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Over the past few days, two of the largest tech companies in the world have taken aim at political text spam and online ads. The next Apple operating systems will begin offering the ability to filter texts, including those from politicians and, soon, Meta will ban political ads on their platforms in European Union states.

These are the kinds of under-the-radar but monumental shifts in elections I write about in my book Modern Political Campaigns: How Professionalism, Technology, and Speed Have Revolutionized Elections. Problem is these two moves just happened. The second edition, published by Bloomsbury, dropped in April this year.

Consider this a partial preview of the third edition … dropping in 2027.

Political Texts as Spam

Why filter political texts? Let’s just say that they’re so ubiquitous that the statistics on the collective volume, just in the United States, are almost hard to believe. During the 2022 cycle, Americans were on the receiving end of more than 15 billion political texts. The final numbers aren’t widely reported but the best estimate is a 3x increase in 2024.

Reminder: the eligible voting population is 244.4 million. Back of the envelope math shows that each eligible voter got 184 (!) texts and we know that targeting leaves some blissfully uncontacted.

That’s a lot of angry voters. So, there is a problem to be solved and kudos to Apple for offering up a solution. However, the unintended consequence of releasing a public beta is that politicos have smartphones, too, and they’re not happy.

On Monday, the National Republican Senatorial Committee released a freak-out memo, first reported by Punchbowl News outlining the potential financial carnage:

- 70% of small dollar donations come via text, and 60% of U.S. mobile devices are iPhones.

- In iOS 26 voters, political texts will be treated as spam and silently sent to an “Unknown” inbox without alerts or notifications.

- The “macro effect, could be over $500M in lost GOP revenue.”

- Impacts on voter contact, including get-out-the-vote, voter persuasion, rapid-response, and election-day reminders will all be affected.

Now, most of this is overblown. The filtering in iOS 26 is opt-in, meaning that you or someone in your family need to find the right place in settings to flip the switch. Opt-out would’ve been catastrophic for campaign teams.

Opt-in is a relative inconvenience. On Apple’s latest developer beta (v.4) it takes seven steps to do this (full story here from Apple Insider).

1. Open the Settings app

2. Tap on “Apps”

3. Tap on “Messages”

4. Scroll down to “Unknown Senders”

5. Switch to the right (green) “Screen Unknown Senders”

6. Tap on “Text Message Filter” and select “Text Message Filter” from “None”

7. Switch to the right (green) “Filter Spam”

Again, how many voters will do this? It’s not zero, but it is not going to add up to $500M in lost GOP revenue. Still, this is the most significant shift in the standard election playbook in quite some time. If users opt-into this filtering they’re basically gone.

To be fair, even when you type “Stop” when solicited in a political text, you’re often still on various lists that get shared so you never leave the doom loop of getting, stopping, then blocking the number.

It is because of this that the new iOS 26 feature is so useful and I’m guessing that voters who have either volunteered on a campaign or given to one and are spammed by every candidate will want to find another way out.

If I’m Apple, I’m on the side of voters (users). If I’m the NRSC, I’m on the side of candidates. Frankly, if you talk with consultants, you realize that we’re already on the wrong side of the curve in terms of number of texts sent to number of dollars donated. We’ve reached peak political text, and Apple is simply accelerating the decline.

We’ll see how far this goes but my guess is that this relatively modest opt-in screening of texts will be relegated by (1) how hard it is do turn it on, and (2) that smart candidates and groups will simply send contact cards to their lists right now in advance of the release of iOS 26 in September so they can get around the filtering.

Yes, this doesn’t solve the long-term problem, but we’ll get to that in a bit. Now, let’s talk about the other big change this week: Meta killing political ads in the EU.

Political Ads as Antisocial

After going all-in on elections, Facebook has been steadily moving away from them. Some of it has to do with the rise of Trump and the backlash on the Left. Some of it has to do with the rise of aggressive memes on the Right. A lot of it has to do with the personal targeting of Mark Zuckerberg.

Tech companies thought politics would spike engagement, and it did. But it spiked governmental scrutiny as well, and for good reason.

