What do Americans really think about the issues? It turns out they are a surprisingly liberal bunch, as Rachael Russell of Navigator Research tells us on this week's episode of The Downballot. Russell explains how Navigator conducts in-depth research to fill in gaps in policy debates with hard data instead of pundit speculation. The challenge for Democrats is that many voters say they hold progressive beliefs but still pull the lever for Republicans. That imbalance, however, presents an opportunity—Democrats just have to seize it.
Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard also recap the first round of voting in the race for Chicago mayor, which saw a progressive apocalypse averted; the resolution to the long-running uncertainty over the speakership in the Pennsylvania state House that saw Joanna McClinton make history; Rep. Elissa Slotkin's entry into Michigan's open Senate race, which makes her the first prominent candidate to run; and the inexplicable decision by conservatives to go dark on the airwaves for a full week following last week's primary in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race.
David Beard:
Hello and welcome. I'm David Beard, contributing editor for Daily Kos Elections.
David Nir:
And I'm David Nir, political director of Daily Kos. The Downballot is a weekly podcast dedicated to the many elections that take place below the presidency, from Senate to city council. Please subscribe to The Downballot on Apple Podcasts and leave us a five-star rating and review.
David Beard:
We've got the Chicago elections, of course, but what else are we going to be covering today?
David Nir:
A long-running situation in the Pennsylvania state House finally got resolved. We now know who the Speaker is and she just made history. We also got our first major candidate in the open Senate race in Michigan, and then there was a truly inexplicable development in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race that progressives have to be chuckling about. Then we are talking to Rachael Russell, who is [associate] director of polling at Navigator Research, a firm that cranks out tons of fascinating polling data that helps inform policy debates for progressive advocates, elected leaders, and the press. There are of course many issues that we want to drill down into with her and we can't wait to get rolling.
Another week, another election. I know it's an odd numbered year, but it feels like we have had so many to talk about so far. What went down on Tuesday? I think there was something big.
David Beard:
Yes, Chicago had their first round of their municipal elections, including for mayor of the city, and we had former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas who grabbed first place as expected. He's the more conservative of the candidates who were running. He got 34%, very much in his own lane, while there was a big mess below him. But we do have a second-place candidate that made it to this runoff that's going to be taking place in April, and that's Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson, who was one of the more progressive candidates. He got 20%, so he nearly edged out Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who is not going to be advancing to the runoff and so has been defeated for reelection. She got just 17% and then Congressman Chuy García, another progressive candidate. got 14%, and to round it out on the major candidates, wealthy perennial candidate Willie Wilson got 10%.
Now obviously we are going to look at this and move straight toward the April runoff with Vallas starting off with 34% and Johnson starting off with 20%. You assume they'll keep their own bases and you also have to think that at least a good chunk of García's progressive base will move to Johnson to help him narrow that gap. The big question of course, is where Mayor Lightfoot's support is going to go. Those are primarily African American voters in Chicago, ones who probably are more moderate, who voted for Lightfoot. Brandon Johnson of course is also African American, so it's possible they may move towards him or it's possible that they have see an appeal to Vallas' more moderate to conservative platform.
García's Hispanic base, obviously it's a mix of progressive voters and Hispanics who backed García. It's a question of where those Hispanic voters will go. Wilson's voters, obviously that's a smaller portion, but those are also predominantly African American voters, so it's very much up in the air even though Johnson starts off with a bit of a deficit where he starts out with that 20% base. Vallas starts out with that 34% base, but we should definitely see that close and there's a real sense that either candidate could win here. It depends on how this race turns out, and there's a real ideological difference that we haven't always seen in big city mayor's races. It's very clear there's a real contrast here, so it'll be interesting to see how this runoff develops.
David Nir:
One thing that progressives have to be happy about is avoiding apocalypse because there was a real fear that we talked about last week on the show that García and Johnson would split the more left-leaning vote and lead to a runoff between Vallas and Lightfoot. That hasn't happened, or sorry, I should say that didn't happen. And so now like you said, we have a much clearer contrast in the general election, which is on April 4, by the way, the same day as the Supreme Court race in Wisconsin. We'll get back to that one in a little bit.
