Cross Tabs

Two days before the election, Rep. Haley Stevens, who lost Michigan's Democratic Senate primary to Abdul El-Sayed, endorsed his Republican opponent. A month earlier, Farrah sat down with Mike Podhorzer — former political director of the AFL-CIO and author of the Weekend Reading newsletter — for a conversation about the question that move raises: who is a party actually accountable to? Mike argues that parties are coalitions of the organized interests that back them in primaries, that Democrats stopped doing politics and started treating voters as customers, and that the problem with AI, the economy and much else isn't the thing itself but who controls it. Plus: what Zohran Mamdani understands about picket lines, why winning an election isn't the same as having power, and why Mike thinks that if we think of 2008 as analogous to 1932, Herbert Hoover won.GuestMike Podhorzer is the former political director of the AFL-CIO and a former senior adviser to its president. He founded the Analyst Institute and the Research Collaborative, was a longtime co-chair of Catalist, is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, and writes Weekend Reading, a newsletter on politics, economics and democratic crises that began in 2017 as an off-the-record email to election practitioners.Weekend Reading: https://weekendreading.netSubstack: @michaelpodhorzerNotable quotes"They are there because they passed the job interview." — Mike Podhorzer, on members of Congress"Economic power is political power, and they have almost all of it, and we have almost none of it." — Mike Podhorzer"Think of the Congress as becoming the most genius customer service center for capitalism." — Mike PodhorzerReferenced in this episodeRep. Haley Stevens's endorsement of Mike Rogers in Michigan's Senate race (PBS NewsHour)The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson"AI as normal technology" (Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor)Zohran Mamdani's Knicks championship speech (June 18, 2026), and the whole celebration can be watched again here.Rebecca Traister's New York magazine reporting on the Maine Senate race and Troy Jackson's campaignJust Evil Enough by Alistair Croll and Emily RossKim Lane Scheppele (Princeton) on Péter Magyar's efforts to dismantle Orbán's system in Hungary — see her Journal of Democracy essay "Can Péter Magyar Restore Hungary's Democracy?"Stay in Touch📬 Subscribe to our newsletter at crosstabspodcast.com for new episodes, insights, and behind-the-scenes content. 📹 Watch video episodes on YouTube @CrosstabsPodcast 💬 Follow us on BlueSky: @crosstabspod.bsky.social and @farrahbostic.bsky.social 📍 Produced by The Difference Engine 📨 You can also email me directly at [email protected]

With the elections a little over 2 weeks away, "affordability" is everywhere — and KFF's Ashley Kirzinger thinks a big share of it is about health care. Ashley, KFF's director of survey methodology, joins Farrah to talk about how KFF reaches people most polls miss, why health costs now tie gas prices as Americans' top household worry, and how majorities of Republicans backed extending the ACA tax credits right up until the issue turned partisan. Plus: why asking voters to choose between "the economy" and "health care" may be a false choice, and why about three in ten voters trust neither party to bring costs down.GuestAshley Kirzinger is director of survey methodology and associate director of KFF's Public Opinion and Survey Research Program, where she helps direct KFF's polling work. She holds a Ph.D. from LSU's Manship School and lives in Portland, Maine.KFF Public Opinion & Survey Research team: https://www.kff.org/team/public-opinion-survey-research/Bluesky: @ashleykirzinger.bsky.socialNotable quotes"When we put out a poll and if Democratic and Republican lawmakers are both mad at us, I feel like that's when we're doing our job right." — Ashley Kirzinger"They may have said the economy and they mean health costs, and they may say healthcare and they mean health costs." — Ashley Kirzinger"You have to take care of your health, but you can't afford to take care of your health." — Ashley KirzingerReferenced in this episodeKFF Health Tracking Poll: Health Care Costs and the Midterms (April 2026) — the worry chart, the party-trust chart, the impact-on-voting chart, and the "most-wanted change" questionKFF Health Tracking Poll: Health Care Costs, Expiring ACA Tax Credits, and the 2026 Midterms (January 2026)Tracking the Public's Views on the ACA — the long-run favorability chart Farrah and Ashley walk throughKFF/Washington Post Trans Survey — 515 trans adults from three probability-based panelsKFF/LA Times Survey of Immigrants — 3,358 immigrant adults, 10 languagesAnnie Lowrey's writing on the "time tax" of public servicesJohnny Harris' video about democracy, “I don’t get democracy”Stay in Touch📬 Subscribe to our newsletter at crosstabspodcast.com for new episodes, insights, and behind-the-scenes content. 📹 Watch video episodes on YouTube @CrosstabsPodcast 💬 Follow us on BlueSky: @crosstabspod.bsky.social and @farrahbostic.bsky.social 📍 Produced by The Difference Engine 📨 You can also email me directly at [email protected]