But there’s also a fair bit of evidence that while political engagement online has its virtues, it has broken relationships, even within families. Online hate is a public policy problem, but purchased political engagement is something Meta can regulate on its own.

This week, Meta announced it is pulling the plug on political advertising in the European Union. This has been long in the making. After the 2016 Cambridge Analytica scandal where that company blew open loopholes left hanging by Facebook to hypertarget individual voters on their personality profiles, the platform pulled back on which tools political candidates could use, limiting the potential reach of campaigns.

Meta also launched an online repository for all political ads so voters can see who sponsored them, and how much they spent. This was welcome transparency but the question of advertising remained hot, especially in the EU.

The Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising(TTPA) imposes a new wave of restrictions that Meta characterized as “unworkable” so they are pulling political ads from their platforms altogether. Reminder: Meta includes Facebook and Instagram, but also WhatsApp, which is widely popular in Europe. It also includes Threads, their text-based platform that has almost caught up to X (formerly Twitter).

It is unlikely that this will find a home in the United States, given the First Amendment and the concern over an opt-in text message screening feature on iOS 26. But, still, this reflects how much paid political speech is being shunned by once-supportive mobile and social technology companies.

Could Meta follow suit on its own in the United States? TikTok has banned them and they’ve leapfrogged Facebook. Bottom line: look at the EU experience as the test run to a voluntary banand for political marketers to test it in court.

In the meantime, what should and will campaigns do?

Solutions: Real Relationships

As the rules governing algorithmic political tactics change, the one thing that will not is the need for candidates to form relationships with voters. This might seem to be almost too obvious, but there has been a counter-shift in political strategy away from relying on platforms like Apple’s and Meta’s to bring voters to candidates.

The shift has been toward relational organizing, essentially, friends and family of supporters being contacted on behalf of candidates. Unlike spam and ads, relational organizing is a slow burn. You need to first understand every person is also a potential network — everyone knows people and they vote. Deputizing those voters expands the network so it becomes yours, not Apple’s or Meta’s.

A candidate asks you for money and it is spam. A friend asks you to give money to a candidate and you begin a conversation: what is the candidate like, do they support what I believe, can they win?

The relationships built this way are more enduring because they were built on people and their connections, not modeled voter lists or social media algorithms. A great Substack to learn more about relational organizing, even if the GOP isn’t your party, The Relational Republican.

The technology supporting this kind of relational organizing is also not new. It’s become standardized over the past two cycles. Voters are given higher scores for outreach based on their prior behaviors and relationships.

Finally, it will force campaigns to do more of the hard work of building grassroots support rather than simply buying access to voters. We might even get better candidates.

This is a good shift, and one that will better reflect how voters feel and behave, as well as respecting their right to be left alone.

Michael D. Cohen, Ph.D. is the author of the book Modern Political Campaigns, president of Cohen Research Group and a 30-year veteran of the polling industry. He writes The Level regularly for 24sight News, analyzing polling and campaign trends with a keen eye and level-headed approach.

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Ed. Notes from Tom L.

If you miss one of our Substack Lives, you can find them over at the 24sight YouTube Page. If you’ve got comments, tips, notes, email me at tom@24sight.news or just reply to this email.

Before we get to 24sight’s own , I want to flag my recent chat with — some might call today MC Squared. If you want to get a sense of how reporter’s work sources and come back with the goods, listen to this, it’s like one of my calls with Cohen. We go deep on the stakes for Elon Musk as he goes to war with Trump, understanding the machinations of Trumpworld, the time “Ye” declared he was Jewish (Cohen ran his business for a wild four months), how democracy supporters build the movement and much more.

You can catch my talk with Cohen on the latest episode of his “Mea Culpa” Pod on the right here and wherever you find your favorite pods.

And make sure to catch up on the latest from the “One Big Beautiful Bill” with 24sight’s own on CBS News here! If you were tuned in last week, you know exactly how wired in JulieG is at the Capitol.

And make sure to check out which is now carrying the best of 24sight, including these great videos of my interviews with and ! Look for more and keep on supporting independent journalism. No bribes, no billionaires, just the news holding the powerful to account!