David Beard:
Yeah, it's definitely shaping up to be the Super Tuesday of spring 2023, April 4th, so stay tuned. We'll definitely have a lot of coverage of all these races between now and then analysis of the results.
David Nir:
So we finally got resolution to a long-running disputed situation in Pennsylvania. Democrat Joanna McClinton finally was elected speaker of the state House. She made history in doing so. It was the last day of Black History Month and she became the first Black woman to ever be elected speaker of the state House in Pennsylvania. She had been expected to be speaker after Democrats rather unexpectedly won a numerical majority in November. For the first time since 2010, they won 102 seats in the state House to 101 for Republicans, but there were three vacant, safely Democratic seats, and as a result, Republicans had a nominal numerical majority that prevented McClinton from becoming speaker.
So instead, some Republicans sided with another Democrat, Mark Rozzi, to make him Speaker and things immediately went south. Rozzi had said that he would serve as Speaker as an independent, but he then never made any move to actually change his party registration or leave the Democratic Caucus. But it was unclear whether he would actually step aside for McClinton, though the Republicans who had elected him in the first place were furious at what they viewed as a total betrayal. Rozzi later claimed that he would only consider becoming an independent; that seemed to contradict his actual spoken words.
Whatever it was, it was a total mess. And in remarks on Tuesday, Rozzi said that he had determined that the only reason Republicans had supported him was to prevent McClinton from herself ever becoming speaker. Well, yeah, but that seemed to animate Rozzi. He said he was going to make Republicans pay for doing that, so he stepped aside, and since Democrats won those three special elections for those safely blue seats, they now have the numerical majority and on a party line vote, McClinton was elected 102 to 99.
In her speech marking the occasion, she referenced two predecessors, one of whom was Leroy Irvis, who in 1977 became the first Black person to serve as Speaker of any legislative chamber in America since Reconstruction.
The other person she name-checked—you got to love this—was Ben Franklin, who was the Speaker of the Pennsylvania state House before the United States was even a country. So I guess Speaker of the Pennsylvania House, not the state House. Yeah, he was Speaker in 1764. I think that's just an incredible piece of history.
The real question now, though, is what's going to happen in 2024? Republicans still control the state Senate. Democrats of course control the governorship. Josh Shapiro won it in a massive landslide in November, but for Democrats to really have the chance to move Pennsylvania in a more progressive direction, in the way that their counterparts in Michigan suddenly are able to, they're going to have to take back the Senate in 2024. Only half of the Senate will be up. It does seem like it is a plausible target. It's certainly going to be one of the top chambers that we are going to focus on next year, so keep your eyes on that one.
David Beard:
Yeah. We've talked obviously a little bit about the federal level and the opportunities and challenges of the 2024 map in the Senate. And of course the House will have largely the same maps with a couple of exceptions, but at the state level, both in Pennsylvania and in a few other states, Arizona is another big one. There's going to be a real push here to get an opportunity to get Democrats in the Arizona House and Senate, and in the Pennsylvania Senate, and give a real opportunity for those states to pass Democratic legislation the way that Michigan and Minnesota are right now, this year.
David Nir:
Speaking of Michigan, it's time we talk about that state again.
David Beard:
Yes, and of course Debbie Stabenow, the senator from Michigan, announced her retirement earlier this year, and so far there hadn't been any major announcements for any candidates, but that changed when Democratic representative Elissa Slotkin on Monday became the that first major candidate to announce a bid. She represents the 7th congressional district, which is a very competitive district based in Lansing. She's had three really tough races in 2018, 2020, 2022, so she's definitely battle-hardened, and we've seen a number of other Democrats decline to run, including Lieutenant Governor Garlin Gilchrist and state Senator Mallory McMorrow. Some Democrats have not said either way, whether they might run or not. Most notably Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who has said that she's focused on her job but has not definitively ruled it out. Representative Debbie Dingell has not definitively ruled it out, so this is definitely still a field that is forming, but Slotkin has definitely put a big stake in the ground in saying she's going to be a major candidate in this race.
