This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Welcome to the Tudor Dixon podcast. Today, we are going to go over all the crazy things that are happening in the political world right now. So we decided we needed a good pollster to tell us how do people feel? Because if you are on Twitter or you're on social media, you think you know how people feel, but that's not that's not exactly how everybody feels like. We always say Twitter is not real life. Do not assume that everything that you see on the Internet is how the whole country feels. But Nick Weinstein is with us today. He is with Signal. It is a polling firm that is one of the most accurate private polling firms in the country. Nick, thank you for joining me today. Yeah, it's great to be here. Thanks, Jeter. I am really excited about this because it's something that we talk about all the time, but we are kind of focused on the trends on social media. And we are seeing, obviously, high prices. We're seeing high prices at the grocery store. We're seeing high prices for gas. We're seeing kind of this Maha fight right now. So I wanted to get into some of these subjects with you. And right now, the farm bill just passed. There was a bit of, well, we've seen Alex Clark going after some of these politicians pretty hard because she's saying that there were some protections in there for the pesticide companies. Give us your breakdown on that. Yeah, I mean, the farm bill is usually not as interesting. I feel like it was this past year. And, you know, it's because of Maha. It's also because, you know, in our most recent survey, the number one issue for families right now, it's as far as, you know, cost of living is at the grocery store, which directly ties back to our agriculture industry. But we actually explored at the beginning of this month, voters attitudes when it comes to major institutions, institutions like Congress, the federal government and corporations. And there's a lot of distrust on both sides of the aisle. And as President Trump has remade the Republican Party into the party of, you know, working class Americans, I think it's really important that our elected Republican representatives in Congress remember that that's the voters that they need to be speaking to. And if they can't articulate to the American people why the policy that they're supporting in Congress is going to help the average American on Main Street, not the average boardroom on Wall Street, we maybe need to reconsider whether that's a policy worth pushing. And certainly when it comes to, you know, liability for these pesticide manufacturers that have, you know, potentially negatively impacted communities, it shouldn't be a surprise that that's not popular with everyday Americans. And it's kind of the old school Republican Party that a lot of voters still feel like is kind of laying in the weeds here in Washington, D.C., and it's good that folks are calling it out. Well, you watch this. I mean, literally, you're watching messaging every day. If you were able to sit down with these folks and tell them this is what you're going to get hammered with and this should be your response, what would you say? Because I've seen a lot of a lot of these congresswomen and men. I think more women are being called out because there does feel like there's kind of a mom uprising against this because as mothers, we're going, what are our kids eating? And I think the most disturbing part about these pesticides is that they're in the foods, every food that we're buying, and we don't even know. We're just finding this out. So there is a bit of rage about this. Yeah. And we tested earlier this year some of these Maha messages, and they were some of the only messages that in this hyper-polarized political environment actually break through with both Republicans and with Democrats. And when we talk about challenging the status quo, 88% of Republicans want legislators to challenge the status quo when it comes to policies around health and food safety. 65% of Democrats, that's as close to a consensus issue as we're going to find out there. And I think, you know, there are some legitimate concerns about, you know, trial lawyers in the trial bar, you know, using the court system to drive up prices for consumers. And I think that that's maybe a root of some of the concerns when it comes to, you know, does litigating this for billions and billions of dollars year over year over year actually help working class Americans? I think that's a debate that we can have. But if we're couching this argument on the right and among some of these conservative lawmakers is saying, hey, we're going to protect corporations from being sued when they damage communities. That's just not a winning argument. We've got to always make it about the people. And if we can't explain how the policy benefits the people, like I said, we should probably reconsider. It's interesting. I just as I was walking in here and I'm not even 100 percent sure what the case is, but I saw that the acting attorney general is bringing a case against like the big meat houses because he says that there's not it's not fair competition. It's something that we've heard for years, actually. I think it was like the Prime Act that Congressman Massey actually brought to the table back in like, I think it was 2019, 2018, 2019, saying that a lot of these mom and pop shops had been put out of business. And I think