The Odd Years

We took a late summer break, but we're back with a new slate of really great interviews! When we started this year, redistricting was not something we thought would be driving our politics this cycle. But, of course, that's no longer the case with Texas unleashing a domino effect of redistricting efforts across the country.Thankfully, we know someone really well who can help us understand what's happening: The Cook Political Report's very own David Wasserman.If you follow Dave on X, you know him as Redistrict.Redistricting itself is a topic Dave's been fascinated with for a very long time. He was pouring over maps and congressional data as a kid, which we talk about in this conversation. (It's pretty adorable.) Now as one of the most trusted sources in the country on congressional maps, we literally can't think of anyone better to help us navigate this complicated and unprecedented mid-cycle redrawing of districts.We recorded this conversation on Thursday, September 11th.Check out our CPR 2025-2026 Redistricting Tracker: https://www.cookpolitical.com/analysis/house/redistricting/2025-2026-redistricting-tracker-how-many-seats-could-flip-0You can watch part of the conversation our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@thecookpoliticalreportSign up for our free weekly newsletter, In Brief: https://www.cookpolitical.com/in-brief-sign-upInterested in subscribing to CPR? Go to: www.cookpolitical.com/subscribe.Listeners can use the discount code"ODD10" to save 10% on any subscription. This offer is available only to new subscribers.

Back in 2023, Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini wrote a book that laid out a path for how the party could win future elections with a working class multiracial coalition.Later that year, Amy talked with Patrick on this very podcast where they discussed whether Trump could expand his base to include those voters of color. Well, as we saw, he did. In fact, in 2016, the coalition that elected Trump was 88% white. By 2024, it was down to just 78% white.So we wanted to have Patrick Ruffini back on for a conversation about how well that same coalition is holding up six months into Trump 2.0, whether these voters will show up for Republicans in 2026, and whether the next Republican nominee for president will have a similar appeal these voters.Patrick is a partner and pollster for Echelon Insights and writes a great Substack, The Intersection.Also, a quick programming note: we are taking a bit of a summer break in August, but never fear! We'll be back in September with new episodes of The Odd Years. You can watch part of the conversation our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@thecookpoliticalreportSign up for our free weekly newsletter, In Brief: https://www.cookpolitical.com/in-brief-sign-upInterested in subscribing to CPR? Go to: www.cookpolitical.com/subscribe.Listeners can use the discount code"ODD10" to save 10% on any subscription. This offer is available only to new subscribers.

This week we are diverging from our normal Odd Years format to introduce you to another Cook Political Report product, Editors Roundtable.This podcast features a rotating cast of our Cook Political Report team breaking down the latest news, analysis and insights about the most important House, Senate and Gubernatorial contests in the country. We like to think of this podcast as an opportunity for you to get the behind the scenes access to the conversations we are having at our weekly Cook Political Report editorial meetings. This week, our talented colleagues talk about the most interesting and consequential state in the 2026 midterms: Michigan. The Wolverine state has it all; a three-way gubernatorial contest featuring the former Democratic Mayor of Detroit, who is running as an Independent; competitive primaries for one of the most competitive Senate races in the country, and a slew of critical House contests that could determine control of Congress next year. And, we can’t have a conversation about Michigan without using a mitt (in this case our Managing Editor’s own oven mitt), to help illustrate where each important congressional district and key cities are located in the state. That “U” shape between the thumb and index finger, that’s Detroit, BTW. We hope you enjoy this episode. And, more importantly, if you do like it, and to hear more of it, subscribe to the Cook Political Report where you can get the kind of deeply sourced, non-partisan and accurate analysis of every race up in 2025 and 2026. Go to: www.cookpolitical.com/subscribe. Listeners can use the discount code"ODD10" to save 10% on any subscription. This offer is available only to new subscribers. You can also get Editors Roundtable for just $1.99 a month on Apple podcast.Read Jessica on Michigan's open Senate seat here: https://www.cookpolitical.com/analysis/senate/michigan-senate/republicans-aim-avoid-messy-michigan-senate-primary-may-not-getRead Erin's 2026 House analysis here: https://www.cookpolitical.com/analysis/house/michigan-house/2026-michigan-house-analysis-democrats-fight-upper-hand

