10/22/26: MAGA Pollster Spells Doomsday, GOP Loses It On Vivek, Housing Market Chaos

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All right, guys, time to dig into the state of the midterms. And I'm very excited to be joined by our next guest, Rich Barris. He is known as the people's pundit. He is a MAGA-friendly pollster who has called a number of the past election cycles correct when others were getting it wrong. So we are very happy to have Rich here today.

And it's great to be here. Thanks for having me, guys.

Yeah, our pleasure. So let's put this Axios report up on the screen just as a way to kick off the conversation here. So you now have senators who are telling people Axios that they are worried Mississippi is in play. You've got millions that are flowing into states like Mississippi, South Carolina and Kansas. I think there are very few people who would have predicted these states would be in doubt at all going into this cycle. So, Rich, what is your assessment of where things stand and how bad things could get for Republicans?

Mississippi is a great example because and people have been following my work for years would know that Mississippi is almost it's not Georgia yet, but it is very similar in the sense that there are states and even in the deep south where the demographic clock has been running out on Republicans and they needed to build a broader coalition, much the way Donald Trump did in 24, by the way, Crystal, and then keep that coalition because on a bad election cycle such as this one. Maybe Democrats won't take a state like Mississippi, but it will show the warning signs flashing that in the wrong environment, in a bad swing election, you could lose these states. And we've seen with Georgia that once you do, it's incredibly difficult to get back.

South Carolina, this is something they were warned about. You can't just grab another Graham and throw them up on the ticket. Even Lindsey himself had a huge base problem. 30% of the electorate was telling us they would not vote for Lindsey Graham. That is a major issue. So they, you know, they didn't, as so many other things this cycle, they didn't listen, they didn't heed the warnings. And now even if they keep them, they will keep them at great cost that they really needed in states like Texas, Alaska, Ohio, Iowa.

Rich, you've been warning about this for literally months, especially since the Iran war broke out. Let's put this one up here on the screen, D2, from the New York Times last, you know, poll. that finds a D plus 11 advantage for the ballot. They also have very important demographic breakouts right there, which underscores the coalitional point that I know that you've made from the 2024 election onward.

Kind of take us through that. How does it match through your own data and especially with the support of Trump having changed? Which are the critical demographics where he's suffering?

The New York Times poll mirrors our own data. What's amazing to me is that we were the first ones to come out with a generic ballot that had a double-digit lead for Democrats. And what was fueling it was what we're seeing right here in the New York Times poll when we're calling it all the winning parts. Where has Trump slid? Where have Republicans slid? In all the winning parts of his coalition. Younger voters who never vote Republican until they did in 2024. Hispanic voters. I mean, we can go down the list, um, of course, independence, but that's more of a party registration. I'm talking about when you looked at Trump's coalition, the first thing anybody who knows anything should know is that what other Republican

would have put this together. And that should have told them a warning sign right away. You have to nurture these voters. This has to be a coalition. You really need to look for what you really need to keep your promises. The Iran war was basically the big overhand right in a one-two punch that put MAGA on the ground.

And the first one was how they handled the Epstein files, and that started to break apart younger voters, especially younger women who gave them a chance. The Iran war, just to give everybody the overall theme of this election, the Epstein stuff was more like a proxy election. you know, for this ruling class that they were supposed to confront and hold accountable. And when they didn't do that and then pivoted to a war, which Donald Trump promised over 10 years never to start, you cannot be serious. You just cannot be intellectually honest with yourself and say that was not going to have consequences. The only reason these voters, all the winning parts that we were just talking about, the only reason these voters ever gave Donald Trump and

Republicans a chance is because Donald Trump had a different brand of republicanism.

Well, this.

administration is looking a lot like George W. Bush's administration. That is not what they voted for. I mean, it's just being honest. So we would absolutely expect these demographics to do the last time we had an administration like this in office. And Barack Obama just did massive damage to George W. Bush's coalition. I think we're going to see that this time.

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting you bring up Obama because we've actually made some parallels. Not that it's exactly the same, but there was an assumption on the Democratic side that the Obama coalition was just a Democratic coalition. And as someone who ran in 2010 as a Democrat during the Tea Party wave, I found out the hard way that was very much not the case. But I want you to break down for us, Rich, because I think for your average person, myself included, I see D plus 11 on a generic ballot. I'm like, that sounds bad, but I don't really sort of intellectually know what that means in terms of what it will look like. I will say for people just to begin to wrap their heads around it, the last time you had that, if that

ends up being the case, the last time you had that level of a popular vote win in the House for a party, we're talking back in the Watergate era. This would mean that the waves of 2018, forget about it, blown out of the water. The wave of even 2010 on the Republican side, gone. 2008, 2006, you have to go all the way back to the 70s. To see that large of a partisan victory. So help us understand what that would look like on election night if that is actually what comes to pass.

