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Matt Katz: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Matt Katz, reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom, filling in for Brian today. On today's show, we're going to fill you in on what's happening with real estate broker fees. The city council held what our guest describes as a tense hearing yesterday on a new bill that would curb the fees for most renters. As you can imagine, landlords and brokers are not on board.

Plus, my colleague, Nancy Solomon, will be here to talk about last night's conversation with New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy. They talked about congestion pricing, and New Jersey transit, government transparency, and plenty more. We've also got our eyes on the Supreme Court this morning. It's an opinion day, and we will talk about any big news from D.C., and we're planning to wrap today's show with a call in for you to share your favorite cheap eats in your neighborhood anywhere in the city. I'm talking really cheap eats. No gatekeeping here, people. Can I get lunch anywhere for $5, $10? We're counting on you to let us know.

It's 70-something degrees in New York this morning, and I was thinking about that because we're headed into summer and it's only going to get warmer, but as soon as things start to cool down, before we know it, it'll be the presidential election. We are now a short 145 days away. Yes, I actually did the math this morning. Since polls show it's a tight race and likely will be right up until the very end, we're going to look at whatever tea leaves we can to try to figure out what's going to happen when the weather gets cool again and the calendar flips to November. Joining us to talk about the election, a short 145 days away, and all things national politics is Aaron Blake, senior political reporter at The Washington Post and writer of The Campaign Moment newsletter, host of The Campaign Moment podcast. Hey, Aaron, welcome back to WNYC.

Aaron Blake: Hey. Thanks for having me, Matt. I can't believe it's only 145 days. It feels like longer than that away, but it really sneaks up on you sometimes.

Matt Katz: How many articles and posts and podcasts do you think you'll be doing between now and then? Probably more than 145, I imagine.

Aaron Blake: I would think so, yes, but I don't even want to think about that at this point.

[laughter]

Matt Katz: You wrote this week, interesting article. I didn't know anything about this. There was a special election in Ohio that didn't get a lot of attention elsewhere, and you pulled apart what it meant. It was a special congressional election. Can you tell us about it and what this might maybe indicate about Trump v. Biden in November?

Aaron Blake: Yes, I should add, it's not just one that probably you and I hadn't been paying attention to. It's one that the national parties had not been paying attention to. It's a very uncompetitive district in Eastern Ohio, Ohio's 6th district. They had a special election there to replace a congressman who left the seat, Bill Johnson. It's such a slanted seat that the national parties didn't play in it. This was a district that went for Donald Trump by 29 points in the 2020 election. What we saw on Tuesday was a much closer race than might have been expected.

There was a time on Tuesday night where the Democrat was leading in the race. That eventually went away, but the ultimate result was far closer than the district suggested it should have been. It was a 10-point win for the Republican nominee. The reason that this is interesting to me is I'm somebody who tracks these special elections over time.

We've seen Democrats see the polling about the 2024 presidential race not looking particularly good for them, but when we've seen voters actually go to the polls in these special elections in off-year elections, some states have elections in 2023. The Ohio abortion referendum that took place last year, a big Wisconsin Supreme Court race that decided the lean of that chamber.

The signs for Democrats have been almost uniformly good when voters are actually voting. That creates a situation in which we're asking ourselves, how much are these polls actually telling us? How much should we rely on this kind of more anecdotal evidence of these actual elections that are taking place? It's a really interesting and kind of fundamental question ahead of the 2024 election because Donald Trump's base, he's much more reliant upon infrequent and casual voters than the Democrats are. Who actually turns out in this election matters greatly. I think races like the Ohio race give us a little bit of a sense for what that could be moving forward.

Matt Katz: The bottom line then is it might be a little bit of a positive sense for the Democrats.

Aaron Blake: Yes, I think if you're Democrats and you look at this Ohio race, you are encouraged, and there's no question you want to be overperforming what you did before in races like this. I think the caveat here is, it was an exceedingly low-turnout race. This had about 60,000 voters, and so by comparison, we had a special election where you are in New York, the 3rd district, where Tom Suozzi won, 170,000 people voted in that race. One-third of the turnout in a district that has roughly the same number of voters. That really reflects that people just weren't interested in this race and we tend to see bigger shifts in races where there's low turnout like that.