President Trump's signature legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, is crawling its way through Congress. Having passed the House by a single vote, the so-called BBB is in the Senate where various Republican factions - the fiscal hawks, the centrists, the populists - are divided over how to resolve their many competing priorities over the national debt, Medicaid, and tax cuts to name a few.What's driving these ideological differences among Senate and House Republicans? What role has Trump played and will he play in continuing to lobby Congress? And will the BBB move fast enough to be on President Trump’s desk by July fourth? (Spoiler alert: it will not.) Amy put all these questions to Leigh Ann Caldwell, chief Washington correspondent for Puck.A quick note: we recorded this conversation on Wednesday, June 4th, as the Elon Musk and President Trump breakup was beginning, but before it burst into the full view. And it appears the falling out has been driven, at least in part, over Musk's opposition to the Big Beautiful Bill. But as Amy has said, she doesn't believe this changes the calculus for Congressional Republicans. You can watch part of the conversation our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@thecookpoliticalreportSign up for our free weekly newsletter, In Brief: https://www.cookpolitical.com/in-brief-sign-upLearn more about The Cook Political Report: www.cookpolitical.com/subscribe

When we booked this episode with Pod Save America co-host Dan Pfeiffer several weeks back, our plan was to talk about the Democrats and their strategy and messaging around Trump - something Dan's been writing about for his Substack, Message Box. Should Democrats just focus on the economy? Should they raise alarm bells over deportations? How loudly and strongly should they push back against Trump?And we do discuss that, but as it turned out, there was a lot more to talk about with Dan. For one, as a former Obama senior adviser, Amy wanted to ask his thoughts on the new reporting coming out about Joe Biden's health and how his inner circle worked to conceal it. In addition to that, we received an important report from the data firm Catalist about 2024 voters, shedding more light on why Kamala Harris lost and Donald Trump won. As a fellow data nerd, I knew Dan would be ready to dive into it.We recorded this on Wednesday, May 21st.You can watch our entire conversation on our YouTube channel.Sign up for our free weekly newsletter, In Brief: https://www.cookpolitical.com/in-brief-sign-upLearn more about The Cook Political Report: www.cookpolitical.com/subscribe

Rahm Emanuel has held many titles: Congressman from Illinois, DCCC Chairman, Chief of Staff to Barack Obama, Mayor of Chicago, and Ambassador to Japan under President Biden.These days, he doesn't have an official position at the moment. But that's not stopping him from giving some very pointed advice to Democrats on every possible platform: cable TV, political shows, podcasts, late night TV, and different political conferences.So how does Rahm Emanuel think Democrats should be responding to Trump 2.0? How does the party recover from 2024 and prepare for 2028? What does a successful midterm strategy look like in 2026? And given his own, let's say, active media schedule, what are his own plans for the future?He came on to talk to Amy about all that.We recorded this conversation on Wednesday, May 14th. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter, In Brief: https://www.cookpolitical.com/in-brief-sign-upLearn more about The Cook Political Report: www.cookpolitical.com/subscribe

You may know our guest today, Josh Holmes, as one of the hosts of the popular political podcast, Ruthless.For those of you who don't know, Ruthless is to the conservative media sphere as Pod Save America is to the liberal media ecosystem.But long before he started his podcasting gig, Amy knew Josh as a Republican political operative.He was chief of staff to Mitch McConnell and ran his 2014 re-election campaign. He also had a stint at the National Republican Senate Committee. He now runs the public affairs firm, Cavalry, and he's still actively giving advice to Republican candidates.Josh's two roles as a member of the new media and a seasoned Republican political hand gives him unique perspective into our current political era. This conversation spans a similar gamut from what advice he'd give to down ballot Republicans for the upcoming midterms to his thoughts on the Trump tariff endgame. Josh also talks about how candidates can best navigate the new media landscape.We recorded this conversation on Wednesday, May 7th. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter, In Brief: https://www.cookpolitical.com/in-brief-sign-upLearn more about The Cook Political Report: www.cookpolitical.com/subscribe

We are 100 days into the second Trump administration and there's no better person to help us understand what voters are making of these first months of Trump 2.0 than Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson.Kristen is a founding partner of Echelon Insights, an opinion research and analytics firm. She's a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and an on air political contributor at CNN.Quick disclaimer: we taped this conversation on Thursday, April 24th, before the flurry of 100 day polls were released this past weekend. That's why you won't hear us asking her about these polls. But the reason we wanted to have Kristen on in the first place was that we didn't want to get caught up in the immediate set of data. We wanted Kristen to do what she does best which is to filter the signal from the noise, present a 30,000 view of the political environment rather than focusing on the minutiae or just small movements in data. What we like about Kristen so much is that she's able to to toggle seamlessly between reading cross tabs but also probing voters in focus groups and really listening to what they are saying or not saying, and then explaining it to regular people in a way that is approachable but not condescending.That's why we were especially excited to talk with her about a presidency as complicated and unprecedented as Trump's.Sign up for our free weekly newsletter, In Brief: https://www.cookpolitical.com/in-brief-sign-upLearn more about The Cook Political Report: www.cookpolitical.com/subscribe

