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Over the weekend, in a November surprise, Democratic Representative Haley Stevens, who lost the Michigan primary for U.S. Senate, appeared at Bishop Marvin Winans’s church in Detroit alongside the Republican candidate, Mike Rogers. She endorsed him soon after, but insisted that she was “not turning my back on Democrats.”
Her endorsement sparked anger among Democrats, who argued that even a vote for Rogers is as good as support for President Trump and his policy agenda—but an endorsement of Rogers is, as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer put it, a “despicable betrayal.”
Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee, returned only a small barb as he tried to stay on message: “I actually don’t think about Haley Stevens,” he told a gaggle of reporters. “This is a state of 10 million people who deserve a lot better from their government. I’m a lot more focused on the 9,999,998 that are not” Stevens and Rogers.
Many of those voters have been clear about their concerns: They want the government to be less corrupt; they want everyday items to be more affordable; they want an end to the war in Iran. On this week’s episode, my colleagues Gabby Deutch and David A. Graham join me to discuss the issues on voters’ minds as they head into the voting booth, and what the officials they elect can actually do to make them better.
The following is a transcript of the episode:
Gabby Deutch: I was just in in Pennsylvania, and I chatted with a couple of college students at East Stroudsburg University, a small school in the Poconos, and they were two guys who had voted for Trump two years ago, and they said, He promised he wouldn’t get us into any more wars, and now our fraternity brother just shipped out to the Middle East. He is in the military and got deployed. And it’s not just about the issues; it’s a sense of feeling lied to.
Adam Harris: This is Radio Atlantic. I’m Adam Harris, and the election is finally here.
The weekend featured a rare November surprise in Michigan, and candidates who’ve been barnstorming their districts and states for months made their final arguments to voters.
My colleagues, Atlantic staff writers Gabby Deutsch and David Graham, joined me to discuss why corruption might be a winning message, how young voters are feeling, and which candidates seem to be delivering actual policy proposals that resonate.
But before we get to questions, I want to remind you that tomorrow, November 3, Radio Atlantic co-host Hanna Rosin and I will be hosting an Election Night livestream starting at 9 p.m.eastern time , where we’ll discuss results and the ideas driving the nation.
All right, let’s get to questions.
Gabby, David—welcome to the show.
David Graham: Thanks for having me.
Deutch: It’s great to be here.
Harris: Gabby, I wanna start with you. We got a rare November surprise over the weekend when Haley Stevens, the Democratic primary challenger to Abdul El-Sayed, endorsed the Republican Senate candidate, Mike Rogers. Can you just sort of walk us through: What happened there?
Deutch: I think that’s the question that we’re still trying to really find the answer to, in a certain extent. But Haley Stevens lost the Senate primary, of course, to El-Sayed in a pretty close and rather contentious race. It seemed pretty clear over the last few months that they were not the best of friends, to put it mildly, but she did endorse him in the Democratic ticket. Over the last week, things have heated up a bit. There was an ad that came out, not from El-Sayed’s campaign, but promoting him.
Harris: Yeah, let’s talk about that ad for a second. It’s from an outside group, and it tries to tie the high cost of groceries to America’s military support for Israel.
Deutch: And Haley Stevens called on him to condemn that more strongly than he did. He ultimately did distance himself. But through all of it, she said she was still standing by her support for him. And then in the last 48-ish hours, there was a bunch of action on that front. They were going to campaign together, the two of them, at a unity rally in Detroit. And then Haley Stevens put out this statement. El-Sayed said she wasn’t welcome. She was still saying she was endorsing him. And then on Sunday morning, we woke up and saw that Haley Stevens was at church with Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee. I think the question of what exactly changed overnight is still pretty open, and I think all of the campaign reporters in the country are trying to find the answer. But yeah, now we have the loser in the Democratic primary for Senate endorsing the Republican. It’s pretty crazy.
Harris: I guess my question out of that, right—because but you mentioned, right, she’s a loser in the Democratic primary; she’s an outgoing congresswoman at this point. It seemed that Democrats pretty quickly coalesced around, kind of, condemning her endorsement. So does this actually change anything outside of her vote and her support?