Again, this points to the idea that our republicans, our Trump supporters are actually going to turn out if they can't turn out for a race like this. The presidential race is a much bigger deal, so most of them likely will, but if there are casual voters who can't be bothered to turn out to the polls, that matters too.

Matt Katz: You did this analysis this week of some polls about low-information voters and what low-information voters do or don't understand, particularly about the recent indictments. Hunter Biden convicted this week on felony gun charges. President Trump's obviously been convicted, also indicted for other crimes. What is the takeaway there in terms of what low-information voters know and what that means for the election? You just said a couple moments ago that they might favor, that's who Trump might rely on, is those who aren't paying as close attention to things?

Aaron Blake: Yes, that's something that we see in the polls repeatedly. Trump supporters are less likely to have voted in recent elections. It's a reversal of where it used to be, where high turnout generally favored Democrats. Now, high turnout is going to be favoring Republicans because the casual voters are such a key part of Trump's base.

I noticed a poll this week, it was from YouGov, which asked people very basic questions about Donald Trump's criminal cases. It asked people, has Trump been indicted for X, Y, Z? It named things that he actually had been indicted for, but a lot of Americans didn't know that, or at least said that they didn't know that. They actually disputed that he had been indicted for those things. Only about half of people correctly said that he had been indicted for trying to overturn the 2020 election for taking and withholding classified documents.

Republicans especially were about evenly split on whether these indictments actually had taken place. I think it's worth asking the question of how honest people are being about this. Do they regard these indictments as unjustified and perhaps they're registering that discontent with a pollster by saying they don't actually exist? There is a lot of other evidence that people just haven't really engaged with a lot of potentially crucial factors in this election.

There was another finding in that poll that showed one in five voters did not know what the verdict was or got the verdict wrong in the Manhattan case. A majority of independent voters have said that they have heard little or nothing at all about Trump's classified documents indictment. I think we need to understand that a lot of people aren't paying as close attention to these things as you and I are. It doesn't mean that we're ultimately going to see huge shifts in the polls as we get closer to the election, but a lot of the factors that could be decisive for these more low-information and casual voters may not be factored into their votes at this point. That makes the race a little bit more unpredictable, I would say, than maybe we think it is right now.

Matt Katz: All right. I'm going to break in here with a little bit of breaking news from the Supreme Court. This is about the mifepristone, the abortion pill case. The case is called FDA versus Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. It looks like the decision coming from Justice Kavanaugh here. SCOTUSblog says, "The court holds that the plaintiffs lack illegal right to challenge the FDA's actions regarding the regulation of mifepristone." This is the drug used in the medical abortion. It is unanimous. Thomas has a concurring opinion. "Under Article 3 of the Constitution, a plaintiff's desire to make a drug less available for others does not establish standing to sue, nor do the plaintiff's other standing theories suffice," Kavanaugh writes.

From what I understand, the drug will stay legal. That's what that means. Aaron, I know I'm just dropping this on you now, but curious to see if you have any reaction to that, what that might mean politically and otherwise. I'm also going to take a moment to ask our callers to chime in, talk about this decision, or about the politics of the moment. We know that listeners to this show are not low-information voters, as we were just talking about, but maybe there's something with these indictments, with the terms of the President's son or Trump's indictment, that might make you-- indictments, I should say-- that might make voters change their mind in November.

If there's any callers out there that are a little wishy-washy on who they're going to pick, very curious to hear from you. Maybe you're one of these undecided voters out there who will decide this election, and maybe these indictments make you more likely to vote for your favorite candidate, or maybe you have a father-in-law in a swing state. What's he thinking right now? Give us a call or text us at 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. We're talking to Aaron Blake from The Washington Post. Aaron, your take on this Supreme Court decision. I know I just dropped it on you right now.

Aaron Blake: No, it's okay. I think that this was an outcome that a lot of people suggested could be the outcome. The idea that the Supreme Court would say that those who were suing in this case don't have standing is something that was very much on the table when this case went to the Supreme Court.