David Nir:
Yeah, and you mentioned her trio of races in that 7th congressional district, which is a really swingy seat. It was actually the second most expensive House race in the entire nation in 2022, but she wound up winning by a surprisingly comfortable six points, which is a lot for that district, and she really does have a record of success that she can point to. I think it's possible that she clears the field, but it's a long time from now until the filing deadline... though you can't really afford to wait. A statewide race in Michigan is going to be very, very expensive. The other issue though for Democrats now is finding someone who can try to hold that 7th district, because that certainly is going to be a linchpin of Democrats having a shot at taking back the House in ‘24.
David Beard:
Yeah. It was already going to be a top seat again in ‘24, even if Slotkin had run for reelection, and now is an open seat. It will absolutely be one of the probably top two or three races in the country. And like you said, going back to people getting into the race, as we've seen in recent cycles, you cannot jump into a race for a big state like Michigan, even in the fall of 2023. It's just going to be too late unless you're independently wealthy and can just self-fund yourself at least 10 million or more. You have got to be in there raising money for most of 2023.
David Nir:
Speaking of money, one candidate who does not seem to be doing very well on that front is conservative Judge Dan Kelly in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race. I told you we were going to get back to that one. So, of course, last week we had the primary where progressive Judge Janet Protasiewicz won in huge fashion. She took first place and Kelly was a distant second, setting up the April 4th general election matchup between them. And Protasiewicz has been a fundraising juggernaut, and she came out of the gate swinging, as you would expect. Her campaign immediately went up with ads hammering Kelly. And now she has booked at least $5 million in time on the airwaves. Her allies at A Better Wisconsin Together, which also played a big role in the primary, they've booked more than $1 million. And during that first week after the primary, Dan Kelly and his allies, they spent a total of $0 on television.
I'm completely gobsmacked by that because this is a six-week race. This is a true sprint. You don't have six-week races really on the federal level. In fact, federal law pretty much makes that impossible because of rules about setting ballots to overseas voters. This is a state race. And so it's a very quick turnaround time, and conservatives spent 17% of it doing jack on the airwaves.
Now, finally this week, the super wealthy GOP mega donors, the Uihlein family, began booking TV time. They booked $1 million dollars so far, but they are worth a gabillion dollars, to use a conservative estimate. So, it doesn't make any sense that they took off last week. It doesn't really make sense that they've only booked $1 million when progressives have booked at least six times that amount, and I just don't really understand what's going on there.
The two progressive candidates, as we mentioned last week, took 54% of the vote in the primary. And the two conservatives took 46%. Now, we can't say for certain whether that's going to be predictive of the April 4 electorate. But Nathaniel Rakich at FiveThirtyEight, who we've had on the show a couple of times, he pulled together some data of Wisconsin's springtime elections for the past decade or so. And in four of the last five Supreme Court races, the April electorate was more liberal than the February electorate, often considerably more. So, we can't say if that's going to happen again, but we do know for sure that conservatives are starting off in an eight-point-hole. Are they getting polls back that are super depressing? They can't possibly give up on this one, can they?
David Beard:
I can't imagine that they actually would. The stakes are just too high. This is for control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. As we've said, it's for two years at a minimum because the next election isn't until 2025. So I think money is going to be spent here. My suspicion is this is chalked up to incompetence that people were not prepared because of the short time frame to dive in and start those ads on the Republican side on day one. And as we see, like they're going to start getting their shit together, if you will, and we'll see this money come in and attack Protasiewicz. But a week's gone in a six-week race, and that's not something they can get back.
David Nir:
How could they not be prepared though? They knew ahead of time that they were only going to have six weeks. I mean, Kelly's fundraising has been abysmal. I'm not surprised that he didn't go up on TV. But the Uihleins, they've been spending heavily for him in the primary, too. They knew that Feb. 21 was going to be the primary. Or could they really just be that incompetent? Maybe. But even that I find gobsmacking.