Yeah, and the good news for Republicans is that they did come out ahead in redistricting because otherwise it would have been an absolute bloodbath. Proportions that, like you said, we actually wouldn't have to go back to the 70s because Democrats were still doing, you know, Nancy Pelosi swept in with the liberal revolution and everything. we wouldn't have seen if they didn't redistrict, we would have a very difficult time finding a map to compare it to. But because they did, you know, we're looking at like 29 seats right now, if it was D plus 11, which doesn't sound like a lot. But here's what I would tell people. Once you get past the eight point mark, even redistricting for election forecasters, it's we don't want to

wade into that territory because it is so you're really walking the plank. And if it doesn't happen, you'll be held to account for it later. I think people should take that into consideration when they're thinking about When they're listening to people like me talk, I'm over here saying 29 seats. But the truth is the levy breaks after eight points. And people like me really don't know what it means. It could. I'm in North Carolina right now.

North Carolina one should not be competitive, but it is. And probably Lori Buck out is going to lose it. But what is it? Eleven points mean it means Greg Murphy is in trouble in North Carolina three. And by the way, he is and he's terrified right now. It means North Carolina 4 is in trouble.

One sec, Rich. Could you just break that out for people who don't know North Carolina? Give us the Trump victory number in 2024. Compare it now to today.

We're looking– I mean the number across all of these districts is like a 16-point swing. That's insane, but we are seeing it in Virginia and North Carolina, and here's why Republicans should be nervous. Those two states, they may not be predictive overall by margin, but they are predictive directionally.

And it's hard for me, and should be for others, to imagine that both Virginia and North Carolina are seeing comparable swings, yet it's going to be isolated to just these two states. I just can't believe that. I think what's more likely is that we have a much better... view of the entire picture in these states and early voting makes it easier to do, compare, you know, year over year. And that's probably what we're going to see in the rest, you know, 13 to 16 point swings in the rest of the country, which by the way, makes sense. That's why Ohio is so close. That's why Iowa is so close. Donald Trump won those by 13 and a half points, but Gerard Brown himself was running in Ohio, for instance. He, he, he only lost that

by three and a half. Bernie Moreno ran 10 points behind Donald Trump. So everyone who looks at that and says it's a red state, I just don't believe it. Well, you better believe it because it's not a 10 point or a 15 or a 16 point swing that Democrats need in that state. They need the three and a half point swing. And Sherrod Brown could easily do that. So, yeah, I mean, some of these incumbents, one I just mentioned, Greg Murphy, even two months ago, guys, he was not sweating bullets the way he's sweating bullets now. And he is for good reason. And he may end up eking it out. But these are Trump 15, 16, 17, 18 point districts. We shouldn't be talking about them. This is crazy.

One point that you had made previously, Rich, which is very insightful, is you warned around these redistricting. You're like, guys, we can only redistrict if you accept that the coalition stays together. Now, obviously, that's not happening. Talk us through that about how it might actually backfire on the Republicans nationally.

Let's look at Texas, where 100 percent This is the state where I tried to, because I thought it was the clearest example where I could explain this. That was Donald Trump's performance with Hispanics. That was not your performance, Republicans. You never win Hispanics by margins like that or even get levels of Hispanic vote share like that. And in several of these states, Donald Trump did win them outright.

Republicans didn't earn those votes. So to redistrict using Trump's vote as a benchmark was extraordinary. foolish. That's what they did. And now you have somebody like Dela Cruz in deep trouble, deep trouble. The internals show it, the early vote in that area, it should be terrifying to Republicans. I know I hear people glazing all day, every day online, but we're going to be here soon. Like reality is going to hit them soon, guys. And the only way that redistricting ever made sense in not just Texas but elsewhere is if you were going to recognize that you are now the lower propensity coalition. You win a lot more nonwhite votes than you did. You win a lot more younger votes than you did. But you need to keep

the coalition together, and that should be your number one priority if you're not going to do that. If you're going to go back and govern like the old Republican Party, you might as well leave the map alone. Just leave it alone. And they didn't, and now it will backfire. It will. It's going to backfire.

Rich, thinking about those demographics, if you look at, you know, Latino voters you're mentioning here seem to be a group that have shifted the hardest away from the Republican Party. Does that mean that certain regions will be more vulnerable? Like, could we see an uneven effect depending on the demographic makeup of particular districts or states?

