying, here is the reason I think things aren't going well and it's not being persuasive.

So this definitely is going to be a fight Republicans are going to have inside their family.

Let's talk quickly about Harris County.

Turnout was low.

We saw Democrats who normally win by big margins, win by very little Sean tier one of the two year race.

Ed Gonzalez wins a sheriff race.

Yep.

Christian Menifee wins the county attorney's race by just a little bit.

Is this a indication that Harris County is gonna be purple again?

I don't know.

I mean, he's once won an election cycle.

The issue of crime, especially these races.

Right.

Plays a very important role, even though that according to the FBI statistics, crimes has gone down.

But, you know, it's all about perception, crime.

It's perception.

It's about.

And perception.

Perception, perception.

And there was a lot of attention on Republican judges and not a lot of concerns from the Democrats in the county.

So I think the county Democratic Party comes to how they're going to proceed.

And there is.

Absolutely.

But that's going to be a question.

That we talk about.

In our next, episode.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina and I'm Brandon Rottinghaus.

the party keeps up next week.

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