I'm back! (With a July maternity leave edition of "Ask Away")
On the outlook for the midterms (and what Dobbs did and didn't change), why Carlos Sainz is my favorite F1 driver, and whether Wally is bonding with his new roommate.
Welcome to Codebook, a newsletter that decodes our world through polling and research.
This edition—"Ask Away!"—is a monthly feature rounding up the best reader questions.
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Hello friends! First things first: welcome Baby Ellie! Eliana Christine Anderson was born two weeks ago and motherhood has been a delight so far. Many of you have sent lovely words of encouragement and I am so grateful for all of them. (Read on for updates on Wally + Baby, an unbeatable combination.)
I also want to take a moment to give a special thanks to Emily Fisher and Eric Bazail-Eimil. They were the student leaders for Georgetown University's fellows program when I was a fellow this spring. For the last few months in this newsletter, I have noted that the best way to submit a question is to send me a Will Buxton video on Cameo. (Will Buxton is a prominent Formula 1 media commentator and one of the breakout stars of Drive to Survive, more on that show below.)
At any rate - Emily and Eric did in fact send me a Will Buxton Cameo! It happened! Thank you to both of them for being so thoughtful and putting a smile on a very sleep-deprived new mom's face.
Now, on to your questions. As always, thank you to everyone who submitted a question this month, and if you want to get a question in for a future Ask Away, there are a few ways to do it.
1. Comment on Bulletin under any post. I see all the comments!
2. Comment on a post on my Kristen Soltis Anderson writer Facebook page or send a message to that profile. I read your notes!
3. Reply to me on other social media platforms (Instagram and Twitter: @ksoltisanderson).
4. As noted above - send me a Will Buxton Cameo. Or a Chris Medland Cameo! I'm very responsive to this particular medium.
On to your questions!
First up, from Nick H.:
How much do you think Roe will mobilize the left in the midterms? Thanks!!
This is a big question now that we've had a few weeks since the Dobbs decision came out. Truthfully, I don't have a single confident answer to this. There's still too much time between now and November and too many variables still in play. So to answer your question, I'm going to sketch out the factors that I would keep an eye on to see if Dobbs and the overturning of Roe v. Wade are having an effect on the midterm election outlook.
1. Does intensity of emotion around the issue stay much higher on the Democratic side? The importance of abortion as an issue has increased a little bit in polls since the Dobbs decision. Not by a lot, but by a little - particularly among Democrats and younger voters. I wrote about this in my Monday Data Digest:
Abortion is really only up there as a top concern with younger voters...[who] are less likely to turn out in a midterm year...the young Americans who are Instagramming about their anger over Dobbs might not actually make their way to a voting booth in November, and the polling models reflect that reality.
The question then is whether this is fueling anger among high-propensity voters who were already going to turn out, popping up as an issue among low-propensity voters, and crucially whether it converts any of those low-propensity voters into likely voters. So far, the "generic ballot" - the question where we track whether voters say they plan to vote for Republicans or Democrats in November - has not changed very much since the Dobbs decision.
Whether this issue remains motivational to low-propensity voters or whether it pushes swing voters from the Republican to Democratic camps in a few months will depend on...
2. How do red states and Republican candidates respond? As I've written about before in this newsletter, there are some policies around abortion that are broadly popular or accepted by a majority of Americans (such as a ban on third-trimester abortions of a ban around 15 weeks) and some policies that are too restrictive and do not generally get majority support (six-week bans without exceptions). In Florida, Gov. DeSantis signed into law a fifteen-week ban. But other states have pushed for policies that are much more restrictive. In Virginia, Gov. Glenn Youngkin has indicated he would support a similar measure.
But there are also laws that are ambiguous (or in some cases unambiguous) and lead to things like doctors being worried about the liability of treating pregnant patients with tragic, life-threatening situations who require termination of their pregnancy for heart-wrenching, legitimate medical reasons.
There's also the fallout of how policies aimed at curbing abortion might spill into other aspects of women's health care that are much less controversial or do not involve terminating pregnancies at all. In Missouri, for instance, there is debate about whether the state's new law would prohibit treatment of ectopic pregnancies (a situation which in my view should not even be in the same conversation as abortion). Some may say this is an unfair reading of the law. But while some states, like Ohio, have passed six-week bans that they say explicitly exempt ectopic pregnancies, it was a recently as 2019 where a bill was introduced in the Ohio legislature that literally would have required doctors to "re-implant an ectopic pregnancy"...which is not a thing that is possible.
Efforts to ban abortions induced by medication could, if clumsily enacted or enforced, lead to curbed access to these drugs for women who require them for medical management of a miscarriage. There are also worries about reducing the training of doctors on procedures such as "dilation and curettage" (D&C), a procedure used for abortions but also for women whose unborn babies have already passed away (therefore: not an abortion) and require surgical management of their heartbreaking and painful situation.
And this is just the policy fallout, to say nothing of the rhetoric. All it might take to move the needle are a few Jim Bopps (the Indiana lawyer who said under his preferred laws, the Ohio ten-year-old who traveled to Indiana for an abortion would have been required to carry her pregnancy to term) or other candidates saying things...how do I put this delicately...wildly out of step with public opinion.
