Perry Bacon: Good afternoon. This is the Right Now podcast by The New Republic and I’m the host Perry Bacon. I’m honored to be joined today by Geoffrey Skelley. He’s a great political journalist. We overlapped and worked together and had a great time at FiveThirtyEight a few years ago. He’s now at Decision Desk HQ, doing a lot of data-informed election analysis.
Geoffrey Skelley: Hey, thanks for having me on Perry.
So, start with New Jersey, where Mikie Sherrill is the favorite. Polls have her ahead by five or so. Talk about where the race stands, first of all.
But I think it’s sort of a situation where Sherrill should be winning this election, if you will, in the sense that you’ve got Donald Trump in the White House—he’s not terribly popular in New Jersey. And given the sort of backlash we tend to see in elections after the presidential race Sherrill has a lot of the environmental factors going for her right now.
Yeah, and Democrats have full control of the state government in New Jersey, so Ciattarelli at least has a case to make that Democrats have been doing a poor job in Trenton and that he would shake things up. But I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Sherrill’s allies at the Democratic Governors Association have run an ad, for instance, that said Ciattarelli wants to be ‘Trump in Trenton.’
But I guess it’s also worth noting—and I’ll let you ask something else in a second; I know I’ve been going for a second—Ciattarelli’s in this position in part because he only narrowly lost against Murphy, when Murphy was seeking reelection, by about three percentage points.
Jeffery Skelly: Okay. Can you hear me now?
And given how close he came—and a lot of that’s gonna come down to, and we could talk about this—him sort of maybe capitalizing on some of the gains that Trump made in New Jersey in 2024. But at the same time, Trump’s in the White House, and that’s gonna make it tough for him.
One view that I’ve heard is that maybe Mikie Sherrill is kind of a not-very-exciting candidate. Maybe she’s—you know, the way she won the primary—maybe there are still some African American communities that are not excited about turning out for her. That’s one take that’s sort of more candidate-focused.
But where do you see her? I think the question is: why is she not winning by double digits? And to me, the answer is because the incumbent governor’s not popular—that’s probably 80 percent of it. But I wanted to figure out—what’s your view about that? Is she a “bad candidate?”
I think they have to really do things to pass a certain threshold to truly qualify as bad. But I will say that I think Sherrill’s had some stumbles in this campaign that might say something about her candidacy, or about maybe how much she’s been tested as a candidate since getting elected to the U.S. House.
And so now, in a competitive gubernatorial election, she has found herself facing a bit more in the way of tests—in terms of when you’re in front of a camera, and when you’re dealing with people asking you questions, sometimes tough questions and sometimes not-so-tough questions.
At the same time, you know, she has a very impressive biography—former Naval Academy graduate, served as a helicopter pilot in the Navy. She certainly has lots of things going for her. But I think there are sort of question marks about, like—but what does she actually want to do when she’s governor?
So in that sense, I think it’s—Steve Kornacki said to me the other day on my podcast—people have basically said to me that Sherrill is trying to lose the race by losing the campaign, but she’ll still win the election. And that’s maybe down to some of the fundamentals.
Look, if Donald Trump had lost the 2024 presidential election—if Kamala Harris were president right now—I think Jack Ciattarelli would probably be in a really great position to win this race, because he wouldn’t be answering questions about Trump all the time in the same way. It would be a lot harder, I think, to make that stick as much.
So it’s not all down to Sherrill necessarily struggling.
So, two questions before we leave New Jersey. One is: how is the Mamdani ‘close by’ factor playing out in any way? Or the comparisons—him being more charismatic than her—how’s that playing out? That’s one.
Skelley: You know, with the discussion of Mamdani, I don’t think it’s having a particularly large impact on the New Jersey race.
Bacon: New Jersey is so close by it’s more relevant than in Kansas though.
I think what is potentially a bigger factor is the swings that we saw in 2024. And so the question you asked was, like, was this kind of a one-off thing? I suspect that if you sort of look at what’s going on politically among, in the places that shifted most, particularly to the right in New Jersey—now, most of the state shifted to the right.
And the places that shifted a lot more in New Jersey were, were places that are historically very Democratic, have much larger populations of people of color, working-class, blue-collar communities—denser, more urban areas of the state that have historically been very Democratic.
This is a place that’s like 65% Hispanic. It still voted Democratic by a good margin, but it was not nearly as blue as it had been. And so you saw that a lot in North Jersey in particular, in the 2024 election. And that’s part of the reason why you went from a situation where Joe Biden carried the state by, like, 16 points in 2020 to Kamala Harris only carrying it by six—and that was a 10-point swing in margin.
So, like, there’s a lot of moving parts here, but it’s not a coincidence, I think, that you saw Trump doing better among people of color nationally—especially Latino voters—and then very much so in a lot of communities in New Jersey that, you know, check those boxes, in terms of the makeup and the constituencies there.
In a 2025 gubernatorial election that’s gonna clearly have lower turnout, is Ciattarelli gonna be able to turn out some of those more marginal voters who may have come out and supported Trump but may not show up for a 2025 gubernatorial race?
Like, comparing 2021 and 2024, you know, Trump way back in some places that Ciattarelli did a lot better in. And maybe that’s just ’cause Ciattarelli’s just not as Trumpy—even with Trump’s support, he doesn’t come across to that extent. So MAGA in particular may have kind of a negative appeal in some more affluent suburban areas of New Jersey.