Deutch: There is a contingent of some Jewish Democrats and pro-Israel Democrats within Michigan who, since the primary—people who had supported Stevens’s campaign said that they were not going to support El-Sayed. And some in that camp endorsed Rogers. Some said they were going to sit the race out. So that’s been, you know, kind of a small force happening throughout the election. I’m not sure that Stevens making the decision to endorse Rogers really grows it. It’s already been building, kind of, organically in a section of the Jewish community that’s unhappy with El-Sayed’s language about Israel and Zionism and some Jewish-aligned issues. But, you know, I think we’ve seen from the Rogers campaign—they’re obviously very excited about this and hoping that if there are people who are still on the fence at this point. And El-Sayed and Rogers are pulling—El-Sayed seems to be in the lead, but it’s closer than in the governor’s race in Michigan as well. So if there were holdouts who were looking for a sign, I think maybe, you know, for that handful of people who could be relevant—or who could be decisive—that is, you know, they think perhaps this is the thing that does it.
Harris: Yeah. David—El-Sayed said:
Abdul El-Sayed: At the end of the day, I actually don’t think about Haley Stevens. See what I’m saying? I think about the, like I said, the 9,999,998 people who are not those two. Because you know what? I’m just less interested in the politics of it all than I am the policy of it all.
Harris: And there are several big issues, right, driving the voters to the polls in this election, right? Affordability, economy, health care, war in Iran. But you also recently wrote about how corruption is weighing on voters’ minds in this election cycle. What are the polls telling us about what voters are thinking about?
Graham: Yeah, I was just really struck looking at some of the late polling, just in the last couple weeks, sort of mid-to-late October. Several polls from Fox News, from the Financial Times, from CNBC, all found corruption topping voters’ list of issues. And that’s striking because we’ve seen so much focus on affordability, and I think rightly so. It is kind of a truism of, you know, data-informed political reporting that money issues are what moves votes. And here we have a case where corruption, which is not purely a money issue, is at the top of lists.
To me I think what we see is—surprisingly, given the party’s, kind of, chaos, including in that Michigan race—a, kind of, success of Democratic messaging where they’ve managed to put together the kind of democratic, you know, pro-democracy concerns that some people thought were a political loser and these economic concerns into a package and be like, What this election is about is corruption. And I think that’s a way for them to attack Republicans across the board.
Harris: Yeah. Gabby, you’ve been on the ground talking to voters in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and you’re heading to Michigan today to cover Election Day. What are you hearing from voters in those states?
Deutch: I think corruption, actually, to David’s point, is a huge issue. And it’s a little surprising because Democrats have been talking for years about, right, the threats to democracy from Trump, oligarchy, corruption, but it hasn’t quite gotten through. But now when the prices of everything is so high, that message lands in a different way. And so I think that’s consistent for any Democrat who’s doing well right now, and I mean, and talking to voters as well—I was just in Pennsylvania, and I chatted with a couple of college students at a at East Stroudsburg University, a small school in the Poconos, and they were two guys who had voted for Trump two years ago, and they said, He promised he wouldn’t get us into any more wars, and now our fraternity brother just shipped out to the Middle East. He is in the military and got deployed. And it’s not just about the issues; it’s a sense of feeling lied to. And I think there’s a lot of that right now, and Democrats are trying to tap into that anger.
Harris: Yeah. David, kind of to that point, right? It’s the ability to put one to one, right? You said you weren’t going to start a foreign war. Now my fraternity brother is being sent overseas. You said that you were going to lower the price of these everyday items. And we’ve heard about this thing that’s happening in Iran, and now my gas is more expensive. How much does—
Graham: You said you would release the Epstein files, and now it looks like you’re covering them up—which is another, sort of a different, form of corruption, but I think it matches in there too. Yeah.