I'd be curious to see, and obviously, I haven't seen the actual opinion and the concurrence from Justice Thomas, how much do they actually engage with the merits of potentially banning a pill like this. Putting this in the realm of the plaintiffs don't have standing allows you to punt on the broader issues of whether this pill should be legal. They don't have to contend with that as much. That's something that I'll be diving into when I get the chance to actually see the opinion.

Matt Katz: Then that question might have some implications for November. Obviously, abortion is going to be the biggest issue that, from what I understand, Biden and the Democrats are going to be bringing up. How could this specific decision potentially play in November?

Aaron Blake: I think if the Supreme Court had gone in a different direction and restricted the pill or banned the pill, which I don't think was ever viewed as a likely outcome here, but certainly on the table, you never know, if that had happened, that would have had a massive potential impact on the election.

Democrats have used the abortion issue to great effect, and medication abortion is something that's even more a consensus issue in this country. Had the Supreme Court gone there two years after overturning Roe v. Wade, that would have been a very significant thing. The fact that they didn't, I think, probably takes this off the table a little bit as an issue, but certainly, the fact that certain elements of the conservative movement are pushing issues like this is something that Democrats have talked about and will continue to talk about.

Matt Katz: This is something that, obviously, Democrats will cheer this decision, even though maybe it wasn't great for them politically. They could have used this politically, if it had gone the other way. I'm curious, I was listening to your most recent episode of The Campaign Moment podcast about the Trump VP reality show. It was great. Loved how you went through all these potential candidates.

What struck me, what I was left with was amazement that several of the eight potential running mates for Trump, it seemed like most of them had once been Trump critics, people who ran against him, people who had criticized him in the past, but flipped. It seems to me that Trump values loyalty and it's hard for me to imagine that he's going to pick someone who has not been totally loyal to him through the years. Am I wrong about that? Will he overlook that if somebody is now loyal to him, even if they've said some critical stuff about him in yesteryear and maybe it won't matter? What do you make of that?

Aaron Blake: It's a really interesting question. I think that the answer is what you alluded to initially, which was that most of these candidates have criticized him before, but a lot of Republicans have done that. There was a time when Republicans were a lot more comfortable speaking out against Trump, not just in the 2016 election, but the years that followed. That's fallen away over time. I think the key issue here is Trump is somebody who has proven that he is willing to forgive, provided you do enough to earn that forgiveness, if you tow his line to an extent that he deems it to be sufficient for him.

Somebody like J.D. Vance, the Ohio senator who's one of the eight names on this list, was a pretty strong Trump critic during the 2016 election. He went on CNN to talk about his book The Hillbilly Elegy and said some pretty critical things of Donald Trump. What we've seen is years of him going in a different direction. When he ran for the Ohio Senate in 2022, he was on board with the election denialism. He was on board with the MAGA populism that we see from Trump.

We've also seen Marco Rubio in recent months, especially, really toe those lines. Elise Stefanik, the congresswoman from New York, was once a moderate Republican when she was elected, has undergone a complete transformation, basically. I think it's a matter of degrees, how recent has your Trump criticism been and how far have you gone in the other direction since then.

I think picking Nikki Haley a few months after she said what she did during the Republican primaries of 2024 is a difficult thing. Even picking Ron DeSantis would be difficult given that he ran against Trump very recently. Some of these other candidates have a more of a track record of shifting towards Trump. I think the fact that it's really a question of pragmatism versus loyalty, and Trump does need to be somewhat pragmatic with this, but that involves picking people who probably weren't initially on his side back in 2016.

Matt Katz: When do we expect this Trump reality show finale to happen and find out who the VP candidate really will be?

Aaron Blake: I would expect him to draw this out until the convention, which is in a little bit over a month. That's the deadline, of course. You need to nominate the vice presidential candidate at that point. Trump is somebody who likes this speculation that we're doing right now, and likes to see people going on TV, and lobbying for the job, and saying the right things. I can't imagine that he would make this pick with a few weeks to spare knowing that he could really draw this out for another couple of weeks and draw more eyeballs to the convention when he actually does pick this person. I think that's a pretty simple decision for a candidate like him to make it close to that convention, if not at the convention.