that people don't necessarily understand that the lobbying that happens in Washington allows big corporations to take over. And then big corporations, when they're producing en masse, they want to make sure that they have these quick fixes. And maybe sometimes that is the pesticides. Maybe it's something else. But ultimately, it also shuts down the smaller farms, the smaller meatpacking plants. It shuts people down. And those people who were maybe taking different levels of care with things, it's a manipulation because they go to Washington, they say, oh, they're not careful enough. What do you think it means to have the attorney general kind of go after this? Is this a good message to support those maha moms in this moment where we're going into the midterms? Yeah, I think so. Right. And my experience before coming to Signal was in the state attorney general space. And for a while there, it was always the Democrats that were doing the better job than Republicans of messaging around issues like consumer protection, because Republicans were right or wrong, perceived as the party of big business. And we were always very cautious to do anything that, you know, might, you know, affect job creators. And this is a winning issue. And you just look at the bureaucracy around agriculture here in the United States and you look, whether it's anecdotal or, you know, in studies at the health outcomes here versus what we see in Europe. And there's something happening here and it merits government intervention here. And I think, you know, RFK Jr. and the Department of Justice are well positioned to ask the tough questions. And, you know, I think as, you know, as politicians and those advising politicians, if we're not if we're not asking tough questions of people in power, the American people are going to see right through us and say that, you know, we're not doing our jobs. And I can report it's no surprise approval of Congress is at its lowest level in generations. I think we're at 15 percent approval of the job that Congress is doing. So encouraging all of our members of Congress, ask the tough questions, try to do something different because the American people don't like what we're selling. What are the American people feeling now about this war? Because I'm going to the grocery store. Prices are skyrocketing. I was honestly not this past week, but the week before I was stunned with my grocery bill, the gas bill. Same. I mean, you go to the gas tank and you were like, are you kidding me? This is ridiculous So how does how does the administration get through that And what the what the opinion of the war right now Yeah So we are in the field every month At the beginning of this month the war was about a 50-50 issue, which as far as issues go for President Trump, a 50-50 issue isn't a particularly bad one. But it had moved in the wrong direction from the very early days of the war to now. And I think the problem that the Trump administration has is we asked voters, We said, what do you think the positive outcome of the war is? Like, what is victory in this war in Iran? And there's no consensus. We let people pick as many issues as they thought could be considered victory in Iran, and not a single issue got over 50%. Even when we talk about things like, you know, stopping terrorism, you know, denying Iran, you know, a nuclear weapon, there's just, there's no consensus around what winning this war looks like. And if I'm President Trump and I'm thinking about, you know, whether we restart, you know, kinetic operations against the Iranians, if we start striking Iran again, I think it's the the administration needs to do a better job with the American people of explaining what we're trying to accomplish, because even if they achieve all of their goals, given that there's no consensus about what those goals are, they're never going to be able to declare a victory. And that's, you know, a major political problem. They also just need to keep in the back of their mind that, you know, if this continues to November, voters are telling us that it's going to make them more likely to vote Democrat than Republican by about a two to one margin. And there's just not a lot of appetite for higher prices. I think people are already feeling squeezed. Inflation and the economy is the number one issue this month for voters. And there's just no appetite among the American people to pay higher prices for any extended period of time, whether it's the result of war or anything else. Is there a way to explain the war that they haven't done already? I mean, I have heard criticisms. I think that there is a challenge when you're dealing with this type of media where the media is constantly agreeing with these radical leftists like, oh, this is Netanyahu's bad. This is an Israel thing. This has nothing to do with the United States. And the administration is kind of pushing back on that and saying, look, America has got to be safe. We have people that are being killed over there. We have allies that are at risk. But it doesn't seem like they've been able to achieve that actual message getting through as to the why. Yeah, and I think you hit the nail on the head. And some of this is because of the strikes last year, where we, you know, significantly set back the Iranian nuclear program. And I think in the eyes of the American people, the number one issue in Iran is a nuclear program. And then everything