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If you listened to GD Politics this election season, you heard plenty about the data coming from The New York Times. We followed its national and state polls before Election Day, watched the Needle as returns came in, and used its voter data to make sense of where Democrats gained ground.
On today’s episode, I invited Nate Cohn, the Times’ chief political analyst, to take us behind the scenes. We talked through what his team was seeing before the votes were counted and what they’ve learned since.
The Times’ pre-election polling picked up the biggest story of the midterms. Its final national poll gave Democrats an 11-point lead on the generic congressional ballot, close to their roughly 13.5-point margin in the House vote. Their state polls also showed that Democrats had a real shot at winning Senate races in places like Texas and Kansas, which they won.
I asked Cohn how the Times decides who’s likely to vote and what he learned from the handful of races where the margins were off. A listener brought up a wrinkle that could matter in the 2028 Democratic primaries. What happens if progressive voters are more likely than other Democrats to answer a poll?
Then we took up a question both parties will be wrestling with heading into 2028. How much of the Democratic wave came from voters changing their minds, and how much came from a different set of people showing up? Cohn’s early read is that changing preferences drove most of the national swing, with turnout playing a bigger role in some states than in others.
And if you spent election night refreshing the Needle, Cohn explains what has to happen before the Times can turn it on and why it goes dark while ballots are still being counted.
It was a wonky and fun one!