I mean, I think that's the most likely outcome, even in Florida, which is, you know, definitely a red state at this point. I think that's fair. Even in Florida, where every Hispanic group is not the same. Right. So we tend to do that. We lump them all together. But Mexicans vote differently than Puerto Ricans. They vote differently than Cubans and Venezuelans. The reason Florida leans more to the right and with Hispanic vote itself is because they have more right leaning Hispanics. And even in Michigan, for instance, there are just certain subgroups of Hispanics that that Michigan Hispanics lean more to the right than the nation overall.

So I think that is the most likely outcome because even in Florida, and it's not just the polling, it's not. We had special elections in 25. We had off-cycle elections in 25. And we saw these massive swings in these areas. Donald Trump lost his own legislative district in Florida. That can only happen if Hispanics swung back significantly, which they did.

And it was a small sample. So everyone made excuses and moved on to the next special election until it happened again. You take a state like Texas where James Tallarico was winning 80% of Kamala Harris's general election vote share in some of these counties along the border counties, heavily Hispanic border counties. That's not possible, guys. It's just simply not possible unless some of Donald Trump's Hispanic voters then just switched and voted for James Tallarico in a Democratic primary. It's the only way it made mathematical sense.

And now I think everybody probably realizes that it's just too late.

What's your number, Rich? I don't want to put you too much on the spot here. Where do your models and things show in terms of the balance in the Senate and the House?

I just don't see how Democrats get any less than 235, 39 seats. I really don't. And again, it could be a lot worse than people think. Could Republicans overperform, guys? Of course they could. Are they going to save the House? I would be stunned. I really, I mean, it's not, I'm going to, I don't want to say it's not possible, but I don't want to even entertain it. That's how ridiculous it is as a prospect to me in the Senate.

I don't, I don't like what I see with Ken Paxton's chances at this point. And if Texas goes, then the Senate's going, it's gone. I think Ashley Hinson is going to hold on. We'll have a pullout in Iowa very soon. I think she's going to hold on. It is razor thin. I think Sherrod Brown at this point, and we're going to go back into the field this weekend, I think he's going to beat John Usted. I do.

And the problem for me is they're all across the country. It doesn't matter what Senate race we're even looking at or what state we're looking at. There are these disaffected Republican voters. If they would get out, they would save Republicans from Ohio to Alaska. The problem is you can't just count on these people to get out. This was the problem they had, only it's in reverse now. The problem they had in 22, why they underperformed against expectations and Democrats held the Senate and did better than expected in the House, even though, of course, they didn't have control of it, is because they have a higher propensity coalition.

You can count on these voters to vote in the midterm. You can count on them to vote in special elections. They are higher propensity. They're more reliable, to put it more simply. This is working in reverse against Republicans right now. So when I see this, And they don't have vote history or they don't have robust vote history. And they're telling me I'm not at all enthusiastic. I'm upset with Donald Trump. I'm upset with the war. Gas is too high.

You can't just assume because you want to assume that they're going to come out in the midterm. They're probably not, which means that's the Senate. That will be the Senate. Susan Collins I thought was going to hold on, but the early vote looks disgusting for her. So– And if she goes, it's a wrap, guys. It's a wrap.

Rich, if you had to, again, I'll put you on the spot here a little bit. But, you know, the hope on the right is that the polls are wrong again. And they could be, right?

Absolutely.

Wrong in 2016, wrong in 2020. They could be wrong here. I mean, one thing that you immediately notice is, OK, but those are all elections where Trump is on the ballot. Trump is not on the ballot here. So there have been, you know, the polls have been better. And actually, they've underestimated Democrats in certain instances.

That's right.

If you had to bet on which way the polls will be wrong this time, what are the things you're looking at? Which direction are you more concerned about pollsters undercounting?

You just said it. The polls have not understated Republicans unless there were two conditions, two circumstances. One, Trump was on the ballot. Two, Trump was still popular. The safe bet Is that it probably it, the polls are more likely to understate Democrats. Donald Trump is a level at a level of unpopular right now that we have never measured.

The New York times poll has him at 34. The lowest we've had him is 36. I'm curious to see what we'll get. We'll get in, uh, over the weekend because we normally get a very clear picture this weekend before an election. He's going out there and doing these rallies.

Crystal.

The problem is you're rallying and trying to juice a much smaller base. And when we look at likelihood to vote and enthusiasm, it all points to the much, much more likely scenario that Democrats will actually be slightly understated in some of these states. And I hate to say it. Look at Alaska, for instance. Dan Sullivan, when he won in 2014, the polls, the average, the RCP average was 2.4.