else kind of falls in after that. But let's just be clear. I mean, there's there's no groundswell of support for Iran here. Only 10% of Americans have, you know, a favorable opinion of Iran. And unfortunately, those voices are getting outsized attention in the mainstream media and particularly among the folks on the radical left. So the problem isn't that Iran's popular or that the United States shouldn't potentially be intervening over there. It's just that Trump and the administration hasn't done the best job of setting a clear expectation for what the goal is and how long the goal is going to take to achieve and what victory is going to look like. And, you know, you hear a lot of negative comparisons about what we're doing over there to, you know, the first Gulf War, which I think many people saw was, you know, this massive, you know, military success. And the difference between what we're seeing now and what we saw back in the first Gulf War is we made it very clear before the first Gulf War what our goal was. Our goal was to expel Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. And once we achieved that goal, we declared victory and we got out. But people don't remember that over 300 Americans lost their lives in the first Gulf War. I think over 45 aircraft were shot down. So the idea that we're in a quagmire or that, you know, what's happening in Iran right now is some, you know, major military disaster for the United States is, you know, complete Democrat and Iranian propaganda. We just got to do a better job of messaging on it so that the American people are able to celebrate the victory when we've achieved it. I think back then you also had a more united country, but a more united Republican Party. There was also more support in the media. Right now, we talk a lot about the fractures in the Democrat Party because obviously they have this extremist left that seems to be taking over. I mean, you just saw Janet Mills drop out of the race in Maine. You've got Graham Plattner, who has a Nazi tattoo. The guy has said terrible things about women. I mean, his comments are just horrendous regarding rape and all these different things. But he's a radical leftist and they're lifting him up. I mean, she stepped out of the race. You've got the same thing in Michigan where you have the two leftist U.S. Senate candidates are kind of battling it out for the hearts and minds of the people in Michigan right now. So we do look at that as like, oh, they have this big kind of split in their party. However, when you talk about the Gulf War and you talk about those Republicans, I do think that there is a Republican Party from the past that is much different than the MAGA Republican Party. How do you see that playing out? Because we've heard behind the scenes that there are some of those people that feel like they're not, I guess, for lack of a better term, Trump Republican, and they don't want to be with that group. Do you see those people splitting off? I still don't think that the Democrats have a home for those people yet. And we're in a we're in a two party system. Right. So, you know, we asked voters, you know, what do you see is the priority of the Democratic Party? And for 45 percent of people, the plurality, it's just opposing President Trump. And I think because the Democrats are going through their own sort of, you know, civil war at the grassroots level, you know, those more moderate voices in the Democratic Party that could be a home for like disaffected Republicans. I just don't see the Democratic Party being a welcoming place for for those type of voters. So I don't think there's a place for those those people to go. And I just I also think that when we look at the coalition that supports the war in Iran, Republicans are fairly unified on the war in Iran. And in fact, MAGA Republicans are more supportive of the war of Iran than Republicans overall. So I think it's a bit of a misnomer, probably driven largely as you let off the show with sort of the echo chamber of social media and some of these kind of loud, vocal anti-war voices that are either on the right or claim to be on the right that are driving the share of the conversation that just isn't really actually reflective of where the base of the Republican Party is today. But I would just come back to there's a populist, maybe not a revolt, maybe a revolt's too strong of a word, but there's major, major populist anxiety and anger underpinning both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. And those voters are solely focused on the economy and they're just incredibly frustrated with, you know, incumbent politicians and both political establishments. So it's not a surprise to me that we see what's happening in Maine and in Michigan and across the country on the left. We'll probably see more of it on the right as well. But that anger is still out there. And if you're running for elected office on either side of the aisle this year and you're not speaking to those voters and talking to those voters and hearing those voters' concerns and making that a part of your party's platform, you're probably going to be behind the eight ball. Well, I think we're hearing a lot, especially on the Democrat side, we're hearing a lot of ICE talk. And you've got that from Graham Plattner. You've got that from both Mallory McMorrow and Abdul El-Sayed. You have Peggy Flanagan talking about this in Minnesota. I