David Beard:
Yeah. And again, all speculation, but the way, particularly a lot of these very, very wealthy sort of people work, there's not really an organization there. It's like a guy, who's their guy. And he works with maybe a consulting firm or something. And so, if they're... The way in which an organization is going to be prepared to pivot extremely quickly, I would not be surprised if they were not prepared to pivot day one. And it took them a little while to get up and running, which normally because of the extremely long ways that America runs elections where you have months and months, that's fine 99% of the time. It's not fine in this election, but we should not look at gift horse in the mouth in this case.
David Nir:
Absolutely not. I love the idea though that it's just this one guy and maybe he got hungover and he spaced that the primary was over. Anyway, dude, take all the time you need. We'll gladly wait for you.
Anyway, that wraps up our weekly hits. We are going to be talking with Rachael Russell after the break. She is the associate director of polling and analytics at Navigator Research, a firm that churns out a ton of fascinating data on policy issues aimed at helping progressive advocates and elected leaders. We have so much to talk about with her. We are going to take a very short break and then we will be back.
Welcome back. We are talking with Rachael Russell, who is the associate director of polling and analytics at Navigator Research, a firm that helps to inform policy debates for progressive advocates, elected leaders, and the press. Rachael, we are super excited to have you on the show. Thank you for joining us.
Rachael Russell:
Thank you. It's great to be here with both of you.
David Nir:
So, Navigator Research, whenever I get one of your emails in my inbox, I'm excited because I know it's going to be interesting information. It's going to be high quality, and it's going to be current in terms of what the issues of this very precise moment are. But for folks who maybe aren't familiar with Navigator, tell us about exactly what that project is, what the whole operation is, and how you came to be involved with it.
Rachael Russell:
Sure. So thank you again for having me here today. Navigator is a trusted resource for developing and distributing winning progressive messages and polling on the most pressing issues of the moment. Like you said, it's designed to act as a consistent, flexible, responsive tool to inform policy debates. So to give you a brief origin story of Navigator, it actually launched in 2018 prior to my time, but we are actually about to celebrate Navigator's fifth birthday in April. So it's very exciting for us over here.
David Nir:
Mazel tov.
Rachael Russell:
Thank you. I joined in 2021, like I said. But to bring us back to 2018, let's set the scene a little bit. We were two years into a Trump presidency, a lot of chaos, a lot of lies, and a lot of tweets. As you might remember, Navigator set out to help progressives respond to and be on the offensive of a lot of the messages that were being put out, including things like Trump tax cuts and how those would affect everyday Americans, as well as things like the special investigation by Robert Mueller.
Then, of course, there was a global pandemic. We ended up doing a lot of tracking on perceptions of former President Trump and his handling of the pandemic, and things like what mitigation efforts Americans supported throughout the last three years. And now almost five years later, Navigator still continues to conduct biweekly national surveys to assess and track public opinion on political and economic sentiment, as well as monthly qualitative research.
So that's typically looks like focus groups, but we've also done live dial groups to assess moment-by-moment reactions to President Biden's State of the Union actually a few weeks ago in Las Vegas with Nevadans, and then also last year in Denver, Colorado. So, we conduct a lot of research to get all of these moment-by-moment, up-to-date reactions. And by conducting this research and providing reliable guidance, Navigator helps top leaders in Washington and grassroots organizations around the country shape the debate on the issues that matter most.
David Beard:
So, I think the polling that a lot of our listeners are most familiar with and people in general are most familiar with is horse race polling, which comes out around election time and polls to candidates and who people are going to vote for, Joe Biden or Donald Trump and so forth. And then occasionally, they might hear about some message polling that campaigns do about here's Joe Biden did X, Y, and Z; Donald Trump did X, Y, and Z. Who are you going to vote for after that? So those are probably the more common types, and those are around election season. But the polling that you all do is not really tied to candidates. It's tied to issues. So, can you tell us about how that's sort of different, how you go through the process differently in terms of creating polls like that?
Rachael Russell:
Definitely, yeah. Like you described, I think, during elections, many journalists cover horse race polling essentially focused on who is winning or losing in a race based on how voters are responding to a survey. This can be done by actually asking about candidates specifically or just generic ballot questions. Will you vote for the Democratic congressional candidate or the Republican congressional candidate in this election?