Matt Katz: Let's circle back to the SCOTUS decision and go to the phone lines. We have some people calling in regarding the Supreme Court decision that just came through on mifepristone. Rene in Manhattan. Hey, Renee. Thanks for calling in.

Renee: Hi. My pleasure. Thank you for taking the call. I'm a former FDA lawyer, as well as a choice proponent. I've shepherded so many drugs into approvable status. All I can say is that our system of approval is the envy of the world. Most of the world's nations copy our approval and our process. Many nations first ask when you try to get your drug through in the EU or in Australia or many Western countries, they'll say, "Well, what was the US approval?" I was so worried that mifepristone would not only limit choice and limit male abortions but would also result in upending of our entire FDA structure and system, and so thank God.

Matt Katz: That's really interesting, Renee. Thanks for that perspective. What do you mean upending in that if the rest of the world would disconnect from the decisions that our FDA makes regarding drugs and medication?

Renee: Well, the manner in which mifepristone was challenged, and the questioning of its approval process would result in a flood of such challenges and drug approval issues. Just as an example, say, you have a drug that's approved for chemotherapy for, let's say, thyroid cancer, and that drug had such side effects that it caused heart attacks in individuals who could then sue to take it off the market despite the fact that the side effects are known. Such a suit right now would not be entertained. If you could show that legal consent was obtained, et cetera, et cetera, the warning box was flagged, and the doctors-- it would not be entertained. Had this lawsuit been upheld or the standing of the plaintiffs been upheld, that could be a result.

Matt Katz: Got it. Wow. Thank you very much for the--

Renee: Our entire drug approval process would've been upended.

Matt Katz: That's a fascinating perspective. We love crowdsourcing these perspectives here on The Brian Lehrer Show. Thank you very much for calling in, Renee. That's an interesting take, right? Aaron, I don't think I understood the larger implications, and we're going to dig in more with that and talk more about these decisions in the coming days, but it is really remarkable. We just hear the abortion medication is legalized, but there's a lot of other stuff going on behind the scenes there. I want to get back to-- yes, go ahead, Aaron.

Aaron Blake: I was just going to say, I think it's an important thing that Renee brought up here. I think my mode is certainly to look at the politics of these things because that's my job, but a lot like the Trump immunity case, this has implications beyond the immediate campaign. The Trump immunity case is potentially setting the guardrails for a future Trump presidency, so it matters for his legal prosecution and the 2024 campaign, but the degree to which the court might insulate a president matters moving forward as well.

In this case, it would have been historic for the Supreme Court to basically set the precedent for the courts to be overturning the authorization of a drug even beyond the specific drug that's involved here. The implications for what the Supreme Court views as its mandate and how powerful it's going to inject itself into some of these issues, that was also extremely important here. I'm glad that Renee brought that up because that's a significant factor as well.

Matt Katz: A unanimous decision too, that gives you some sense that the Supreme Court is going by the book and not necessarily putting their finger in the air in terms of the political winds. Have those been a little bit less common these days, the unanimous opinion?

Aaron Blake: Yes. I think on a decision like this, this is something the Supreme Court likes to be unanimous on because a decision the other way would've kind of rocked the country in a very significant way. Medication abortion is the prevailing method that is used right now. More than half of abortions are conducted in this manner.

The Supreme Court, these aren't politicians that are on the bench, but they do tend to do things in a way that has public perception in mind. If they can get to be unanimous on an issue like this, they like to do that, and perhaps that's why we saw this opinion focus on the standing issue rather than other issues. Yes, I think that is significant that this was kind of a no-brainer. I also think it focuses on the district judge who initially made this decision in favor of the plaintiffs. It really kind of casts a shadow on them because the decision that they made was very controversial from the start. The reasoning behind it was suspect according to a lot of legal experts.

Matt Katz: Thanks for putting on a SCOTUS analysis hat for us, Aaron. I know your bailiwick is politics, so we appreciate it. Want to go back to politics and the political perceptions of these two men running for president, both older men, as we all know. You wrote this week that while polls show there's more concern about Biden's age than Trump's, and Biden is a little bit older, the better comparison to understand where voters stand might be Biden's mental fitness versus Trump's mental stability. Can you explain the difference and how we should be thinking about this in these terms?