Harris: Yeah. So Gabby, you know, thinking about those young folks in Pennsylvania—you mentioned that these were Trump supporters. Is this a broader thing, or does it seem as if this is a broader thing?
Deutch: I think these couple of voters that I spoke to are certainly indicative of some larger trends we’re seeing, which is namely that among a lot of the youngest voters—you know, these are people who are 21 and 22. There’s not really a sense of party loyalty, at least not yet. And, you know, I think a decade or so ago, the conventional wisdom was that young voters were pretty liberal. But then a couple years ago, we saw a big swing among younger voters towards Trump. I think what we’re seeing in this election—and there’s, you know, polling and research that indicates this as well—is that young voters are very much up for grabs and they want to feel like they’re voting for a leader who is not going to lie to them, for example, and not going to say, I’m gonna stay out of wars, and then start a war in Iran. So I would call young voters very much a swing group, and I think a lot of campaigns are recognizing that.
Harris: The thing that I’ve been wondering is people sort of call this the “anger election,” but anger only, sort of, lasts so long. I guess, is this something that Democrats see as sustainable for not just maybe 2026, but on towards 2028?
Graham: Well, I think there’s a question of campaign, and there’s a question of governing. Corruption is a really good message for people. And you know, I think voters are always upset about corruption. They tend to think the government is corrupt. Maybe we’re reaching a kind of tipping point, because some of the instances that we have seen have been so brazen—you know, hidden donations to a White House ballroom and so on and so forth. So maybe there is a tipping point.
But the problem is really what happens when you get in government. Because you see voters of both parties who are upset about this. But we see a, kind of, hamstrung government. Let’s say Democrats ride this messaging to a win in the House and the Senate. What are they going to do once they’re in? Okay, they can launch a lot of investigations, which will uncover more corruption. They can maybe even impeach some Cabinet members. We’ll see. But, you know, it’s an open question how much difference they can make when they do not—you know, they only have control of one or two houses of Congress. And I think this gets to the general sort of “calcification,” as political scientists call it, of electoral politics and of policy. When no party has a clear majority or could win an outright majority because things are so closely divided, it’s hard to really have lasting policy change. And I think that’s one reason voters are frustrated and voters are disillusioned, and so many voters say the country is on the wrong path.
Harris: Gabby, when you’re talking to people, are there things that they say, you know, actively might excite them? Are there, sort of, affirmative visions for what they would be willing to vote for outside of what they’re willing to vote against?
Deutch: I think for a lot of the voters that I spoke with, it’s pretty simple what they want. Government actually doing it is another question. They want lower prices. A lot of people want to see an end to the war with Iran. Even for supporters of the war with Iran who, let’s say, want to see the Iranian regime taken down—that, as we’ve now seen from several months of this, that’s not an easy thing to do. And so when I was in Ohio, Sherrod Brown, you know, would give this stump speech, and he spoke pretty straightforwardly. When I’m elected, I’m going to end the Iran war, end the tariffs, and lower gas prices. And those are three great things to say. To do those things and actually make sure that they come with, you know, a decrease in the cost of living to change the quality-of-life concerns that voters have is obviously a lot harder. And I think a lot of this is, you know, Let’s try to ride this, this wave of anger, and once we get to Washington, we’ll figure it out.
Graham: I’ve been seeing a similar thing in North Carolina, where we have a Senate race and Roy Cooper, the Democrat, is expected to win very comfortably. And Cooper’s been out on this “make stuff cost less” tour. That’s kind of his headline approach for campaigning. And you know, he spent eight years as a popular governor and I think is used to being able to do things, but as one senator, maybe in the majority and maybe not, I don’t know how much impact he’s going to be able to have. And so I wonder about the, you know, about the wisdom or about the value of these kinds of promises.
Deutch: Well, I just said one thing, which is—and I don’t know the likelihood of this actually coming to fruition, but I have seen a lot of, among particularly some congressional swing seats in Pennsylvania where the Democratic candidates are talking about ending stock trading among members of Congress. That’s something that, to the corruption point, seems to be coming up a lot and perhaps resonating more with voters this year: this idea that—and this is directly what I heard some candidates say—that members of Congress are learning information, let’s say, about the war, and then they’re able to trade stocks in defense companies and get rich off of your sorrow as Americans. So I think we’ll see more of a push on that front. I don’t know how likely that actually will be to happen.