Way back in the late 1990s, Cook Political Report founder Charlie Cook had an idea to rank all 435 congressional districts by their partisanship - in other words, whether a district is more Republican or more Democratic.That way, we'd be able to see, at a quick glance, which members of Congress represented districts that were either slightly or strongly partisan. For example, is a certain Republican representative in a very solid Republican seat…. or in one that is only slightly red… or even one that was blue or blue leaning?Thus was born the Cook PVI, which stands for Partisan Voting Index. And since 1998, CPR has released a new addition every two years.This admittedly very geeky undertaking is also something we get really excited about because it cannot only tell us the partisanship of every district, but with more than 25 years of data, we can see how districts have shifted over the years. The person behind the Cook PVI and how it all works is David Wasserman, The Cook Political Report’s senior editor and elections analyst.We invited him on to explain what the Cook PVI is, how we calculate it, what we learned from it for 2025, and what it may tell us about elections in 2026. We recorded this conversation on Wednesday, April 9th. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter, In Brief: https://www.cookpolitical.com/in-brief-sign-upRead Dave’s Cook PVI analysis: https://www.cookpolitical.com/cook-pvi/introducing-2025-cook-partisan-voting-index-slightly-depolarizing-electionLearn more about The Cook Political Report: www.cookpolitical.com/subscribe

On the last podcast, Amy talked with Chauncey McLean, head of the Democratic super PAC Future Forward, about their media strategy for Kamala Harris and why things didn't work out as they had hoped.For this podcast, we turn to the ad strategy of the Trump campaign with John Brabender, the chief creative officer for the media company BrabenderCox.John was hired as Trump's ad consultant in early 2023 and worked with him throughout the entire campaign. He had incredible access to and input from Donald Trump about the ad making process and strategy, which he shares with us here in colorful detail - like what it's like to work on the Trump campaign and, specifically, to work with the president when putting these messages and ads together. We also wanted to talk to John about whether the lessons he learned working for Trump could translate to non-Trump candidates and Republican downballot candidates who have to run in the 2026 midterms.This conversation was recorded on Wednesday, April 2nd.

This is a special episode in your podcast feed. You are about to hear a recent edition of Editors Roundtable, our Cook Political Report podcast where our team of editors trades behind-the-scenes analysis and dives into the weeds on races and elections. If you're a political junkie - and chances are high that you are if you're listening to this - subscribe to Editors Roundtable today in Apple podcasts for just $1.99 a month. You can also listen by subscribing to the Cook Political Report. On this episode, Amy Walter, Erin Covey, and Matthew Klein take a look at our new 2026 House Race Ratings. They go over why these ratings look they way they do right now and explain why they will change over the next 21 months before election day. They also talk about which races they had disagreements over. In two cases, those races fell in districts that have been moving to the right.To read about our 2026 House Race Ratings and see where each race stands go to: www.cookpolitical.com/subscribe

Whether you expected it or not, it seems pretty safe to say that President Trump's first days have been defined by its intensity, a very fast moving news cycle, and often, the trademark chaos we remember from his first term. And that's why we love conversations like this one with The Wall Street Journal's Molly Ball.She's the kind of journalist who offers clearheaded insight into the many twists and turns and helps us consider the bigger questions we should be asking about what success or failure might look like for Trump this time around.So we wanted to have Molly on to give us some context for these early days of Trump's second term. But we also wanted to ask her about how she approaches her job of political storytelling - especially when it involves accessing some of our highest profile politicians - which is what she did when she wrote a book about Nancy Pelosi a few years back. Molly Ball is The Wall Street Journal senior political correspondent. You can check out her podcast, Trump 2.0, which comes out every Friday for the first 100 days of the second Trump administration.Molly is also the author of Pelosi, a biography of Nancy Pelosi, the first woman Speaker of the House. We recorded this conversation on Wednesday, January 29th at 10:30amTo learn more about The Cook Political Report go to www.cookpolitical.com/subscribe

We started The Odd Years in 2023, which was both a literal odd numbered year, and also a political odd year; a year when there were no national elections. But Amy enjoyed these conversations so much - and so did you - that we kept going into 2024 even though it was an even year. We just couldn’t help ourselves. As we head into another odd year, we are ready to launch the third season of The Odd Years. As many of you have noted, our title has a few layers of meaning. Odd describes so much happening in our world now, and we'll get into that with our guests. What's making the times we live in interesting, unpredictable, surprising?Amy will talk to people who live and breathe politics (like ourselves) and plenty who do not. So be sure to follow and listen in.