What Navigator does is focus on policy issues and public opinion. We try to understand and sometimes persuade people on progressive policy issues. So for instance, one of the issues I've been tracking a lot during the Biden administration's tenure has been around student loan debt cancellation. Whether Americans support their proposal, which we know a majority of Americans do support it regardless of whether they themselves currently have or have had student loan debt. But we also ask things like what reasons are most convincing to support it? And using that messaging, we can actually test that and see if we can move the needle on these issues.
Another issue that we've researched recently has been support for creating paid family and medical leave, which would allow people to continue to earn a portion of their pay while taking time away from work for a serious medical issue. This also receives resounding support across partisanship.
Issues can of course be complicated. I think we can talk a bit about that later, maybe when we talk about the debt ceiling and how wonky that policy debate can be. But overall, discussing and defining issues about... discussing and defining issues makes the public more informed and helps move the needle on potentially passing some of these things and putting more progressive policies in place.
David Beard:
And the absence of this information really leaves it to the media to policy wonks who get themselves on CNN or Fox News to just sort of give what they think, and that can sort of become the broader assumptions among, particularly D.C. And so, bringing this type of actual qualitative and quantitative polling into the atmosphere in [Washington,] D.C., can help bring things back to reality of what people in America are actually thinking in those two years between elections, right?
Rachael Russell:
Yeah, definitely. I think that's a big goal of ours is to actually check the pulse of the American public and see how people are feeling about different issues and whether they've also changed their mind on certain issues because we know that public opinion does shift.
David Nir:
So continuing on that theme, a lot of political science research has shown that politicians typically assume that their constituents, their electorates, are to the right of where they actually are. And you have, like you've just been saying, done a lot of analysis on no, where do Americans actually stand in the issues? We shouldn't have to guess. So I'd love to hear some thoughts from you about, as a baseline, where do Americans stand politically and economically, in terms of the traditional left-right spectrum? And what areas are people making the most fundamental mistakes when it comes to assumptions about what Americans actually believe?
Rachael Russell:
Yeah. We actually did a really interesting analysis in a post-election survey right after the '22 midterms. We asked a range of questions from education, to race relations, to policing. Just a lot of questions that ranged from, do you strongly support this, somewhat support this, strongly oppose, somewhat oppose, and were able to put people on this matrix scale of how progressive the entire '22 electorate was. It was a really fascinating project, and one that we were able to also look at in comparison to how people voted. So even though people were far more progressive in their overall beliefs, people voted more Republican in nature. And I think some of that has to do with messaging, and how we can actually tell people that the candidate they're voting for actually stands for something differently than how they feel. But generally, the American electorate is far more progressive than they are conservative.
David Nir:
So in this perception gap that obviously some voters have between their own beliefs and the candidates that they prefer to support, you talked about messaging, but I'd love to maybe drill down a little bit more on your thoughts on how Democrats can take advantage of that. Because frankly, I'd much rather be in that situation than in the other situation. Republicans don't seem to have an opportunity that they can take advantage of like this.
Rachael Russell:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think sometimes Democrats do get it right. We do talk about issues that Americans agree with, and we need to continue to do that in order to get voters on Democrats' side. I think specifically when it comes to social issues, it's taken a long time specifically on things like the abortion debate for Democrats to actually say the word abortion, and to actually understand that that's where the American public is on these issues. They agree that that should be a right reserved to a patient and not to the government.
And so I think there's other economic frames that Americans overall agree with, that we need to be re-envisioning an economy that actually works for Americans, especially the middle class. I think that relates to things like paid family and medical leave, ensuring that we have an adequate minimum wage federally, and actually being able to talk about these things as a way to reduce the financial burden on the middle class is really important—while also acknowledging that these are real pain points, right? Inflation and financial uneasiness are actual burdens that Americans across the country are feeling.