Zoe Padgett, who runs public opinion research on SurveyMonkey's survey science team, joins Farrah to walk through three years of tracking data on how Americans actually feel about AI — not the LinkedIn-hype version. They dig into an unusual generational "crisscross" (Gen Z's trust in AI dropped from 2023 to 2026 while every older generation's rose), why brands selling AI tools are still just selling the category itself rather than differentiating, and what happens to the research pipeline when AI quietly absorbs the tasks junior researchers used to cut their teeth on. The conversation ends on data centers — the physical, local, increasingly contentious infrastructure behind all of it — and the way it is scrambling normal demographic and political coalitions.GuestZoe Padgett is a public opinion researcher on SurveyMonkey's survey science team. She previously worked on federal survey design and analysis at the American Institutes for Research, ICF, and the Department of Education and holds a Master's in Survey Methodology from the University of Maryland.ResourcesSurveyMonkey's latest AI & Jobs Survey ReportSurveyMonkey Research: AI Sentiment Study. The quarterly AI tracker, including the data-center findings (Sam Gutierrez, July 2026).CNBC|SurveyMonkey Quarterly AI & Jobs Survey, Q2 2026In AI We Trust (HubSpot × SurveyMonkey, 2025)Stay in Touch📬 Subscribe to our newsletter at crosstabspodcast.com for new episodes, insights, and behind-the-scenes content. 📹 Watch video episodes on YouTube @CrosstabsPodcast 💬 Follow us on BlueSky: @crosstabspod.bsky.social and @farrahbostic.bsky.social 📍 Produced by The Difference Engine 📨 You can also email me directly at [email protected]

Every few years, Pew stops asking Americans whether they're Republicans or Democrats and instead lets the data decide where the lines actually fall. This year it landed on nine groups — and the most-discussed one is defined less by policy than by style: 53% of the "No Apologies Right" say they like it when politicians they agree with humiliate their opponents. Senior Researcher Baxter Oliphant and Research Associate Gabriel Borelli join Farrah to talk about how you build a typology from scratch, why the 62% of Americans who aren't in the four "anchor" groups are the most interesting people in the data, and why everyone wanting a third party is not the same as everyone wanting the same third party. Also: what a typology genuinely can't tell you, and why that's worth saying out loud.GuestsJ. Baxter Oliphant is a Senior Researcher at the Pew Research Center, focusing on U.S. politics and policy — including partisan polarization, trust in government, gun policy, and U.S. foreign policy. https://www.pewresearch.org/staff/baxter-oliphant/Gabriel Borelli is a Research Associate at the Pew Research Center focusing on U.S. politics and policy. He ran the modeling for the 2026 typology. https://www.pewresearch.org/staff/gabriel-borelli/Notable quotes"They're the group that really stood out for saying they like it when politicians that they agree with humiliate their opponents. That just wasn't a group that would have popped fifteen years ago." — Baxter Oliphant, on the No Apologies Right"There are laws of physics, but there's not really laws of politics. There's just tendencies." — Baxter OliphantReferenced in this episodeBeyond Red vs. Blue: The 2026 Political Typology — Pew Research Center, June 10, 2026. Take the political typology quiz How political typology groups feel about the midterm elections and Trump How foreign policy values and issues cut across the political typology groups Appendix B: Typology group creation and analysis Appendix C: The history of the political typology — the nine typologies going back to 1987 (1987, 1994, 1999, 2005, 2011, 2014, 2017, 2021, 2026). Worth browsing as a set of time capsules.The 2021 political typology — the previous version, with its Stressed Sideliners and Outsider Left groups, referenced by Gabe as a comparison point.Stay in Touch📬 Subscribe to our newsletter at crosstabspodcast.com for new episodes, insights, and behind-the-scenes content. 📹 Watch video episodes on YouTube @CrosstabsPodcast 💬 Follow us on BlueSky: @crosstabspod.bsky.social and @farrahbostic.bsky.social 📍 Produced by The Difference Engine 📨 You can also email me directly at [email protected]