Dan Sullivan won by 2.2. And we always say the same thing in Maine. Well, Susan Collins always outperforms the polls. No, she doesn't. She only outperformed it one time with Donald Trump on the ballot in 2020. it's coat. I'm sorry. It's coat. And I hate to tell everybody, but I heard the same thing before, you know, Abigail Spanberger absolutely romped you in Virginia. So, and Jackson or Ellie, I thought he was only down three points. Mickey shower went on to stomp him into the ground. So me too, rich.

I believed in that one. I was like, ah, it's going to be an upset.

And I was like, I did too. I did too. Until Mark Mitchell from then at Rasmussen. Still, I was doing Virginia. He was doing New Jersey and, And I'm watching Virginia just blow wide open. We're at Spanberger plus 13 and a half and people are still putting out plus fours and I'm scratching my head. And then he brings me New Jersey and same thing. He's like, look, Jack isn't even close here. What are they talking about? Well, election night comes and what happened, guys? I mean, what happened?

Enthusiasm matters. I've never seen Donald Trump this unpopular. I've never, he's also never had to deal with disaffection. I think people are vastly underestimating the power of disaffection. He never sat for an election where he had to get people who were disaffected to go and vote. Not only did he not have that, he had the absolute reverse of that.

We're in unchartered territory, and there is honestly a lot more evidence to make an argument. The case is stronger that Democrats can actually do better than expected than not. Guys, let me give you one stat. Unpopular war leads to defeat 100% of the time.

Yeah, right.

It's just not a question. That's right. Gas is high. War is unpopular. A war they never wanted. What would you expect if you weren't a partisan at all? And I would tell people to do this. You don't have to be a statistician. Just take off your partisan hat no matter which way you want this election to go.

Look at the environment and say to yourself, if you were just blindly– if you were looking at this from the outside, how do you think this would go?

Let me turn to Ohio. And then after that, the last thing I want to get your reaction to is this Wedgwood polls insanity. So I'm sure people know at this point that Vivek Ramaswamy has now put $ 4 million behind this ad with Amy Acton's estranged mother, who apparently fled the state with her husband when Amy was 12 years old after her husband raped, according to the evidence that was found that led Amy to be taken from that home. raped her daughter and abused both her daughter and her son. So he's going forward with this ad.

He's facing a lot of mounting backlash here. However, J.D. Vance is standing by him. Let me go ahead and play his comments and we'll get to the backlash. Then I'll get your political analysis here. Let's go ahead and take a listen to J.D. Vance on this ad yesterday.

Do you think that that ad was appropriate? Well, I'll be honest with you. Whether the ad was appropriate or not is not really my concern. What is my concern is who is going to govern the next generation of American government. And I've got to be honest that when I see Republicans, people in my party, reacting so strongly, especially elected officials, look, have the opinion you want to have on that ad. If you think it was too tough, say it was too tough. If you think it wasn't tough enough, say that. But I have to admit that I'm a little bit disgusted. when I see Republicans across the country who are whining more about that advertisement than they are about what the congressional Democrats and other Democrats

want to do to the United States of America. So I would say to Ohio Republicans, do you actually think that Amy Acton is unfit to serve as governor of the state of Ohio?

I do.

Remember some of the ads that have been run against me? I've run in, I guess, two races now in my entire life. People have called Vivek Ramaswamy a murderer in some of the advertisements ran against him. People have called, you know, use the president of the United States. How many times have we seen advertisements using his family members, estranged family members, to go out for the president of the United States? Politics is a tough business. And my message to my fellow elected Republicans is if you actually believe in the things you say you believe in, stop whining about an advertisement and go win the race in 13 days.

Next question.

And now the media and the Democrats in the state of Ohio are obsessed because guess what? Vivek Ramaswamy had the audacity to run a TV commercial which calls it out like it is and calls Amy Acton a liar. My message, ladies and gentlemen, is very simple. Whatever you think about any of the TV advertisements, focus on the substance and focus on the facts.

So the vice president standing by him saying the ad is calling it like it is. Other Republicans, however, Rich, taking a different approach. Let's put the next piece up on the screen. Republican Senator John Husted, who is, of course, in that very tough reelect against Sherrod Brown, says, I would not have run that ad. Other Republican officials in the state have also echoed that sentiment. So turning to the political analysis here. Clearly, the Ramaswamy team thought that this was going to work. To me, it also reeks of desperation. I don't know that you would do something.

I mean, I don't think you should do something like this anyway, but certainly not if you were in a commanding position in the polls. What is your sense of this as a political play? Is this going to work out for them?