mean she even came out and started to say that we should celebrate the people who were against the Lake and Riley Act and going full anti and Riley Act And this is after we had these raids in Minnesota But if you look at the people that were taken out of Minnesota, I mean, there was a really good chance that you would end up with a situation very similar to Lake and Riley's there had these people not been. And we're talking about child rapists. And some of them had already happened. I mean, we're talking murderers, child rapists. We're talking about like the worst of the worst people. Is that message resonating with Democrats? Do they have this feeling that ICE doesn't isn't necessary? Yeah. So it's a party of contradictions, because if you ask voters, do you believe that we should deport criminal illegal aliens? An overwhelming majority of Republicans, as you would expect. But a majority of Democrats also want to see criminal illegal aliens deported. And it's an incredibly popular issue with independence as well. And I think this is maybe one of the, you know, the missteps of the early Trump administration was we let too much of the focus shift away from those criminal illegal aliens. And we kind of fell into the Democrats trap of, you know, making this about, you know, the sheer number of people deported. And it allowed them to, you know, put a bunch of, you know, faces on camera that were, you know, not those, you know, high level criminals that the Trump administration has been just so efficient at deporting. and allowed them to be the face of this immigration enforcement. And so, look, the political situation is almost exactly the same as it was, I think, when Trump took office. I think the Democratic Party is far, far to the left of where the average American is on this issue. Just unfortunately, because Trump has just been so successful at closing the southern border and tackling immigration in a really public and forward-facing way, It's just not resonating at the top of people's minds the same way that it was sort of the number two issue behind the economy heading into November of 2024. So Republicans could still definitely take advantage when the Democrats put themselves far out of whack and start defending these rapists and these criminal illegal aliens that are here and are going to bat for those folks. But it's just not going to have the same impact on Election Day because it's just not as big an issue for the people that aren't really tuned into the election at all. Those sort of independent voters that pay attention at the last minute and actually can be swung one way or the other. How effective are Mamdani politics today, though? You see a lot of these people that are following his lead of like tax the rich. We'll we'll get all the money from them. There will be all these free things. And obviously, we're seeing that play out in kind of a negative way in New York City right now. So is that going to carry across the country where people are going to look at New York and say, maybe taxing the rich is not the best idea? Are they still there? Well, I mean, it's always the problem, right? As, you know, our wealthiest Americans in the eyes of the average person, they're not a very yet they're not someone that folks feel like they need to rally around. Right. And, you know, part of the disaster of New York City is that we as Republicans and I'm a native Western New Yorker, we did an awful job in that New York City mayor's race. We didn't put forth a credible Republican alternative. Right. We gave voters a choice between all of the stuff that I just told you that people are fed up with and they hate. Andrew Cuomo, a former disgraced former governor and establishment politician who represents everything that voters on both sides of the aisle despise about the Democratic Party against someone in Mom Donnie who has a bunch of abysmal policy ideas, but at the very least is a young, fresh face and is someone who is speaking to the anger that average New Yorkers were feeling about the political establishment. And now the first few months of his term have been a complete disaster. I think that honeymoon, if it's not already over, is coming to a close as the rubber meets the road and he's got to run this city. And voters start to realize that all of this talk about taxing the rich and holding the rich accountable when there's already been a massive outflow of wealthy individuals and job creators from New York City. And Wall Street is waking up and realizing we don't have to physically be on Wall Street in order to trade. and is expanding in Texas and other places. I mean, eventually the voters are going to wake up, but the Mamdani problem is going to be a problem going forward just because voters are deeply distrustful of corporations. They're distrustful of establishment politicians. And so if the establishment media and if the establishment politicians and the establishment business interests are out there saying Mamdani is dangerous, particularly in a city as liberal as New York City, that doesn't have the same effect that it may have, you know, 10 or 15 years ago when there was more trust in those institutions. Now we're seeing Starbucks leaving Seattle. Obviously, they're going to have some portion of their headquarters still there, but they're leaving. I mean, they're headed to Nashville, right? That is a big change. You're going from one of the most liberal