And so without just throwing legislation in their face, understanding that, and acknowledging that these are things that people are feeling, rightfully, and we have solutions, but we need to message them correctly and adequately and make sure they're getting in front of people. Because as much as we might scream, "The Inflation Reduction Act is going to lower drug costs," When only half of Americans have heard of what that is, it's really not doing what it's supposed to do. So really making sure that we are taking advantage of legislation that has been passed, to make sure that Americans know that these things are happening, and should be able to address these financial woes.
David Beard:
So you've got a new survey coming out soon that's covering a lot of very prominent issues that are going to be talked about a lot in 2023. So I wanted to take an opportunity and see what those findings were, and we'll start with one that you already mentioned earlier, the debt ceiling.
Rachael Russell:
Yep.
David Beard:
Obviously the debt ceiling is extremely wonky and complicated to even explain to congressmen or experts in D.C. People often don't have a full understanding of the debt ceiling, and the fact that all of this money has already been budgeted and owed to people, and the debt ceiling is simply authorization to pay debts that have already been incurred. But obviously that's not a good soundbite to take to the American people. So tell us what you found in your survey.
Rachael Russell:
Absolutely, that is a great point. It is a wonky one, and it's tough for people to understand, and I don't expect people to sit down and read all about the debt ceiling, and what it means, and why we need to pay it. I think we need to define it in a clear and concise way, saying that the debt ceiling is a limit to the amount of money that the US government can borrow to pay its bills. Like you said, it's money that we've already spent, but what we have found is that if you just continue to say, "We've raised it 80 times in the past, that's why we should raise it again," that's not an effective argument that people find to support raising the debt ceiling. What we've really found is that alone by itself, if you ask if Americans support raising the debt ceiling, they do support it.
We've found that by, I believe it was a 20-point margin, Americans support raising the debt ceiling. But more so, we need to focus on the consequences of if we do not raise the debt ceiling, Americans understand how important Social Security and Medicare are. They do not want Congress to make cuts to them, and they do not want the government to default, and therefore there would be delays in Social Security and veterans' benefits. By acknowledging and adding the context that that is a possibility of the debt ceiling not being raised, Americans are far more supportive of raising the debt ceiling.
When we just continue to harp on the fact that it's been raised 80 times in the past 60 years and under X amount of presidents, Americans aren't really hearing that argument. It sounds like, oh, more money out the door. That's not going to be a successful way to talk about it. So I think the real framing that we need to work on is one, defining what the debt ceiling is in a way that's not going to put people to sleep. And also acknowledging what the consequences will be if we don't raise the debt ceiling.
David Beard:
And I think in general, we find this a lot, that the American people respond to things that are going to affect everyday people. And that is a lot, because most Americans don't pay super close day-to-day attention to American politics, to what's going on in D.C. We are very much the exception, us and our listeners, who we value and love, but most people are not tracking this. And so what matters to them is what's going to happen to them, to their loved ones, to their community. And so more often than not, these issues have to connect back to that to really make a difference.
Rachael Russell:
Exactly. We actually did some focus groups back in January with soft partisan independent voters, people that said that they didn't pay that much attention to the news. And when we informed them of different Republican agenda items, and one of them being to cut Social Security and Medicare, it was a resounding, "What, they can't do that! That's like..." It wasn't even about them really. It was, "My parent has been paying into this for 50 years, and this is something that people deserve. It's a right. It's something that we have been working towards our entire career." And so it definitely seems like even if it's not in everyone's ear every day, it's not something everyone's reading about and knows what it is, when they realize what the consequences can be, it's definitely something that people care about, and want to make sure is around for future generations.
David Nir:
An issue that has been front and center for the better part of a year now, of course, is abortion, and Republicans are determined to open up a new front in their war to ban abortions, and that is their assault on abortion medication. I would love to hear what your findings have been on that particular issue of medication abortion, and the GOP's attempt to really curtail or ban it.
Rachael Russell:
Absolutely. So we've done a lot of polling on abortion, like a lot of other groups in the last year or two. We actually started back in September of 2021 when Texas enacted its crazy vigilante abortion bill for a six-week ban. And since then we've really been tracking pretty consistently around abortion rights and access and perception of those, how there has been a steep increase in Americans feeling like the right is at risk in their own state, and nationally. So it's something we've really been looking into a lot. And with the coming ruling from the federal court on medication abortion, it's definitely something that we wanted to provide guidance for others. We have consistently found that Americans support access to abortion, and don't believe the government should take that decision from a patient seeking care. Most recently with the attacks on prescription abortion medication at the state level, we have been tracking support for keeping this medication legal and support for allowing patients to access this medication.