Aaron Blake: Yes. I've been a little frustrated by how we poll this issue because the question we often see is asking about age, asking about mental health, asking about sharpness, things like that. I do think one of the things that we saw last week after The Wall Street Journal did a story about how Biden is perceived in private meetings and him seemingly having lost a step according to their reporting, the pushback on this from the left has always been, why aren't we paying attention to these bizarre rants that we see from Donald Trump? He clearly has issues of his own. Why isn't that being covered?

I think part of the reason that we haven't had a good comparison is that the issues with both of these men are different. I think President Biden projects as being elderly and the way he walks around, things like that, his stilted public comments. Trump is a different thing. It's the rants, it's things like that. When he was president, the question wasn't, is Donald Trump mentally sharp? It was, is Donald Trump mentally stable? We had polling back then that showed half of voters thought that he wasn't stable. That was a pretty stunning finding that half of the electorate saying that the President of the United States was not a stable human being.

I sought to isolate that comparison and look a little bit closer than the broad questions about mental health. What I found was that if you distill this down into decision-making and competency, it's less of a gap between the two men. Trump leads by a lot when it comes to "mental and physical health", but when you talk about being competent and effective, it's a smaller gap. When you talk about ability to handle a crisis, the moment in which a decision-making process becomes the most important, it's actually a very close matchup between the two.

I think the age question certainly looms very large for President Biden, I don't think that we should discount that it's a major factor for voters, but when it comes down to it and decisions are being made, it's not as much of an advantage for Trump as it might otherwise be. I should add, it's still an advantage that Trump did not have during the 2020 election, these numbers have all shifted towards him, but it's not as easy of a call in the minds of Americans as we might see on the surface here.

Matt Katz: Listeners, is mental fitness, mental acuity, age, indictments, are all of these things factoring into maybe you having questions about your preferred candidates and maybe going to the other side? Are you thinking about this election in those terms? Give us a buzz. We're at 212-433-9692. You can also text us there, 212-433-WNYC. We're talking to Aaron Blake from The Washington Post. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be back with Aaron and your calls in a moment.

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You are listening to The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Matt Katz, filling in for Brian today, and my guest is Aaron Blake. He's a senior political reporter at The Washington Post, author of The Campaign Moment newsletter, host of the podcast of the same name. Listeners, if you want to read Aaron's writing, go to washingtonpost.com/newsletters to sign up for his new newsletter.

We got a text just came in during the break, Aaron, from a listener. "I know two low-information voters who are always on their phones, what are they scrolling? Again, I ask, how are dems and reliable media sources getting quality information out?" That's interesting. Someone's always on their phone, they're always scrolling, and they seem to know no actual factual information about what's going on in the country.

You and I work in media, we know the media environment is changing dramatically, but it seems since the last election, people are getting information differently and from a wider range of sources. Is this a challenge for one party more than the other party, getting factual, reliable information to American voters?

Aaron Blake: Yes. Trust me, if I could get people to stop scrolling Twitter and Facebook and get their news from WNYC and The Washington Post, I would do that, and not just for the business model, which would be helpful, but it is in an increasing problem in American politics, misinformation is, and we do see it more prevalent on the right. The low information voters polls that I talked about in my piece, the Republicans were much more likely to wrongly believe Trump hadn't been indicted. Republicans were much more likely to believe that certain facts about those indictments didn't have that information right.

For example, in the classified documents case, we've seen polls with half or more of Republicans who don't think that Trump even had classified documents in his possession, which is just objectively not true. We had the Mar-a-Lago search. It's in court filings. If you don't believe that, you have to believe that those documents are planted, which is not true. I do think, again, something I referenced earlier is, are people being totally honest with pollsters? Are they just lodging a protest here by saying things that aren't true because they don't want them to be true?

I don't think we should discount that they are either not getting this information because they are not engaging with traditional news sources, or they're getting their news from outlets that don't cover these things or cover them in a slanted way. This is why we've seen a number of conspiracy theories take off on the right in recent years.

