Season 2, Episode 12: A Deeper Understanding of Swing State Voters

The Odd Years

For our final show of 2024, we are bringing you a conversation we recorded a couple weeks ago with the Cook Political Report's David Wasserman and the two pollsters who collaborated with the our team on 2024 Swing State Project.

We started the project in the spring of 2024 in order to get a deeper understanding of the issues, concerns, and priorities of voters in the seven key battleground states.

We teamed up with two amazing pollsters, Patrick Toomey, partner at the Democratic firm BSG, and Greg Strimple, president of GS Strategy Group, a Republican polling company.

What we really loved about working with Greg and Patrick and their teams is that these are campaign pollsters. They understand the dynamics involved, not just in what voters are saying, but also how candidates and campaigns would respond to them.

We conducted three surveys with Greg and Patrick, one in May, one in August, right after Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden on the top of the ticket, and a final one in September. You can find all of those at here along with our analysis.

The one consistent theme we saw throughout those three polls was that voters' concern about the state of the economy and inflation dominated even as events like Biden's last minute dropping out and an assassination attempt on Trump roiled the campaign.

So Amy started this conversation with Dave, Greg, and Patrick by asking: even though Kamala Harris was able to narrow the gap on economic issues from where Joe Biden stood earlier in the year, in the end, was this simply it's an economy stupid election?

**We're excited that we'll be back in 2025 with a brand new season. Our guests will include people who live and breathe politics - like us! - and plenty who do not. We'll be back soon in the New Year, but for now, enjoy our final show of 2024.**