Harris: Are there any other candidates who might have laid out other policies, right? So thinking about corruption, are there candidates who’ve laid out policy visions that actually seem, right, practical? Because like you said, David, for the next two years, if Democrats do win power in the House, they’ll have investigatory power over, you know, different members of the Cabinet, members of the administration. But for two years it’s going to be, it would be a lame-duck session, right? So there wouldn’t be a lot of legislating happening. But are there, sort of, policy ideas being laid out to address those other concerns that voters have that seem that they could be in a reasonable timeline?
Graham: Well you know, Trump was saying in the last few days that if Democrats win Congress, he will become Mr. Veto, which seems like he’s right about that. I think Gabby’s example of the stock-trading ban is a really interesting one, because that’s the kind of thing that you could imagine actually winning bipartisan support. In fact, we’ve seen versions of this law that are just not really, don’t have teeth, attempted. That’s a bipartisan enough thing; you could imagine Republicans backing it and Trump having to then either sign it or veto it. But it’s hard to think of other things. For example, you know, if we talk about health care; if we talk about—you know, it’s hard to imagine what Republicans and Democrats would agree on. It’s hard to imagine Democrats forcing an end to the war. It’s just the things that they have power over from Congress, I think, are fairly limited.
Deutch: I think we’ll see, if Democrats take power in the House and/or the Senate, some efforts to try to reverse some of the changes and cuts that were made by the Trump administration to Medicare and Medicaid and health care more broadly. That’s challenging when there is legislation that was passed by Congress that Trump signed implementing some of those cuts. But I would imagine there will be, you know, ways to look at that and make sure some people keep health-care coverage who were going to lose it. But that’s not something that’s going to be easy for Democrats, certainly.
Harris: When we return, Gabby and David tell me the races they’ll be following most closely on Election Night.
[Break]
Harris: So the president rallied in Kansas and Iowa over the weekend. He’s expected to speak Monday at the Reflecting Pool in Washington to make a closing pitch to voters.
Graham: It’s fascinating to make your closing pitch in front of a huge symbol of incompetence during your administration.
Harris: Yeah, you know, and David, I was gonna say—because we spoke about this back in July, right? That, you know, given the ways that this venue, sort of, exemplifies, highlights that disconnect between the president’s, the things that he values, right? The appearance of the nation’s capital and building the archway and, you know, the Reflecting Pool and the things that voters say that they care about, which is like trying to get to work and it’s way more expensive than it used to be. What does that exemplify about that misalignment between the president and the voters? And is there any way that he’s trying to close that gap in this last couple of days?
Graham: Yeah, I mean I obviously don’t know what’s going to happen in the election, but to the extent that Republicans are on the defensive, I think Trump’s handling of the last few days of the campaign show that. Having a rally at the Reflection Pool does that. These rallies in Kansas and Iowa do that too. The White House announced they were canceling these rallies. And then Trump seems to have been basically goaded into putting them back on the schedule because a reporter for Reuters asked him if he was sick or if he wasn’t feeling well and why he was canceling them. And he seems to have reacted to that with a, like, Okay, well then, I’ll just go ahead and do it, although not without sort of tasteless remarks about the reporter’s physique. And that lack of discipline or a guiding principle or sort of interest in what voters actually care about, I think is why Republicans are in a difficult spot and why, you know, the president has become something of an albatross for many of them.
Harris: So tomorrow is Election Night. What will you both be watching for, right? Are there races that you’ll be paying attention to that could be sort of bellwethers for the rest of the night? And Gabby, I’ll start with you.