We found that by, I believe it was a 37-point margin, Americans support allowing women to legally use prescription abortion medication to end an early abortion at home. This was, I believe around three in five, almost two in three Americans saying that they support this right. This included independents, Democrats and very narrowly Republicans are split, though Republican women have also said that they support this access to abortion medication by a 10-point margin. So we've tested some messages to see what Americans view as the most convincing reason to support or to keep abortion medication legal, and we found the most successful message is to focus on its safety and effective record for over 20 years, and being FDA-approved as well as being able to be used as lifesaving treatment for miscarriages.
So we have found that, I believe it's seven in 10 Americans found that those reasons were convincing to keep medication abortion legal. Americans overwhelmingly support the right to access abortion. They absolutely oppose national abortion bans, and this sort of backdoor national abortion ban is something that the American public, if it is to happen, is not going to be happy about. Along with our abortion tracking, we've also been tracking favorability of the Supreme Court. While this is a federal court, I know it's different, but I think it's really instilling a federal court as a political institution. If these federal courts as well as the Supreme Court continue to curtail access to abortion, we'll continue to see a decline in their favorability and trust in the institution just generally.
David Nir:
Yes. Since you mentioned the Supreme Court, I would love to hear what your numbers have been over the last year on the justices.
Rachael Russell:
Yeah. We have done some sole justice favorabilities. In the latest survey, we just did general, the US Supreme Court, but we do have some on Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett from the past year. But generally, the Supreme Court has gone into net negative, which a year ago we had not seen. Majority of Americans viewed them favorably, and since the decision, they have been under a 40... I believe it was like a 48% favorability rating and a deep decline among Democrats and Independents on their favorability, in the negatives for both groups.
David Beard:
Now, one final issue I want to ask you about that you recently did some pulling on, is the recent spade of anti-trans legislation, specifically around minors, school sports, healthcare decisions around trans minors... This is something that has really just sort of popped up in an enormous way in the past few years. Over the years, there tends to be an issue or two that people like to pull out as a, "I'm a Democrat, but I'm not a down the line liberal, and here's my example." And it seems like in the past couple years, this has become the example where people like to be like, "Oh, I'm a Democrat generally. I'm a progressive generally, but I don't know about trans kids in sports, in school sports," things like that. And it's been very frustrating to see this develop, this sort of concept around it that it's this big problem. So what did you find in terms of your polling around these anti-trans attacks?
Rachael Russell:
So I think that's a great point that you make about how Democrats are defining themselves, and it's really troubling to see. Our polling, what we have been asking is around education and children, and what Americans view as their top priority for children and their education. What we see time and time again is that at the top of the list is Americans want children to be getting adequate education so that they can be successful in the future and in their schooling. We also see that Americans want children to be safe from mass shootings and from gun violence. These are at the top of the list. We are not seeing we need to... Much lower on the list and much more driven by Republicans, we are seeing that children need to be protected from the ‘woke’ ideology. We have been working to frame arguments around anti-trans legislation. While we're still in the process of doing this, I hope that we can provide some more thorough guidance soon, because it's definitely not a priority of Americans for transgender students to not be able to play a sport with the gender that they identify with.
David Beard:
And I think we've seen in 2022, a lot of the Republicans who ran on these anti-trans school issues and critical race theory type issues, it really fell flat. There were obviously some Republicans and Republican leaning seats who managed to win and talk about this stuff, and really red states keep pushing it. But in terms of swing areas, swing candidates, competitive races, this was not an issue that got Republicans much success.
Rachael Russell:
Yeah, it definitely was not the focus of most Americans. I think what we found from our post-election survey was that Americans wanted these elected officials to be focusing mostly on the economy. Let's face it, but about real issues that were facing Americans and not sort of these woke scare tactics that don't actually affect Americans' day-to-day lives.
