STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Kyle Kondik was listening with us. He's with the University of Virginia Center for Politics and managing editor for Sabato's Crystal Ball, which is a nonpartisan newsletter on campaigns and elections. Welcome back.
KYLE KONDIK: Thanks for having me.
INSKEEP: We have been spending part of this morning trying to slice and dice the different parts of the electorate, the Black vote, the Latino vote, the rural vote and so forth. But at some level, it hardly seems worth doing when everybody moved in the same direction.
KONDIK: Yeah. I mean, it was wild. And also, some of the groups that we saw where Donald Trump, you know, performed the best with relative to, you know, past Republican performance, they just zoomed the other way - your Latino voters, younger voters. And this - tonight - last night was also kind of, I think, kind of a vindication for polls because, if anything, polls kind of underestimated - Democrats, you know, were so worried about them underestimating Republicans.
But polls told us months and months in advance that the Republicans had big-time problems with some of the voters that they had just picked up two years ago.
INSKEEP: I noticed when talking with Republican voters in the past month or so, even when they were still with Republicans, they struggled to tell a story of why it was the smart thing to vote for Republicans. They acknowledged the disappointment in the country. That was really striking to me.
KONDIK: Yeah. I think Republicans took their own voters for granted and they just thought that these folks are going to stick with us, no matter what. And, you know, you had the president essentially, you know, actively, you know, hurting the base by, you know, through tariffs and not really doing anything about prices. Look, you know, tackling inflation is a difficult thing for, you know, for any administration to do but, you know, the decision to attack Iran, I mean, it created this whole new, quote-unquote, "affordability problem" through, you know, gasoline prices just went through the roof.
And I mean, it sort of, you know, it seems like it was a, you know, huge, unexpectedly big wave and I think it was, but, like, it makes sense that it happened, given all of the - given all the problems and the president's just terrible approval rating.
INSKEEP: I want to just ask about the lack of trust in government and the lack of trust in institutions because it seems that every election in memory at this point is a change election. Obama's election was a change election. Then Republicans captured the House in a huge change election and then Trump won, which was a change election. And then Democrats captured the House, which was a change election, and then Biden won, which was a change election.
And then 2022 was kind of mixed but kind of a change election. 2024, another change, '26, another change. What the heck is going on?
KONDIK: Yeah. You know, you could argue that 2012, when Obama won reelection and, you know, Democrats kept the Senate and Republicans kept the House, that was, like, the last sort of almost, like, stasis election...
INSKEEP: Yeah.
KONDIK: ...That we've had. And, you know, the - we do - we are in a time where there, to your point, there's not very much trust in institutions, and people, you know, they're not getting the changes they wanted so they just keep changing things and maybe they'll eventually get it and settle down. But there's just, like, a lot of, you know, negative reaction to the party in power. And, I mean, last night was (laughter) just crazy in that regard.
INSKEEP: Is that a warning for Democrats as they take charge of the House and Senate?
KONDIK: Absolutely. And I also think - and this is something that Republicans, I think, can even be happy about on what was just a horrible night for them - I think there's been a belief in American politics that it's almost like the nation's political arteries are too clogged and that, you know, because of, quote-unquote, "polarization," there are lots of places where, you know, the Democrats - oh, the Democrats can never win there. The Republicans can never win there.
Well, the Democrats won in some places where, like, basically they don't win. And it does perhaps suggest that in the future, maybe Republicans can win in places that you wouldn't otherwise think they can. And if things get bad enough, the public will move in ways that they typically haven't in recent years.
INSKEEP: OK. We're getting a little lower cholesterol in the system. Kyle Kondik, thanks so much.
KONDIK: Thank you.
INSKEEP: He's with the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
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