There was a survey last week that asked if people believed that President Biden was behind Donald Trump's indictment in Manhattan, which there is no evidence for that. People have drawn highly circumstantial cases for that, but there's no actual evidence for that. 43% of Americans believe that. 80% of Republicans believe that this thing is far from proven and has been denied not just by Attorney General Merrick Garland, but by a former Trump lawyer, Joe Tacopina, recently.

It's a problem that these things are being seeded and being embraced by people. We, as a more traditional media, have not figured out a way to combat that. It's part of our responsibility to see how people are interacting with the information that we're putting out there. When people have the wrong information, that's a bad thing. If they're not reading you, it's hard to dissuade them from believing those things. It's a very difficult thing that looms large over our elections certainly.

Matt Katz: Yes, for sure. The trend is only going more in that direction of people getting their information from a wide variety of sources. Then for the reliable news outlets to grab a hold of those eyeballs, so to speak, and hold onto them, it's getting harder and harder and more challenging. Let's go back to the phones. Marvin in Brooklyn. Hey, Marvin, thanks for calling in.

Marvin: Thank you for taking my call. I always enjoy reading Aaron Blake's articles in The Washington Post. I have two comments and-

Aaron Blake: Thank you, Marvin.

Marvin: -question. One is in terms of talking about Trump's fitness, his members of his own cabinet reputedly had wanted to talked about invoking the 25th Amendment because they were so concerned about his instability. Secondly, my other question is, I don't hear much analysis or read much analysis about what's happening with older voters. All kinds of other demographics are discussed, but we know that older voters are the most reliable voters. The small indications we have is that there's been a shift of older voters towards the President, President Biden, because of his action on prescription drugs and defense of Medicare, et cetera. I'm wondering if Mr. Blake can add some more insight into what we know about how older voters are thinking about the coming election. I appreciate your call.

Matt Katz: Thank you, Marvin. Thanks for calling in. Aaron, take both of those. First, we'll fact-check on the potential, the cabinet members threatening to invoke the 25th Amendment over Trump's mental acuity while he was in office, and then what the polls show about older voters.

Aaron Blake: Yes. On the first one, this is something that you are going to see Democrats talk more about as we get closer to the election. Relatively few of Donald Trump's cabinet members have endorsed his 2024 campaign. A lot of them have not. Some of them resigned after January 6th. We have John Kelly out there, his former chief of staff saying very critical things. Former House Speaker Paul Ryan was on TV this week basically saying Trump is unfit for office.

Those are going to be character witnesses and testimonials that are going to feature extensively in Democrats' advertising as we get closer to the election. It's a compelling argument that the people who have worked closely with Donald Trump are not on board with him being in power. Again, I think a big question is how many of them are going to do what Paul Ryan did and actually go on TV and drive this message?

It's not a fun thing to do because you get half the country turning against you, and Trump is going to attack you. A lot of them don't want to do that, but I think it's a major X factor in this election. As for older voters, it is true that we don't focus as much on them. A reason for that is because we've seen bigger swings relative to what we usually see with other demographics. Black voters, Hispanic voters trending towards Republicans, young voters not being as on board with Democrats as we usually see, or rather not as onboard with President Biden as we usually see.

We have, in recent years, seen a more subtle shift of older voters towards the Democratic Party. We should not discount that because, as Marvin noted, these are the most reliable voters. This is part of the reason why President Biden's base is full of more reliable voters because it trends towards older voters. I don't think that we should lose sight of that. It's not something that we focus on as much because we haven't seen the bigger shifts that we've seen in some of these other demographics.

Matt Katz: Aaron, I was curious, we're talking about the presidential race, but what about what's going on with the Senate? I was looking at the RealClearPolitics. They compile the polls and whatnot, and there's nine toss-up states for Republican or Democratic control. Those nine states, several of them are presidential swing states, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan.

I have this theory, tell me if I'm wrong, that however the presidential election goes this time around will also determine control of the Senate. If you have Trump winning these states, then he wins the presidency, and then he also, therefore, has the coattails that allow the Republican Senate candidates to win. Am I right about that? Does a Trump White House come with a Republican Congress, does a Biden re-election come with a Democratic Congress, or is that way too simple and I'm thinking about it way too simplistically?

