The following is a lightly edited transcript of the September 21 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
A new poll came out that offered a striking finding. The Democratic candidate has a real lead in the Senate race in Alaska. One of the pollsters behind that survey is Donald Trump’s pollster. A quality poll like this one, putting Democrats ahead in Alaska, suggests a Democratic Senate takeover has become a real possibility. Republican panic is becoming palpable in a series of new leaks, with one Republican saying the midterms will be a bloodbath. There’s still a long way to go, though. The Senate is very, very tough, and a lot can go wrong.
So we’re lucky to be talking about all this today with the Democratic pollster on that Alaska survey, John Anzalone. John, thank you so much for coming on.
John Anzalone: Thanks for having me, Greg.
Sargent: OK, so your new poll is with Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio. It’s for AARP. It’s a very good poll, and you find Democrat Mary Peltola leading GOP Senator Dan Sullivan by 46 percent to 41 percent.
Then, after ranked-choice processes run through, Peltola is up 53 to 47. John, you rarely get quality polling out of Alaska. So this is quite something. Can you tell us what struck you about what you found on the head-to-head?
Anzalone: There’s a couple things going on. First off is that, you know, Mary Peltola is a really good candidate. If you talk to people in Alaska, one of the big things about her candidacy is that they believe that she is an Alaskan, and her Alaska kind of defines her.
But what we see in the internals, for example—we see this all across the country, we just came out of the field, for example, in Texas—we see this same dynamic where, one, Mary is consolidating Democrats at a higher rate than Dan Sullivan. But the real story is with independents. She leads 58 percent to 26 percent. That’s a 32-point margin.
Peltola has a 60 percent favorable with independents, is plus 30 in the favorable, not favorable. Sullivan, again, just underwater with independents, because independents right now have left Republicans. And so Sullivan’s favorable among independents is at 26 percent, 53 percent unfavorable.
So his rating is underwater by 27 percentage points with independents. So that kind of becomes the whole story there, is what’s happening with independents.
Sargent: Well, I’ve got to think that you’re not going to see something like this with independents, this kind of Republican collapse, without Donald Trump. Trump is underwater in Alaska in your poll, at 45 percent approve to 53 percent disapprove. That’s striking. Trump won Alaska in 2024 by 54 to 41. That’s a 13-point spread. He’s now eight points underwater. That’s a big swing.
But what I saw in there is that Donald Trump in Alaska—again, a state he won by double digits—is thirty-eight points underwater with independents. I mean, that’s just crazy stuff. Let me ask you, though, John: you don’t get a Republican collapse with independents without Trump collapsing among independents. That’s what’s driving this, right?
Anzalone: Well, I think there’s two things. Absolutely correct. What’s stunning is that Trump’s disapproval is minus 38 with independents. The Democratic Party has terrible imaging; in this state, it’s underwater by 14 points. But the other thing is, the Republican Party’s image has collapsed from January, right? It’s minus seven here, not as bad as Democrats. But again, when you take a look at independents, the Democratic Party net favorable is only minus one. The Republican Party image is underwater by 34, even though statewide they have a better image—there’s more Republicans, et cetera, et cetera.
So it is a combination of Trump and the Republican Party writ large. He without a doubt has caused this problem. You’ve got the combination of tariffs and the Iran war, either increasing gasoline prices or grocery prices or utility prices, et cetera. This is expectations not being met. They thought he was the economy president. They anticipated that he would fix the economy and make it roar. And now they’re seeing gas prices at 4.33. They’re seeing diesel at six something. They’re seeing ground beef almost—well about six dollars.
If you get in and talk to real people, they are struggling. And it’s not just a matter of that they are struggling—they don’t see a way out. And that’s where you get in real trouble, is, you know, how are they looking not only at the present, but the future? And that’s caused the Republicans a problem.
Democrats don’t have a great branding. Like, there’s not a whole lot of positive things that people say about Democrats. And so we’re winning when they’re losing, and they’re losing spectacularly on just about every diagnostic.
Sargent: Well, we are getting more signs of Republican panic. Republicans leaked to the Times that they’re quietly considering diverting resources away from the Georgia Senate race, which may mean they think Jon Ossoff’s win might be unstoppable at this point.
Another GOP pollster from Florida leaked to Axios, saying the party is just bleeding Hispanics. This is quite a quote from this pollster: “The support is just evaporating, the economy sucks, and ICE is just out of control.” That’s what’s driving Hispanics away in huge numbers.
And another GOP consultant on a lot of top races literally sent a turd emoji to a HuffPost reporter who asked about how the polling is looking.
Anzalone: When it’s a really good Republican year, you see a lot of Republican polls being released publicly, right? And when it’s a good Democratic year, you see a lot of Democratic polls released publicly. That’s just kind of how you do it, right? And you don’t see a lot of Republican polls being released right now.