Well, one, let me just say I love the vice president. Save your capital, brother. Save your capital. Yeah. It does reek of desperation. And the saddest part about this crystal is that these Republican pollsters who, uh, do this work that lead to these very foolish decisions, um, do this every year. They over their own polls, typically overstate democratic support in these states. Uh, the vice president himself thought he was in a very close race in 2022. Um, and it was not, we polled it. It was seven points.

He won by seven. But his team thought it was closer. They believe the media polls and then go out and call them fake and run and then make bad decisions based on their that information. So, again, another self-inflicted wound. Would I run this ad?

No.

The impact, I think, from this ad is is going to be negative. And I I know people who are in the field in Ohio and it had an impact. And here's the irony about this. We actually had Vivek Ramaswamy doing better than John Ustedt. And a lot of polls did not, but we did, and we have no problem being the outlier in Ohio. We've been doing it for 10 years, and we end up right, and everyone else ends up wrong. And by the way, this happened with Mike DeWine, who's now the governor. It made sense to me that Vivek would actually outperform Usted. Usted's running against Gerard Brown. It's an incredibly, incredibly difficult, talented candidate.

And then they did this. So we're going to find out over the weekend because we're going back in Ohio. Now I have to. He's costing me more money to go back in to make sure I'm right because I can't leave that last poll we did on the table. That's how strongly I feel about how this ad will impact this race. If you're going to run something like that, you better make sure your facts are right. And by the way, I wouldn't anyway. But you better make sure your facts are right. And they didn't. And it was a dirty trick gone wrong, you know? Yeah, let's put D9.

My friend Ryan Groduski, he says, private polling, this is a supposition behind the scenes that there may be something to publish. The poll's actually showing Acton better position than Sherrod Brown. And he goes, I wonder if today's blowup would only exacerbate that. Rich, I was told, just like you, that the ad has half of Ohio GOP absolutely furious.

And that basically- Vivek himself knew some of the circumstances and said, you know what, I'm doing this anyways. And a lot of people told him, hey, this is a bad idea. And now the rest of Ohio GOP, including the Husted campaign, they are not happy because they think he just screwed them across statewide on the ticket. I'm curious if that fits what you referred to.

That is, I heard yesterday the same thing, that not only will this hurt him, but they're very angry because it could hurt. They thought Husted was mounting a comeback. And that's another reason why I wanted to go and poll the state anyway. We did have Brown up, never by the margin some of the other polls had, but he's winning Mahoning. He's winning Trumbull. He's taking back parts of the Ohio River Valley and is dismantling the Trump coalition and putting back together his coalition that won Ohio in the first place. So again, I have to go back in now and see if that's really the case.

I will just say this to Republicans out there. Instead of running tricks like this, do you know what would work a lot better if you're in trouble and you're in a race that you think you're going to lose? We're sorry. We'll do better. It's that this is where I'm serious. I am so serious. This is where Republicans have just every in every wound is a self-inflicted wound.

Just admit you promised never to start a war. And you did just admit that you're going to write the ship. Just admit you didn't listen to the voters when they were screaming at the top of their lungs for a year. Just pull a Bill Clinton sister soldier, this thing and move on and they won't do it. It's this mentality that they have. And I think we all know where it comes from, where you never admit that you did anything wrong and you just fight, fight, fight, fight. Even then when you lose, you declare victory or you say something else, which is even worse. Like somebody took it from you. Just go to the voter and tell them we'll do better next time. Don't give it back to the Democrats. That argument would have worked far more, but

they didn't. And by the way, it's too late now. It's October 22nd. I'm talking about in this, in the spring, in the summer, even in the turn of the fall, If you would have just said, I understand you're unhappy with us and we understand why. I have congressmen, they survived for years. And one of them the other day, who's in a very tight race, and I think he's going to pull it out. But that's because he's a superhero when it comes to defying national swings. I don't know how he does it. But he said, you know, actually, I'm going to tell you what he said. This is how he does it. I just, I'm just honest. I just go back and say, you're right. I could do better next time. I'll do better. It really is that simple.

And he does it. It's amazing.

I think part of the problem, Rich, I think for some of these people, maybe Houston, although I have to think he thought going back up against Sherrod Brown was going to be tough, but they took votes in favor of the Iran war. They took votes to block the release of the Epstein files so they could come. And we've seen some of them try to do this now and be like, I'm going to be different, you know, and it's hard to sell that. When your record indicates something, you know, extraordinarily different. And for a bunch of these senators, you know, Roger Marshall, he didn't think he was going to have a race on his hands. So he wasn't he didn't you know, he wasn't prepared. And he's still apparently not prepared, not fundraising, not apparently working hard, you know,

very flat footed, saying all kinds of, oh, there's more important things than gas prices to people in Kansas has taken all of these horrible votes that come back to bite you. So I think that's part of the story here, too, is because you have so many other seats in play, these people were not expecting to have to run real races.