Aaron Blake: Sure. I think it is exceedingly unlikely that we would see Donald Trump win, but Democrats hold onto the Senate. The map is very difficult for Democrats. A lot of these seats are in red-leaning states. A lot of the close races are in red-leaning states. West Virginia is a Democratic-held seat where Joe Manchin is retiring. That's basically gone. There is no real hope for Democrats holding that. That brings you already to basically a 50-50 tie.

Trump winning, Democrats holding the Senate, very unlikely. There is a chance that we could have Biden winning the presidential race, but Republicans taking over the Senate just because of how the map looks, the given seats that are up, the incumbents who are in those seats. One thing that's really interesting about this to me is that we see in these surveys, and again, you can take polls with a grain of salt, but one thing that we see consistently in these surveys is that these Democratic Senate candidates perform better than President Biden does.

Voters are prepared to vote Democratic, but not necessarily for President Biden. I think if you're Biden, you might take some heart in that, you say, "These are voters that are available to me and that I can win over because they clearly are willing to vote for Democrats." I think that's a significant factor. It also suggests that maybe Democrats are going to be a little bit harder to dislodge from their Senate majority than we think or we thought going into this cycle because of that very tough map.

It's also just a hugely important question because if Trump wins the presidency, we could see Supreme Court vacancies. Is Justice Thomas going to retire? Is Sam Alito going to retire? The balance of power in the Senate has enormous control over who can take those seats. I think there's going to be a ton of money dumped into these Senate races because it's so close, because it's on a knife's edge, and we shouldn't lose sight of that battle as well.

Matt Katz: We've been talking so much about polls and surveys and whatnot, and I want to take a caller who's asking about polls. Theresa in Harlem. Hi, Theresa. Are you still there, Theresa? Theresa wanted to ask Aaron who's being polled. She doesn't know. She says she didn't know anybody who's ever been polled. So much of our analysis this morning is based on these polls and what they tell us and what's going to happen and Senate race and demographics, presidential election. What should we be thinking about polls in 2024?

Aaron Blake: Yes, I'll take on the role of poll defender here. I rely on them a lot in my coverage because I think it's important to understand how the American people feel. If you're looking at polls and expecting them to be determined-- if you predict the winner of a race, you're often going to be disappointed. A poll can be off by one, two, three points, which is a very accurate poll, but if that one, two, three points swings the race the other way, it'll look like that poll was extremely shoddy.

As to the question of-- but I should add. Just because it is off by a couple points, that's in the margin of error. We should understand what these margins of errors are. The fact that a poll shows Biden leading by two, a Trump lead by two is within the margin of error in that poll, so it's conceivable that what that poll is actually showing is a Trump lead.

We should also understand that polls are valuable because if you look at them more broadly, they take the temperature of the nation. If you look at an issue like the abortion pill, a poll shows that 80% of people support-- it's not 80%, but 65%, 70% of people support the availability of mifepristone. Whether it's actually 66% or 72% or it's off by a few points, you're still getting a picture of where the American people are with a relatively good degree of certainty.

As for people you know not having been polled, these are small sample sizes. You are seeing hundreds of people polled or maybe thousands if it's an online poll, which is a very small section of the country. Pollsters are in the business of modeling the broader electorate. You look at who is responding to your polls and you try to distill a sample that is broadly representative of what the electorate is going to look like or what the country looks like.

Certain polls are better at that than others, but I don't think we should kind of throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to that because these samples are so small. You really need to look at polls holistically. Iif you ought to see one poll result that surprises you or that you think is interesting, look for another poll that asks a similar question to see if it shows the same thing. That's what I do a lot in my work, is I look at not just that one poll but at multiple polls and see if they're trending in the same direction, and then you apply the context and the necessary caveats, and you try to draw conclusions based upon that.

Matt Katz: Thank you for that explanation. I'll just add that without polls, what would we even talk about until November? It's a good fodder for conversation as well. My guest has been Aaron Blake, senior political reporter and author of The Campaign Moment newsletter for The Washington Post. If you want to read Aaron's newsletter, and you do, go to washingtonpost.com/newsletters to sign up. Aaron, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for talking about the SCOTUS decision and all the rest of this. Really appreciate it.

Aaron Blake: Thank you. I really enjoyed the chat.

 

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