The bottom line is that there are a lot of Americans who might be ok with a fifteen-week ban on abortions with some additional exceptions, or policies that look more like what you'd find in Europe. However, those same voters are likely completely uninterested in making life harder for women suffering miscarriages, or in banning abortion as early as six weeks, or who think it is insane to require a ten-year-old assault victim to carry a pregnancy to term.
The policy and rhetoric that emerges in a post-Roe world can go many different directions, and that may determine if and how voters factor this into their decision making in November.
3. What else happens between now and November? The overturning of a nearly fifty-year Supreme Court precedent is a big, big deal. But it is not alone as a big, big deal in the news or in the minds of voters. Inflation is 9.1%. Russia is still conducting its invasion of Ukraine. Uvalde. Highland Park. January 6th committee testimony. Record levels of border crossing. Who knows what will happen in the next few months? This isn't just about Dobbs, it is part of how I am evaluating any "How will Issue X affect the midterms" question.
Next up is a question from Tom G. via Instagram:
What if anything do you change in your polling when polls to date indicate a "wave election"?
In general, your polling methods should not necessarily change depending on whether the election is likely to be a wave or a nail-biter. You want to engage in good sampling techniques and so on no matter what result is expected.
However, if there is reason to believe turnout will be much higher among certain types of voters or much lower among others, factoring that into your weighting assumptions is important. If you are finding heightened enthusiasm among Republican voters or apathy among pockets of Democratic voters, you don't want to just assume the 2022 electorate will look like the 2018 electorate.
Pollsters may also look at the "undecideds" in their polls a little bit differently in a "wave" year. The conventional wisdom is that in an "wave" year, those who are undecided usually break with the wave toward the end, so a poll showing R+2 but with a few points of undecideds could wind up with a race result of R+5 and it wouldn't be that odd (or even a "miss" per se).
Next question! From our favorite repeat customer, Josh G.:
If Dems win WH in 24, will we see another insurrection like Oathkeepers spox suggested?
I believe Josh is referring to Jason Van Tatenhove, who left the Oathkeepers before January 6th but has provided insight into the group's operations and motives through commentary and testimony. I think the answer to this question depends very much on who Republicans nominate in 2024 and whether ballots are counted in an efficient and effective manner (states like New York and Pennsylvania have got to get their act together because long, drawn-out counting creates a breeding ground for conspiracy theories).
I'm going to also slightly dodge answering this robustly in this newsletter and tease that next week I am a guest on a major podcast where we spend about ninety minutes on this question, so stay tuned to my Facebook page - I will post the link as soon as that podcast is live!
Two related questions, one from reader Chad S...
Who is your favorite F1 driver?
And one from reader Chris J.:
What got you into being an F1 fan?
I've been aware of and somewhat interested in motorsports my whole life as a result of being my father's daughter. Because I grew up in central Florida, he would take me to Daytona night practice and such. There's a great photo of him and me when I'm super young and we are wearing matching "Sebring '84" t-shirts.
But I was never really interested in Formula 1 because my general impression of it was "doesn't the same guy win all the time?" (That "guy" being Michael Schumacher.) So it wasn't until last summer when, out of things to binge watch, my friends Chris and Shannon suggested I watch Drive to Survive on Netflix. I believe my husband and I started watching it on a Friday evening, planning to watch one or two episodes, and it turned into that Portlandia sketch about Battlestar Galactica. "One more episode!" We had mowed through all three available seasons within a week. We also found the show to be extremely re-watchable. I think I've watched the Sebastian Vettel "We Need To Talk About Ferrari" episode from Season 3 a hundred times.
Then, we had a case of "right place, right time". We finished our binge right before last year's British Grand Prix, making that our first actual race to experience once we had learned who all the drivers and teams were. That race, at the iconic Silverstone track in the UK, had major controversy, and was followed by an absolutely bonkers run of events (huge crash on Turn 1 at Hungaroring! The Belgian Grand Prix getting totally rained out! Abu Dhabi!) and a dramatic title fight that totally, completely, utterly hooked me.
As for who my favorite driver is, it is Carlos Sainz Jr., a Spanish driver who is currently with Ferrari. Why is he my favorite? So many reasons, but a lot has to do with what you see of his life and personality in Drive to Survive. For instance, he jokes about how people assume since he's a Formula 1 driver he must drive a fancy car, but no, he's pops around Madrid in a VW Golf. He's clearly very close with his family, including his father Carlos Sainz Sr., legendary rally car driver. Other drivers have drama and rivalries but it just seems like everyone really, really likes Carlos. Thus, I do too.
Last but not least, from Nicole D.:
Has Wally tried to lick Ellie yet?
Oh yes. Almost immediately. He has licked her feet and the top of her head. He is a combination of apprehensive about her and protective of her. He likes to break into her nursery in the middle of the night and sleep next to her crib. He grows concerned when she cries. But we also have to monitor him when he's around her, because he's a big galoof and doesn't realize how strong he is; the last thing we want is him pawing at her asking for pets. Babies and golden retrievers are an unbeatable combination and I look forward to their bond growing as Ellie gets older and more able to interact with him.
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That's all for this month! Don't forget - send in your questions for Ask Away, August Edition! Thanks for your patience during my absence, I look forward to being back to a normal cadence of newslettering in a few short weeks.
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