cities in the country to a pretty conservative place where we have a lot of our biggest conservative voices speaking out and working hard to keep Nashville to be one of the more conservative areas. I've recently seen some, I guess it would be polling saying that employers are actually looking at Christian colleges to hire people because they're saying those students are more reliable. It's kind of this more Christian conservative viewpoint also seems to be working out in the in the workplace as well. It sort of begs the question, is that what Starbucks is saying? You know what? We're going to go someplace where we feel like there's going to be that strong community. They're going to show up to work, going to take work seriously and not going to pick it outside of our office building. And we're going to be able to walk through the streets that aren't covered in drug addicts and feces. You know, there's I mean, there's a real it's to me, it's a real statement when Starbucks leaves Seattle. Yeah, I mean, Starbucks is Seattle. When you think about Seattle and companies, the first company that comes to mind is Starbucks. And I think you nail hit the nail on the head, right? I mean, some of this just comes down to, you know, what does effective government look like? and Republican parts of the country. It means that your cities are safe, that your streets are clean, and that antisocial behavior isn't tolerated, right? And in major American cities, whether it's Seattle or Washington, D.C. or New York, we've just course-corrected so far in the wrong direction. And the idea that the justice system is disproportionately impacting people, that the entire city government is basically bending at the beck and whim of people whose behavior is antisocial and who, you know, are really themselves victims here. You know, we're letting people live on streets and abuse drugs and, you know, waste away. And there's just there's no mandate for that anywhere outside of the far extremes of the Democratic Party. And it's more corporations wake up to what it's like in, you know, the red parts of the country. I think we're going to kind of continue to see this outflow until cities get serious about addressing crime, addressing public safety, and tackling the cost of living. But what happens when these big corporations go someplace like Nashville? Does that corporation change over time? Are they bringing some of those policies? Because even the antisocial behavior that you're talking about. I mean, we've all seen this happening in certain workplaces where people are coming in and you can speak to me a certain way you can say certain things you triggering me If you trigger me I have to take the rest of the day off Becoming an employer or being an employer today is much harder than it was even 10 years ago There this entitlement We seeing this entitlement type of behavior coming out of some of our top universities where these students are still coming out of universities and saying well I can only work four days I can work before 10 o I mean, the workforce has become very demanding and difficult to work with. How does that affect politics? Is there going to suddenly be a shift where people go, we want to go back to the olden days where we kind of understood it was nine to five. We're all going to show up. We're going to treat each other respectfully and we're going to get through the day. Yeah, I mean, certainly I think the one place where if you're a Starbucks and you're going to Tennessee, it's the the court system is going to be way more forgiving and the laws are going to be way more common sense when it comes to, you know, what is workplace discrimination and like, how are these, you know, malcontents going to be treated? Should they try to, you know, bring action against the company? I've got to think Tennessee is a much better climate for that than Seattle, Washington. But I think kind of more globally, this malaise you talk about in the workforce, I mean, it's not going away. And if anything, I think it's going to be turbocharged by this, you know, artificial intelligence explosion, right? We're sort of on the precipice of what feels like maybe not another industrial revolution, but kind of similar to the introduction of, you know, the computer into the workforce where jobs are disappearing and are changing really, really quickly. And I know if I was a young person entering the workforce, I would feel a lot better about entering the workforce in a job that had me in the office 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., day in, day out, interacting with other people, doing the things that humans do really well versus, you know, sitting on the computer at home, you know, a square on a computer screen, you know, because maybe one day the artificial intelligence replaces that square, right? So that's interesting because we still have a situation in the state of Michigan where state workers are still more than 50 percent are working from home. It's a significant problem for state government. Just people feel like they can't get an actual person. So you would think that, oh, that would be an opportunity for somebody to come in and say, wow, we can actually reduce the size of government because people aren't in their offices anyway. Let me just say before we go, what do you think the big issues are on the Republican side and the Democrat side? Obviously, both are going to be