Yeah, I think you're 100% correct. Even the races in North Carolina that I mentioned before, they're stunned. These are not guys who are good retail politicians. They don't go and show up to every event. You're not going to see the other one over at Mumfest, which is a huge thing here where a lot of politicians will come and shake hands. He never does it. He just thinks he's going to be reelected. Then, of course, the president comes to town. He pops up, even though it's not his own district. He pops up and he's sweating bullets.

He's in trouble because he's never had to do this before. A lot of these guys actually have been sitting in normal or reliably Republican districts because of redistricting. Republicans were kind of, you know, feeding from the trough a little bit. They put some of their stronger incumbents into less Republican districts to make other ones more solidly Republican thinking. The incumbent has the power of incumbency and the hold on.

And they just didn't count on, again, you know, we were talking about this cycle. You would have to go back to the 70s in order to see a Democratic margin like this. Well, guys, when is the last time we saw an environment like this, right? A president, even Barack Obama, who I would argue very much let down his coalition, which is why he lost a lot of them.

He didn't. break a massive campaign promise, one that cuts right to the core of the point of the entire coalition, which is to put America first. The last time we saw a promise broken like this, I think, would probably have to go back to read my lips. No new taxes. That ended up with the Ross Perot fracture, eight years of an independent party. The only reason George W. Bush put back the Republican Party was because he recognized it.

And I know we look back at Bush now and he's the quintessential neocon, but he was not in 2000. He stole a lot of very different we can't be the world's police we can't tax uh you know the we can't tax the working man and and give corporations a tax cut if we're going to give tax cuts it's got to be to everybody this is worse than that i i don't know how you can't see other people can't see or everyone can't see that donald trump spent 10 years telling everybody that it is dumb to squander our wealth and our talent abroad And that, especially in the Middle East, which is, you know, this hole or that hole, and we shouldn't spend treasure or blood in that region anymore. starting new wars abroad is stupid, right?

No new wars, no new forever wars. And now we're in a war with Iran. I just don't, I don't know how, this is at all a mystery to people. The only reason he put together the coalition that we've been talking about is because of that, because of so many of these other issues where he doesn't look like John Usted. John Usted was probably the worst kind of a candidate you could have picked for a state like Ohio, which is a state people think is just deep red.

It's really not deep red. It's Trump red. There's a difference. Even Iowa, if you go back to Iowa in 2018, they lost three out of four congressional districts in that swing alone. So how do you think Iowa's going to look?

Yeah.

How do you think it's going to look this time? Why is Ashley Hinson even in a fight? They just seem to not learn. They have not learned any of these lessons, and they just move forward. And the worst part for the Republicans is that Donald Trump's term is eventually going to end. He will not get a third one.

He's not coming back to save you. You need to learn how to fend for yourselves. And the fact that 10 years into this movement, Republicans are in this position in 2026 is not a good sign for them. It means they've learned absolutely nothing.

Last thing quickly, Rich, on this, because we definitely want to get you to weigh in on this Wedgwood polls situation. We can put this element up on the screen. So this is their statement. So an outlet called 50 Plus One was apparently about to blow the lid off of this fake polling scheme where they'd been putting out all of these numbers, some of them very consequential, like in the Michigan Senate primary race on the Democratic side, purporting they were online bullies. grassroots fundraising so that they could fund more polling operations. And now they're saying, oh, this was an experimental project to demonstrate the vulnerabilities and lack of oversight and barrier to entry to political polling. No,

the truth is you are about to get caught. So now you're pretending this was some sort of a social experiment rather than just complete fraud. Talk to us about how this happened and whether this you see this as a one off isolated incident or whether you think there is a broader problem here.

Well, let me just let me just preface the first answer by saying that there is a broader problem. This is the tip of an iceberg. But here's how it happened. And this is more concerning. It only happened, the tip to Elliott Morris only came because of a gripe between another pollster and them, all right? And I'm just going to go ahead and lay that out there. Why wasn't this brought to anybody's attention? Because it was wrong. Because there was deception going on here. So that is another damning testimony about the state of this industry. And it's sad to me, someone who's been doing what I've been doing for over a decade now, trying to, you know, when I first came on the scene, it was the media and university polls that were constantly favoring one party

over the other. So regardless of whether it was an ethical or methodological issue or both, it didn't really matter. It was really causing distrust in the industry and fighting all these years to get to a place where there were more voices allowed in the industry. I never thought that it would lead to an environment that isn't more open but one that– because the industry is built on trust, it was easy to exploit. And it is. I mean the foundation of this industry is trust. So when you're Morris or when you're DDHQ, the decision desk, right? You don't want to pry too much into a pollster. You're supposed to take– if they're claiming something, you're supposed to take them at their word. So it is widespread, and

this is what I'm going to say about it. RCP, Real Clear Politics, so far, is the only one who has not been duped by fake pollsters and putting them in their average. I have been through all of their processes and can tell you that Real Clear Politics is the most rigorous process out there, the most rigorous vetting that you could get, that you could face as a pollster.