David Nir:
So earlier in the show you referenced focus groups, and that is this whole huge arm of political research that most folks don't really get to see a lot of insight into. We all encounter polls all the time, and if you're an election nerd, like we are data nerds, it's easy to drill down into all the numbers, but we don't really get to see the sort of curtain drawn on focus groups and learn about what's going on there. So to me, it's always a fascinating, fascinating topic. And I know that Navigator Research is particularly working on focus groups regarding young men of color, and I would love to hear more about that effort and what you're hoping to learn.
Rachael Russell:
Yes. We're really excited to do these groups among young men. Specifically, we're doing six groups, two with young Black men, two with young Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and two with Hispanic young men in all battleground regions. We're hoping to actually do different groups based on how sort of politically motivated and engaged they are. So maybe one group that is more focused or that is less politically motivated, less engaged, maybe a little more apathetic, and another group that might be more politically motivated, more civically engaged. So I think the origin of these groups really came, I think, from this past election cycle. I think we heard a lot about young women coming out to vote and electing Democrats. I think there was a narrative that young men weren't doing the same, but we haven't necessarily seen concrete data to support the narrative around young men of color, which is something that I think we're curious about.
But there have been some narratives saying that young men of color might be fracturing off from the Democratic Party. And I think our intention with these groups is to understand what makes them engaged with politics, what issues they want to see solved, and how can political leaders stand up for them. And I think we're really coming to them asking these questions. We just sort of want to listen and sort of take that as instruction. In the past, we've conducted focus groups to dig a little bit deeper into questions we've found from our survey data. For example, we saw a decline in Biden's approval specifically from Black voters around this time last year. I think it was February or January of '21. So we ended up conducting groups with Black voters and asked, "How is Biden's presidency holding up to expectations? What would you like to see more of? What grade would you give him? What policies are you looking for in your communities?"
And a lot of the answers showed that they felt like they hadn't seen enough from Biden, and they didn't believe that he was being aggressive enough when it came to passing his economic agenda. We also heard a lot of disappointment around the status of student loan debt cancellation, and I think all of these things were really instructive for how Black voters were feeling about the administration. In conjunction with our biweekly surveys, we were able to really pull a narrative together. So we've done a lot of different groups. I think sometimes it comes from specifically questions we see in the data, and sometimes it comes from narratives that we hear out there and we sort of ask, "Are we seeing this too? And is this accurate, and is there a way for us to combat a narrative that might not be accurate?"
Another group that we did this summer was actually among pro-choice women in battleground states, pro-choice women of all ideologies and party affiliation. So we actually did a group of Republican pro-choice women in Texas, and it was a really fascinating group. We actually started talking about... They started talking about how January 6th rioters were being unlawfully detained after the insurrection, but they were also talking about how the government was intervening on a woman's right to make a choice about their own body. So I think qualitative research really helps us understand things that we can't always get in a quantitative survey. It's really useful because humans are very complicated and say a lot of contradictory things, so it really helps us as researchers to have this qualitative data that we can't really replicate in a quantitative setting.
David Nir:
I find that endlessly fascinating. We have been talking with Rachael Russell, the Associate Director of Polling and Analytics at Navigator Research. Rachael, it's been fantastic to have you on here. Where can our listeners learn more about Navigator's work? Where can they follow you? What website should they check out? Give us the whole shebang.
Rachael Russell:
Sure. So you guys can subscribe to receive our newsletters with latest polling and data by visiting navigatorresearch.org. You can also follow us on Twitter @navigatorsurvey or on Instagram, navigator.survey. Thanks for having me.
David Nir:
Thank you so much.
David Beard:
That's all from us this week. Thanks to Rachael Russell for joining us. The Downballot comes out every Thursday everywhere you can listen to podcasts. You can reach out to us by emailing thedownballot@dailykos.com. If you haven't already, please subscribe to The Downballot on Apple Podcast and leave us a five star rating and review. Thanks to our producer, Cara Zelaya, and editor, Trever Jones. We'll be back next week with a new episode.