Reflecting on an awkward July 4th

By

The July 4th weekend is usually one I look forward to every year.  It’s an opportunity to look back and look forward, to appreciate the American experiment and to commit to a more perfect union sometime in the future.  It didn’t feel like that to me this year, and it was a unique feeling.  This was the first time in memory that I didn’t rush out to fly the flag.

Or so I thought.  The more people I spoke with, Left, Center, Right, the more people felt this 249th celebration of our country to be more complicated.  I have a close friend who has a transgender child, who is struggling with the near-universal attacks, whether they come from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, or down the block in both chambers of Congress, and now even at the Supreme Court.

I have college friends, who even 30+ years later remain my closest, feeling simultaneously good about certain tax breaks they’re going to get this year, and terrible about who is going to pay the cost, as well as the long-term debt.  It seems like yesterday that we were all rooting for a smaller, smarter, and more efficient government.  Now that the unpopular One Big Beautiful Bill has been signed, we wonder if it’s all arbitrary as to whom is in power. 

I watched the fireworks with my wife, as we have for decades, this time at home.  The Air Force band was amazing, and the sights of DC were spectacular.  But I didn’t feel that surge of pride that I felt not too long ago.  That we were worth celebrating.  That our values were ascendant.  That we were on the right path.

The data supports this in the aggregate.  Trump’s presidential approval ratings crossed over sometime around fake “Independence Day” (the tariff announcements) in mid-March and have not recovered. Pride in America has found a new low, particularly among Democrats, which is easy to predict, but also among Independents.

And yet, if you look at the Trump administration’s performance in terms of what they’ve accomplished on their perceived mandate, there is cause for MAGA celebration:

 - DOGE flushed many in the “Deep State” if not solved the debt problem

- Tariffs have reset relationships with countries that have been “ripping us off”

- The immigration crisis is over, the border closed, and a border wall is on the way

- NATO nations have agreed to spend 5% of GDP — paying their “fair share”

- The Iran nuclear program has been bombed back at least two years without American casualties

- The OBBB passed on time, signed on Independence Day, securing a broad-based MAGA legacy in legislative form

The best the Democrats could do was talk.  In the House, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries broke the record for the “Magic Minute” delaying final passage of the OBBB. In the Senate, New Jersey Democrat Cory Booker did pretty much the same.  But beyond two yap-fests, the Democrats have no core message other than “MAGA BAD” and that won’t cut it moving into the next election period.  

They need a bit of luck, at all of our expense, in an economy weakened by the tariffs and the OBBB, which is kind of like hoping that the local deer eats your neighbor’s strawberries and not yours.  So much goes into those decisions and sometimes it has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with the unknowable decisions of a clueless deer.

Relying on randomness is where the American experiment is right now, and that’s not exactly patriotic.  America is at its best when its engaged.  Right now, most Republicans are content, Democrats are exhausted, and Independents have checked out of politics until a couple of weeks before the next election, if they choose to check back in at all.

In the meantime, it’s on the Democrats to craft a coherent narrative about what it means to be an American, a patriotic message that’s authentic to the Party and broad enough to bring home voters they lost in the Biden-to-Harris debacle.  

A strategy of “All Politics Is Local” so “let everyone run their own race” won’t cut it in this national political media environment.  A third party funded by former First Buddy Elon Musk is a super PAC side show.  My guess, despite the current generic candidate polling is that MAGA would retain control of both chambers of Congress in 2026 unless Democrats are able to unlock a New Patriotism.

 Moreover, Democrats should reject the Abundance messaging flavor-of-the-month.  I read it and it is simplistic and unrealistic.  

 The core takeaway is that Democrats need to do better in following through on promises.  If they say they’re going to build EV electric chargers there ought to be more than a 214 after spending $7.5 billion since Biden’s infrastructure bill became law two years ago. As the authors say, Abundance “is a liberalism that builds.”

 To which I say, duh. So why haven’t they done it?

The second is that we can have everything we want: “Scarcity is a choice.”  Really.  That’s the argument. They continue, “This book is dedicated to a simple idea: to have the future we want, we need to build and invent more of what we need. That’s it. That’s the thesis.”