the economy for the state of Michigan, I'll say there's been some media manipulation. In 24, the governor was big on, I'm passing this free lunch and breakfast for all students across the state. At the time, there were a lot of Republicans who were saying, wait a minute, if you need a free lunch or a free breakfast, you're already getting it. They kind of manipulated this with like, oh, well, we don't want kids to feel like they are being singled out. That's not how lunch works. today. You're in the system. Nobody knows whether you're getting it free or not. But they used this as kind of this, oh, we're doing such great work. Every kid is going to be well fed and not have to worry about whether or not they can they're distracted by having a growling stomach during the school day. This was two years of just praise from the media. Today, Monday morning, a drop on the media comes out saying, you know, turns out that the education dollars are now actually going to the richest districts. The kids in the districts that were in Detroit and Flint, some of the districts that were 100 percent free and reduced lunch before that from the federal government, they're not getting any state dollars. So you're only sending state dollars now to the richest communities in the entire state. So your dollars that have been taken away from other places are going there. I say that because there's a lot of defense of bad decisions when it comes to the Democrat side, if you can make it look like you're helping people, even though you're actually not. So going into this midterm, what will Democrats get the most benefit from? What message will Democrats get the most benefit from? And what message will Republicans get the most reaction from. Sure. Yeah. So, I mean, look, I think you hit the nail on the head and there's a lot of dissatisfaction across both parties with government spending. And I think everybody recognizes that it's a problem. Ninety one percent of voters told us last month that they were concerned about federal government spending. So spending is a concern. But to your point, the Democrats do a good job of making it about, you know, taking the school lunch away from the needy child. So if look, if I'm the Democrats, I've got two goals, right? My base is being animated solely by opposition to Trump. So we're going to have this sort of Trump is bad message that they've run with every single election since President Trump was on the ballot in 2016. And that's going to be the animating message for the Democratic base. But, you know, where Republicans and Democrats are going to be battling is going to be this referendum on the economy. And we've done focus groups in swing congressional districts across the country. And I think Republicans just have to be aware that there's a lot of anger and frustration and that the average voter doesn't believe us if we say things are going to get cheaper, because for the last four years, things have gotten more expensive every single year. So we've got to be really specific about what we are going to do and how that's going to impact either slowing the rate of growth of prices or bringing prices down, maybe in the case of gasoline or something like that, where there's an actual path to do that. But we've got to bring back every single debate to how is this impacting everyday Americans. I know that there was a lot of excitement about the one big, beautiful bill, some of the changes to the tax policy. The only thing that people are that is resonating with people about the one big, beautiful bill, Trump's signature economic policy is no taxes on tips in overtime. Right. Because I mean, shoot, I don't know what I pay every year in taxes. And if my marginal tax rate goes down a little bit or goes up a little bit, he is a pretty plugged in guy. I don't know what the impact of that is at the end of the year, really, until I start to do my taxes. Whereas I drive by the gas station every day. I see that the gas prices are up. I go, to the grocery store and get groceries. I know that my grocery prices are up. And that's the lens through which the average American is, you know, evaluating this economy. And, you know, as Republicans are going home and doing town hall meetings and then transitioning into, you know, that election season here, they've got to meet that anger, meet that frustration and be prepared with some concrete things that they're going to do if they're given another two years in Congress to get those things moving in the right direction. If the election is tomorrow, Do Republicans lose the House? Yeah, I think so. We've got it right now at D plus six. It's probably three or four points too far in the wrong direction for Republicans right now. But there's a ton of redistricting and a ton of time between now and November to get things back on the right track. We've got some work to do, but we can do it. Thank you so much, Nick Weinstein. Thank you for being here. Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks, Peter. Tell people where they can follow Signal Polling. Yeah, you can find us on Twitter, Signal, or on our website. C-Y-G-N dot A-L. Signal. Awesome. Thank you so much. Yep. Thanks. And thank you all for listening to the Tudor Dixon podcast. As always, you can get it at the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Rumble, or YouTube at Tudor Dixon. Just make sure you join us. And right now, have a blessed day.