And, you know, when they’re doing it, they’re in Trump-plus states, and they’re releasing it just to show that it’s closer, it’s within the margin of error.
Sargent: Well, you mentioned your poll of Texas, which I want to talk about for a sec. Just to remind people, you found James Talarico leading Ken Paxton by 48 percent to 44 percent. This is the AARP poll. But here again, you found Trump’s approval at 43 percent to 54 percent disapproving.
Anzalone: Fifty-four percent. Yeah.
Sargent: Yeah, that’s in Texas—43 to 54 in Texas. And you have him thirty-three points underwater with independents again in Texas. I mean, I’ve been saying on this show that Trump’s collapse among independents is, like, an undercovered story. John, why is Donald Trump 33 points underwater among independents in Texas?
Anzalone: Again, I think it’s about expectations. They elected this guy to be the economy president, and it was his biggest strength, and now it’s his biggest weakness. And, you know, they’re hurting. People are struggling. I mean, Texas is a great example.
Again, you were talking about some Republican operatives—James Talarico is getting 60 percent of the Hispanic vote, right? And this was a place where Trump did really well with Latinos, so well that the legislature redid the congressional maps to have more Hispanic kind of Republican districts. That’s going to bite them in the ass, right?
I mean, Latino voters are persuadable voters, and they’re not going to be beholden to one party or the next. And right now they’re with Democrats. Again, young people and Latino voters are coming home, right? There’s good consolidation. African American voters, good consolidation.
I think it’s taken a long time for guys like you and me to believe Texas is real. And it took me until mid-September. Texas is real. It took me a long time to get there. And one of the big reasons I think that it’s real is candidate quality, right? You just get a feeling that Paxton is such a bad candidate and has so many negatives on him on the corruption side, people get a bad feeling about him.
Sargent: Yeah, he’s just a nasty fucker, let’s face it.
Anzalone: That money is not going to matter, right? And James Talarico is just so unique and he’s so different. And he can sit there—
Sargent: Different. That’s the key, John.
Anzalone: Well, he’s, you know, as a Christian, he’s something new.
Sargent: He’s something new. And I want to ask you about Talarico for a sec, because in your polling, the AARP polling of Texas, you find the Democratic Party really in the toilet, right? Which isn’t surprising, because it’s Texas.
But Talarico seems to be running well ahead of the party, right? Why is that? And let me ask you this too: they’re going really heavy with the anti-trans attacks. Are those not working? And why not? And why is Talarico running so far ahead of the party?
Anzalone: You know, let me tell you what. I have a couple theories. One is just Paxton—they just don’t like Paxton.
Two, you know, you do get a feeling that the trans issue has just run its course, right? I mean, it was one thing with Kamala Harris, because it was her own words. She was sitting there in an interview talking about supporting federal funding for prisoners getting trans surgery, all that type of stuff. And so, one, I think voters’ bullshit meter is really high, and they don’t necessarily believe all of it.
But the other thing is that this is not an important issue to them. Like, they are worried about the cost of gasoline and ground beef and what it costs to get school supplies to send their kids to school. They’re concerned about the fact that health care is so expensive and insurance companies deny claims at a high rate. They’re concerned about the fact that groceries are so expensive and everything in their life is expensive. They’ll never be able to buy a home.
And so, quite frankly, the trans issues just seem small to them, right? And it’s just—I’m not saying that it won’t work in some places against some people. It depends on how you’re actually doing the negative. But I’ve got to tell you, in Texas, against a Christian—and everyone knows his faith, that he can talk about his faith—[I doubt] that it’s really going to work in any way.
Sargent: Well, OK, let’s talk about some of these other outer-tier races. Do you take any of them seriously? Do you take Nebraska seriously? Do you take Kansas seriously? Then of course you’ve got things like South Carolina, where there’s a very good candidate, but man, does that seem like an unlikely one? If you’re going to get a surprise somewhere—and you often do get surprises out of nowhere—it’s in an environment like this one.
This is where you’re going to get a surprise, with independents turning against the president by such dramatic numbers and Trump collapsing so badly and Republicans unsure what to do about it. If you’re going to get a surprise, it’s in this kind of situation. Are we going to get a surprise? What do you think?
Anzalone: Well, listen, clearly we don’t know, but where we get a surprise is where there’s a quality candidate and they’re different. Like this Kansas Democratic Senate—like, you’ve seen the debate clips, right? And, you know, I mean, he’s just really good. And you take a look at Osborn, who—Ricketts has one line, which is calling Dan Osborn a Democrat, right? And that may work at the end of the day. But the reality is, both of those races are close. And so it is causing Republicans agita. It means that they have to move resources.
Listen, right now the Senate Leadership Fund and the Republican National Committee and MAGA Inc. are making decisions. They’ve pulled out of Georgia. They’ve got Collins. Then they’ve got to decide whether they’re going to pull money in North Carolina, right? You’ve seen how much money they’re putting in Michigan, right? And in Iowa. And right now, Ohio is a friggin’ rescue mission.