Bacon: Let’s go to Virginia. So Spanberger ahead eight to ten points is what I’ve seen. What do you all have as the average right now?
But I think at the end of the day, it would be very surprising if Spanberger lost. I think that’s sort of where things stand. It’s the likely Democratic race at the top of the ticket.
I mean, Virginia actually—what’s interesting is, with New Jersey shifting to the right—in Virginia, it had about the same margin in 2024, about six percentage points. And think about the 2021 gubernatorial election that Glenn Youngkin, the current Republican incumbent, won.
Considering Youngkin won by about two percentage points in 2021 with Biden in office—and Virginia has had this historical pattern of shifting against the president’s party consistently in every gubernatorial election since, going back to at least 1977—they’ve shifted at least somewhat against the president’s party.
And so I think knowing that Youngkin only won by two points in 2021, knowing that the state went for Kamala Harris by about six percentage points—if it moved at all to the left—it was gonna be really hard for Winsome Earle-Sears, the Republican, to win. And so that, it’s not—none of this is, obviously, about a given candidate.
And then, on top of that, Spanberger has fundraised very impressively, has done all the things she needed to do to put herself in a position to win. And there’s been talk that Earle-Sears is not a particularly, great candidate in terms of her work on the campaign trail. And, you know, again, how much do those things matter?
Bacon: So, lemme drill down here. I guess just watching this from afar, my impression has been that the Democrats have a strong candidate and the Republicans a weak one. But if the margin is six or eight, that’s kind of— I guess if Youngkin were running against Spanberger, Spanberger would be ahead by four, we think.
Skelley: Yeah, it’s interesting. Youngkin, in polling of this race that has asked about his approval or favorability, has tended to be somewhat above water—in net positive territory—even while Trump has polled net negative, uh, on approval or favorability.
At the same time, maybe Spanberger wouldn’t have decided to run. She might have been like, well, I’ll just hang out in my congressional district…
Like, I guess—yeah, I guess—is Spanberger better than the generic Democrat, is what I’m trying to ask? Let me ask you that way.
Then we can talk about the attorney general’s race for a minute if you want to. Yeah, ’cause that’s actually really the most interesting contest now in Virginia. Uh, but Spanberger—all signs point to her sort of leading the ticket in terms of her margin of victory.
So I think the thing to remember with Virginia, though, is that in recent elections—basically since 2009—you’ve almost always seen those three statewide races, the three statewide offices in Virginia, the results run very close together generally.
There he is, seeking reelection, and maybe because he was an incumbent and was outraising Jones, maybe he was always going to run stronger than any of the other Republicans on the ticket.
I mean, besides even the content—what, like, what are you doing, my guy? Very dumb. He’s texting about a hypothetical where he shoots and kills the then Republican speaker of the State House of Delegates. I mean, just, you know, really out-of-bounds kind of stuff. Just very, very off-putting.
And in the aftermath of that, we have seen Miyares lead in the polls in this race. Is it enough for him to win? We’ll see. I think there is definitely a path for Jones to sort of get carried across by a favorable environment for Democrats. If, you know, Spanberger is winning by, like, nine or ten at the top of the ticket, I could see Jones winning by one or two points. That could absolutely happen. There’s just not enough ticket-splitting in this day and age for Miyares to pull it out.
So the attorney general’s race is actually the one that I think people are most closely following because of the Jones texting scandal and the opportunity this has given to Miyares.
What I want to ask you about, though, is the broader picture. I’m having a hard time figuring out where we are, ’cause I don’t think I’ve seen a good analysis about where we are generally. Like, in a normal environment—Trump’s approval is, like, in the low forties—I think the Democrats would be favored to win the House.
Skelley: So right now, the two big stories are California and Texas. And they may roughly cancel out—assuming, I mean, look, it looks like California voters are probably gonna pass Proposition 50. And if they do, Democrats will get the map they wanted, and that will position them to perhaps cancel out the gains that Republicans are gonna make in Texas.
And North Carolina just made a move that will gain them a seat—Republicans one seat there. So at this point, I think Republicans have edged ahead slightly in terms of the net gains they could get from this process. However, I don’t think it’s enough at this point to at all guarantee them continued control of the House.
Like, for instance, that was a little farther afield than I think people expected that to happen, even in a pro-Democratic environment.
Those are the kinds of seats that are gonna be in play in an environment where I do expect Democrats, in terms of the overall environment, to have at least some advantage. We don’t know what that advantage will be yet—but at least some advantage, just like Republicans had at least a small advantage in 2022.
So if Democrats have a small—at least a small—political advantage in the environment in 2026, I would expect Democrats to at least get some of those seats. And they only need three. Now, obviously, that’s gonna change with the redistricting math being incorporated or whatnot, but if you’re talking about a situation where Democrats might be able to win 15 to 20 seats, I think you’re gonna need more to change to really guarantee Republicans a shot at holding on.
Perry Bacon: Okay, interesting. I think we’ll wrap there. That’s a good, uh, because I think that’s where I’m looking, that’s the next thing. If they rewrite the Voting Rights Act, then we’re talking about a lot of seats. Okay. That’s the, that’s a good thing. And, so, Geoffrey Skelley, thanks for joining me.
Skelley: Hey, Perry. Thank you so much for having me. Good to see you.
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