Deutch: Sure, I’ll talk a little bit again about Pennsylvania. Just something that I found very interesting on my trip there last week is that Josh Shapiro, who’s running for reelection, and polling shows him ahead of his Republican opponent 25 points, which is sort of—I mean, he’s very popular, but it’s still pretty shocking in a state that Trump won two years ago. He’s hardly even campaigning for reelection. Really, what he’s doing is, kind of, this tour around the state promoting state and local candidates, and also four Democrats running in swing congressional seats. And he wants to be able to say, I flipped Congress, to say, I gave Democrats this check on Trump. And those, I think, four seats are places that I’ll be watching.
Paige Cognetti, for example, the mayor of Scranton, who’s running against a congressman named Rob Bresnahan, or Janelle Stelson, who is running against Scott Perry, who is a prominent supporter of election deniers and promoting election-related conspiracy theories. So those are a couple of the races that I’ll be watching.
And then in Michigan, where I’ll be spending Election Day and Night and some time this week, just how much of, as we’ve spoken about, of an impact Stevens’s endorsement of Rogers has and looking at the difference between how El-Sayed does and Jocelyn Benson, who’s a Democrat running for governor, who is polling a lot better than El-Sayed. And so is she and,kind of, the general anger at Republicans going to be able to pull El-Sayed over the finish line, despite some of these interruptions that he probably rather would not have dealt with in the closing days?
Harris: Yeah. David, same question to you.
Graham: I guess a couple of races I’ll be looking for just as indicators are the New Hampshire Senate race and the South Carolina Senate race. And so in both of those cases—in New Hampshire we expect Democrat Chris Pappas to win. In South Carolina we expect Republican Darline Graham to win. But how close those races are, I think, will be a useful indicator. If John Sununu keeps that close in New Hampshire, I think it’s not gonna be an overwhelming night for Democrats. If, on the other hand, Annie Andrews is very close to Darline Graham in South Carolina, that’s a sign that Republicans are going to be on the ropes for the rest of the evening. And so those might be early signs. But I mean, the other thing that I am really desperately trying to do is not to overreact to early results. I have been thinking back to the 2018 election, when, on Election Night, a lot of commentators declared that there was no blue wave and that it had been a real underwhelming night for Democrats. And then after a lot of races that were close or hadn’t been counted yet came in, it turned out to be a pretty good night for Democrats. So I just, I’m trying to remind myself that we really don’t know on Election Night. There’ll be a lot of races we can’t tell, and I’m going to try to hold my analysis until I have a better sense of the whole picture.
Deutch: I was just going to follow David and say that his reminder is the most important one and we all like to spend our evenings on Election Day on Twitter and calling people as soon as the polls close. And at that point, no one knows anything, including all the people that we’re calling. It’s always a good reminder to ourselves as journalists to not be drawing those conclusions too early.
Harris: Yeah, absolutely. Well, David, Gabby, thank you so much for joining me and helping us better understand what to pay attention to; what, maybe, to give a little less credence to; and also, we’ll be following your reporting as Election Day moves on and into the next couple of weeks. So thank you so much for joining.
Deutsch: Thank you.
Graham: Thank you.
Harris: That’s all for today’s show. Don’t forget, this Tuesday night, November 3, we’re going to host a special Election Night livestream. I’ll be joined by my Radio Atlantic co-host, Hanna Rosin, where we’ll be talking with Atlantic staff writers like Tom Nichols, Mark Leibovich, and Tyler Austin Harper, among others, about the midterm results as they come in and their theories about where the nation could be headed. We’ll be live for two hours starting at 9 p.m. eastern.
This episode of Radio Atlantic was produced by Mike Pesoli and edited by Hadley Robinson. It was engineered by Miguel Carrascal and has original music by Rob Smierciak. Claudine Ebeid is the executive producer of podcasts, and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor.
If you like what you saw here, new episodes of Radio Atlantic drop every Monday and Thursday. You can subscribe on The Atlantic’s YouTube page, on Apple or Spotify, or wherever it is you get your podcasts. And if you want to support this work and the work of my colleagues, you can subscribe to the publication at TheAtlantic.com/Listener.
Until next time, I’m Adam Harris.