Maybe it's time for RealClearPolitics to sit down and say, okay, we're going to develop a set of standards. Because, guys, the truth is APOR, which is the American Association of Public Opinion Research, doesn't have the respect for a lot from everyone. They have respect from left-wing pollsters. They have respect from university pollsters. And some of them only give it to them because they feel like they need to.

There needs to be somebody that we all trust to– and that's RealClearPolitics– We all trust whether you're right-leaning or left-leaning because all pollsters have their own views. Of course, we say they're impartial. It only means they're not sponsored by somebody in a party or a committee. Real clear politics could be that arbiter and put together a set of standards that APOR really has tried to put together, but nobody's abiding by anyway. Even after 2016, they developed something called the Transparency Initiative, which I cheerlead for. I thought it was fantastic. And I think maybe me and Spencer Kimball– Spencer Kimball and I from– and Spencer is from Emerson College. I think we're the only ones who

followed it. And the industry just kept going. There has to be somebody who comes in and puts their foot down and says no because Morrow's campaign was destroyed by that poll. And that– I mean that should be prosecuted if you really want my– I agree. It's fraud. To me, this is fraud. To me, this is straight-up fraud. And election interference.

Yes.

And this is real interference and fraud. And you're going to love this one. He traded on it. So this is a bigger, guys, I'm telling you, it's the tip of the iceberg. We're going to find out there are a lot of people, even if it's not 100% fake, they're probably being paid. Not probably, I know they are.

They're being paid by committees, by entities, and then they're trading off of numbers they know are going to come out. And you can literally go into the volume and see that people went in before some of those polls from Wedgwood. They bought shares of yes or no or margins or whatever. And then the polls come out, the markets swing. And they do usually level off. But I think we're going to find out that a lot of the reason for that leveling off is that the people who knew about these polls ahead of time are profit-taking, and then the market is leveling off again. Disgusting.

Makes sense.

We got ahead, Rich.

But seriously, thank you so much for your insight. Genuinely incredible work, and we appreciate your time.

Thank you. All the best, guys. It was a little under the weather, so I'm sorry about that, but all the best.

Couldn't tell.

Don't worry about it.

Turning now to housing, I want to keep an eye on this. Obviously, there's structural economic problems, which belie a lot of the dissatisfaction outside of just oil. Let's put this up here on the screen. America's housing market is absolutely in the dumps right now. Home sellers currently outnumber buyers by 63%. That is the biggest gap since the housing crash of 2008. There are 62% more home sellers than buyers. nationwide, which is the largest gap in Redfin records.

Put E2 up there on the screen. This is actually even more of an interesting statistic.

U.S.

Pending home sales have fallen to a record low as mortgage rates surge. And it just shows this is all about mortgages. The leading indicator of U.S. housing has fallen to its lowest record, underscoring the adverse impact of these very high mortgage rates on the real estate sector. Index tracking pending home sales has actually tumbled to its lowest level back to 2001, according to the National Association of Realtors.

And those are sales where a property is under contract. September data has actually marked a 7.3% drop just from August, which is one of the largest monthly decreases since the pandemic and exceeds the 0.5% fall forecasted by economists, if you want to see that one. So they expected 0.5. It ended up dropping by 7.3%. I think basically mortgages are now at a point where it's just completely nuts because it's not the rate itself, it's the price, obviously.

So those two things together, you have prices still near all-time high levels and you have mortgage rates around 7.3%. People are like, I'm sorry, I just can't afford it. It's more than double the mortgage payment that you would have had to make five years ago in addition to a higher price because of where things currently stand in the market. The other thing that you really have to pay attention to is how much of this is actually the government's fault. A significant portion of these rise in mortgage rates is both by the Federal Reserve and the 10-year bond. And it's implicitly because of the Iran war.

And so this is a foreign conflict, which is breaking the back of the American consumer who is trying to or potentially wants to be able to buy a new home. And I mean, all of this, you know, you might feel some schadenfreude or whatever for rich property owners. But the truth is, which we'll get to, rich property owners are all doing just fine. It's everybody else in the middle class. They're the people who can't sell their house.