And you remember this, when Tim Ryan was leading JD Vance in that U.S. Senate race and he was doing it all on his own. And then the Republicans had to come in and put in, what, forty or sixty million dollars for JD Vance to win this, where Ryan had no help from the Democrats.
Well, right now, Sherrod Brown probably has more money spent for him in the Democratic community, in the independent expenditure world. And it is a rescue mission by the Republican Party and MAGA Inc., et cetera, to go in there and try to pull this thing out.
Sargent: OK, well, so let me ask you this, then, John. What keeps you up at night? How does this not come together? What can still go wrong here? These races are all extremely close. You’re going to get outspent, I think, by a few hundred million dollars at the end of the day.
Anzalone: Yeah, I think there’s three things. I think that, listen, the Democratic Party image is in shit, and you’re probably going to see most of October more about these candidates being part of the Democratic Party and going up and voting for—so I think that they will turn on that and kind of move away from some of the negatives that they’re trying to do on this, that, or the other thing, right?
The second is money. I mean, money’s going to matter in some races. There’s just no doubt about it.
And the third that keeps me up is the stuff you don’t see. In 2024, you know, the Musk field operations in places like Pennsylvania really had an impact. The people that they had doing that—they had Phil Cox, who is an absolute brilliant Republican operative. I remember getting kind of reports from the Harris team, and Pennsylvania, we got all this stuff going on, we never see the Trump people.
Well, the reality is that Musk operation that was being run by Phil Cox was doing real work and actually had an impact. So there’s stuff going on out there in these battleground states that we don’t see, to try to move up the motivation level and get Republicans out—that we see in our polling right now that there’s low motivation.
So you could see that move up. You could see these operations actually work. So I think that’s really it. You know, I mean, it’s without a doubt the money, and it’s the operations that we really don’t see.
Sargent: So John, have Democrats learned from what happened in 2024? You pointed out—and I was one of them too, who was totally shocked by Elon Musk’s thing working. I didn’t expect any of that to happen. Are Democrats paying the right amount of attention to some of this more under-the-radar stuff that Musk is doing? Are Democrats focused on it?
Anzalone: Listen, here’s what you hope is happening. Like, you just saw Jon Ossoff transfer three million dollars into the coordinated campaign. Well, that’s all for infrastructure. That’s all for field operations. You know, probably again to help maybe Keisha Lance Bottoms to get that African American vote out in Fulton, DeKalb, Clayton, et cetera. And, you know, clearly in North Carolina, Roy Cooper, who’s on his own—he doesn’t have a presidential, he doesn’t have a governor, and so that whole field operation he has to create himself.
But he did it in eight years as governor. And so, you know, I don’t really know each place, who has a strong field operation, who doesn’t. But the fact is that we’ve got to do some real work on the ground.
Sargent: If there’s a path, what do you think is the most likely path to the Democratic majority? What are the races that they’re going to win?
Anzalone: Well, I think we’re going to win Maine, right? And I think we’re going to win North Carolina. I’m the pollster, so full disclosure there. And then listen, we would be happy with fifty-fifty, even though that’s not what we want. But I actually believe that you then go to Alaska. I think she’s a unique candidate that truly fits that state.
Sargent: OK, that’s three.
Anzalone: And that’s three. And I think people will think I’m crazy, but I’m really bought in on Texas. And while Ohio is—Ohio is thirteen points, too, right? Ten, eleven, twelve, something like that. I think that race is still, you know—I think there’s going to be so much money in that race that we should be looking at it in two weeks, three weeks, et cetera. I think that’s more of a week-by-week. I just have this feeling that Paxton is so soiled that there may be no coming back.
Sargent: So you think Texas is more likely than Ohio?
Anzalone: People would think I was crazy saying that, because, sure [Sherrod Brown has] been up. But what I like about Texas is that [Talarico] doesn’t have to get fifty-plus-one. I think the libertarian’s going to do real work for him. There’s going to be so much money in Ohio—that’s the one place where it actually may be impacted.
And I think with the vice president being from Ohio, that is going to be the number one race in the country, and then followed by Michigan, because they feel that there’s an opportunity because of Abdul El-Sayed.
Sargent: Can Michigan and Maine hold?
Anzalone: Maine can hold. I think we’re winning. I think we’re going to win Maine. I feel very good about Maine. I think we all feel nervous about Michigan. And I think we’ll all feel nervous about Michigan until election night. And we all may be surprised that we didn’t have anything to worry about. We just don’t know yet.
Sargent: John Anzalone, the way you describe it, it sure seems like there’s a path. Thanks so much for coming on with us today.
Anzalone: Thanks for the time. Good talking with you, Greg.
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