Before things get heavier this fall, a conversation about the plumbing: CNN Polling and Election Analytics Editor Ariel Edwards-Levy joins Farrah to talk about why survey response rates keep sliding, what fraud and burnout look like from the respondent's side, and a fun experiment Ariel ran called "Why Are You Talking to Me?" — which breaks down, by age, race, and party, the real reasons people bother answering a poll at all.GuestAriel Edwards-Levy is CNN's Polling and Election Analytics Editor, where she covers public opinion research and helps shape how CNN reports on polling.CNN profile: https://www.cnn.com/profiles/ariel-edwards-levyX / Twitter: @aedwardslevyIn this episodeWhat actually happens at AAPOR (the annual gathering of, as Ariel puts it, "survey nerds")Why response rates keep falling, and what that forces researchers to do with weightingThe fraud problem in online panels: bots, incentive arbitrage, and people gaming their way onto U.S. panels from outside the country"Fit for purpose" research: why the right sample depends on whether you're trying to measure opinion, predict an outcome, or build a persuasion strategyLow propensity voters, low social control, and why the people least likely to say their voice is heard elsewhere are often the ones most willing to take a political surveySurvey-design experiments that backfired — including one where researchers tried to end a survey with a joke and had to kill the test because it tanked completion ratesAriel's own AAPOR presentation, "Why Are You Talking to Me?" — a 2025 survey experiment asking respondents their real motivation for answering: making their voice heard (43%), the incentive (29%), or just enjoying the questions (22%) — broken down sharply by age, race, and partisanshipWhy "make your voice heard" recruitment messaging pulls in a very different (older, more partisan) respondent than other messagingWhat it takes to get people who don't trust polling, or don't think of themselves as political, to participate anywayHow Ariel thinks about her job as a journalist covering public opinion — presenting what people think without telling readers what to do with itA behind-the-scenes moment from CNN's State of the Union video-response project, and why hearing an actual respondent's voice changes how the data landsNotable quotes"Don't jerk survey respondents around." — Ariel, on what she took away from a wave of survey-design experiments at AAPOR"When there's no incentive to lie, people tend to be lazy and not lie." — Farrah, on why paid respondents tend to answer honestly"I worry for anybody who feels very prepared for an election season — that demonstrates to me a worrying level of confidence." — ArielReferenced in this episodeAAPOR (American Association for Public Opinion Research) annual conferenceVeraSight's AAPOR omnibus (their annual free-question booth at the conference)Coming up on Cross TabsThis one's the calm before a harder run of episodes — next up, we're getting into the midterms, political identity, what people actually want out of policy, and the future of democracy.Stay in Touch📬 Subscribe to our newsletter at crosstabspodcast.com for new episodes, insights, and behind-the-scenes content.📹 Watch video episodes on YouTube @CrosstabsPodcast💬 Follow us on BlueSky: @crosstabspod.bsky.social and @farrahbostic.bsky.social📍 Produced by The Difference Engine📨 You can also email me directly at [email protected]