Presidential elections in Wisconsin the last two cycles have been incredibly close. In 2016 and 2020, they were decided by less than one percentage point. Of course, polling in the state has been notoriously "off" - or maybe fickle - which makes it more important than ever to talk to people who have been covering politics in Wisconsin for quite some time and can help us understand the many whims and changes there. That's why we invited Craig Gilbert to talk today. He is a self-described chronicler of close Wisconsin elections and he calls it one of the "most enduring" of the battleground states. Craig has covered politics in Wisconsin since 1988. He was the Washington bureau chief and national political reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He is now a fellow at Marquette Law School's Lubar Center.

A special episode of The Odd Years: Amy and David catch up with David Axelrod in Milwaukee at the RNC. The three discuss what they're seeing on the ground, their thoughts on the selection of J.D. Vance as Trump's running mate, and the situation for President Biden and the Democrats as they head into their convention in a few weeks. David Axelrod is the founding director of the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago; former Chief Strategist and Senior Advisor to President Obama; senior political commentator at CNN; and host of the podcasts "Hacks on Tap" and "The Axe Files." **Subscribe to the Cook Political Report with our new $99 election season pass. Get the latest analysis, first, from our top-notch team for the next 4 months. Subscribe here: cookpolitical.com/subscribe**

We originally asked our guest today, Michael Podhorzer, to come on to talk about voter demographics. Mike was the longtime political director for the AFL-CIO. He’s now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and he writes a Substack called Weekend Reading. And Mike has been one of the pioneers in Democratic circles using data and analytics to inform campaign strategy. After we invited him on, President Biden had his terrible debate performance and the entire presidential race took a sharp turn. So we’re going to start with the news, and then later we’ll get into some of his big pictures thoughts on horse race polls, education polarization (he has differing opinions from our last guests on this topic), and what he calls “the anti-maga coalition.” Since news is moving fast right now, we recorded this conversation on Tuesday, July 9 at 2pm.

The Cook Political Report's David Wasserman, Jessica Taylor and Erin Covey answer your mailbag questions this week.They weigh in on what Trump's conviction will mean for Republicans in down-ballot races; they go into the weeds on their process for rating two congressional districts in California; they discuss Senate races in Virginia and Minnesota; and they explain why they don't believe in what some are calling a "reverse coattails" dynamic in the presidential race.

Donald Trump is very popular in rural America. Drive down a rural stretch of road, and you are still likely to see Trump flags waving in the breeze or the Trump logo painted on the side of a barn. Rural parts of America have always been conservative-leaning. But Republicans now dominate rural politics from the top of the ticket to the bottom. There have been plenty of books written about how and why Republicans, and Trump in particular, have thrived in rural parts of the country. Our guests today have one of the newest additions to the mix.  Dan Shea and Nick Jacobs are professors at Colby College, and their book is “The Rural Voter: The Politics of Place and the Disuniting of America.” Dan and Nick conducted 10,000 surveys of rural voters. They dug into hundreds of years of voting history to try and understand the voting patterns we are seeing today, and to provide a more nuanced picture of rural voters. 

Amy Walter is joined by her colleague, Cook Political Report Senior Editor and Election Analyst David Wasserman. First, they answer a listener's question on partisan realignment, particularly among education lines. Next, they dive into the question of which House Republicans won by Biden in 2020 are the most endangered.Ask us your questions here or by calling 202-739-8520 (press 8). Remember to say your name and where you are calling from.

Amy is back with a conversation about the new show now streaming on Max, The Girls on the Bus. The show stars Melissa Benoist as Sadie McCarthy, a scrappy and ambitious journalist covering a fictional Democratic presidential primary. It follows Sadie and three other women reporters as they navigate the campaign trail, while juggling their careers, personal lives — and relationships with one another. The Girls on the Bus is inspired by the book “Chasing Hillary” by Amy Chozick, a former New York Times reporter. Amy’s book chronicled her experiences covering Hillary Clinton’s 2008 and 2016 presidential campaigns.Amy Walter talks with Amy Chozick and Julie Plec, co-creators and executive producers of The Girls on the Bus, and actress Melissa Benoist. They discuss politics, journalism, and turning campaign coverage into a television series.