They're the people who can't buy a house. The top of the market is all conducting in all cash. They're actually building luxury homes. They're doing better than ever before. It's a totally bifurcated economy. And the worst part is, you have to remember, is when people are locked in their houses, locked out of buying a house, that means they're going to rent. We don't have any more new rental stock, which is coming online. unless you live in Austin or a few other very select places. So what does that mean? Your rent is going sky high. And that's basically what we're seeing across the board.

It's really bad.

I mean, this is this is devastating because it's been years now of a broken housing market.

Let's put E3 up on the screen because this adds to the picture that you're painting because basically, I mean, it's ugly no matter which way you look at it. Because not only do you have the high mortgage rates, price is still quite high, making it very difficult for people to get their foot in the market unless they're wealthy and have all cash that they can just plunk down a million dollars for a house. Also, home builders are really struggling as well. And there you've got a multifaceted dynamic. First of all, the materials have been more expensive because of tariffs. Second of all, you have high interest rates.

Guess what?

They also have to finance a lot of times construction in advance. Third of all, you have because of immigration enforcement, you have a struggle with the workforce there. And then fourth, you have a crowd out factor because all of the construction financing is going to AI data centers. So in spite of the fact, you really had this kind of bipartisan sentiment coming into the Trump administration. You've got the abundance-pilled Democratic folks. You've got, obviously, the Trump people who want to succeed economically, or at least they theoretically did.

They sure don't act like it. But there was the sentiment of, OK, we've got to build more houses. We've got to roll back the regulation. We've got to do what we can to spark change. spark housing development so that we have a larger supply. So that'll bring prices down and make things more affordable. We are going in the polar opposite direction where the number of new housing starts is plummeting, putting additional pressure on this market. So it is a really, unless you are a wealthy individual, as per usual, it is a very dire situation for the homeowners who can't sell, for the buyers who can't afford to buy, and for the builders who are unable to get the labor and get the financing and get the materials at a cost where they can move forward

as well.

Exactly.

And let's continue on just to the point that I was making about E5. The luxury housing market, it's doing fine. It's all about luxury and it runs on cash. The surging mortgage rates are sending many buyers to the sidelines while, quote, affluent shoppers are driving overall prices high because of large cash purchases. So this is what we mean by completely broken is if you are middle class, upper middle class, you are still competing with mortgages. If you are in the actually rich territory, mortgage mortgages is really not part of your concern because the stock market portfolio has exploded post COVID and you have more wealth than literally ever before.

You have the option to sell some of your assets. You can take margin loan against your assets and put down all cash and do some sort of back time financing. If you need to, you're sitting on more money than you ever have in your entire life. And by the way, of course, most of these people are old. And so what does that mean is you're The entire market is now catered towards those people. So you just were talking about homeowner starts and all of that. I mean, it only matters if you can't sell it, but the people who are building multi-level luxury homes, they know that they're gonna be able to sell it. They know that that type of customer exists. It just happens to be 5% or whatever of the US population. That's what's also dramatically

skewing the housing market. So you just put all this stuff together, the downward overall pressure, which is basically creeping from, if you make 300, this sounds insane to say, if you make a household income of about 300K or less, you are doing much worse. If you make above that, or if you already have substantial stock assets, then you're actually doing just fine. That number used to be like 100K. Inflation, I guess, coming for everybody, including the literal upper middle class.

I'm talking about doctors and lawyers in high-priced major cities who are now out here probably having to make serious trade-off decisions and not being able to buy a home. That is not the way things usually work when 95% of the population feels financial pressure.

Yeah, I mean, it is wild. Put E4 up on the screen. It's the last piece here. We've mentioned this before, but this is such an important dynamic. Look at the size of the AI build-out. So this is average annual infrastructure spending as a percent of GDP, and they've got AI here tracked at 3.6%. comparing it to previous boom infrastructure cycles, which almost all of which ended up with some sort of a market collapse, even the ones that ended up providing some sort of useful technology. The closest competitor is the railroad build-out, which came in at 2.2% of GDP. And we've showed you the charts before. As AI data center build has increased, spending on all other types of construction, including home building, has fallen off a cliff.

So not only do you have AI eating all the gains in the stock market and the stock market being increasingly dependent on AI-linked companies, but also in the physical infrastructure space, our entire economy is also being bet on the AI build-out. So the very thing that Americans do not want built in their towns, that's what's getting built.

More housing for you to live in? Not so much. So amazing priorities we've got here as a country.

Yep, exactly right. All right, thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate it. There'll be a Friday show for everybody tomorrow.

We'll see you then.

10/22/26: MAGA Pollster Spells Doomsday, GOP Loses It On Vivek, Housing Market Chaos

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