 It’s borderline tautological. Who would disagree with that to get to where we want to go, we need to invent (waves hands) new things? This is not a strategy. It’s an aspiration at best, a mass delusion at worst.

In response, let me provide a trio of messages that both hit Trump and remind us of why being an American is special:

1. Freedom: The ability to live your own life without the government interfering in it

 The federal assault on our freedoms to work, love, pray, and play are everywhere.  Trump’s micromanaging of all aspects of our life is un-American.

 2. Opportunity: A level playing field in immigration, the workforce, the tax code, and our broader culture

 Trump’s reconfiguration of American society and attacking our non-federal institutions is limiting our growth and stifling innovation.

 3. Responsibility: We are in this together, and we will do everything we can to help people in need

Patriotism isn’t just to a flag; it’s to a set of common ideals. The core of it is that while we strive individually, together we provide help for those who need it.

Each of these meets MAGA where they already are and nudges its recent/late adopters to rethink the Kool-Aid before they finish the cup. But to get what we want we need to do this together. We need to move beyond fighting each other and back to working alongside with whom those we probably like but at times disagree.  

We need a New Patriotism that is as good as the foundation laid for us almost a quarter millennium ago. The Democratic Party needs to understand that it’s no longer in a fight for control of DC, but for the hearts and minds of latent patriots who just need a reason to believe again in America.

Michael D. Cohen, Ph.D. is the author of the book Modern Political Campaigns, president of Cohen Research Group and a 30-year veteran of the polling industry. He writes The Levelregularly for 24sight News, analyzing polling and campaign trends with a keen eye and level-headed approach.

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Donald Trump’s 10-year MAGA takeover of the Republican Party is over, but the debate about what it will mean, and how long the coalition will hold, is just beginning. Just as “Make America Great Again” is an echo of Ronald Reagan’s tagline, Trump would be well-served to see how important it is to win the next elections if he wants his legacy to outlast his presidency.

His brand is on the ballot in 2026 and 2028 and beyond.

Insurgencies are cohesive. To take on the establishment the insurgents need to agree on a core set of principles that challenge the party. Trump did this with his focus on immigration, economics, and war — the three legs of the MAGA “stool”, to build on a Reagan aphorism. All three were at odds with the Reagan GOP and the shift was as gradual as it was dramatic.

When I was a field operative for the Florida Republican Party in 1996, working on state House races, the Pat Buchanan wing of the party was viewed as crazy, nativist, protectionist and anti-interventionist. These proto-Tumpers knew what they believed but they didn’t have a leader who could take on the party.

As we all know, Trump was that person. His secret superpower was instantly captivating the base of the party that was shifting away from Reagan and toward Buchanan. More working classand anti-elite, and most important: sick of losing.

Do not underestimate how much good will Trump bought with his upset over Clinton. The shift in the GOP rests on winning, which is why the next two elections are not only a referendum on Trump but the entire MAGA majority within the GOP.

The Midterms

Whether or not MAGA survives Trump rests on the next cycle of elections, specifically in the House of Representatives. The Senate is likely to be held by Republicans but control of the House is on a knife’s edge. If Trump loses the midterms, he’s not only a lame duck but Democrats will likely spend the next two years building a case that the entire MAGA project is a failure.

This is why there is so much tension now in Washington among Republicans.

The One Big Beautiful Bill is broadly unpopular, but Trump and Congressional leaders are banking on getting the win and explaining it afterwards. Without passage, this Congress will have enacted very few policies of consequence beyond the ICE and DOGE rampages, largely done without legislative authority, and both with limited results.

With limited successes on immigration and government spending, this is why the strike on Iran is so important.

It’s not exactly “Wag the Dog” because Israel initiated the action on Iran’s nuclear program. But the use of bunker busters , without Congressional authorization, amounts to unilateral action by the executive branch, undermining the third pillar of Trump’s coalition, which is staunchly anti-war.

Its online avatars are screaming “No!” into the social media echo chambers. Even staunch supporters like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., are sounding off in opposition.

If the GOP does not pass the “One Big Beautiful Bill”, Trump slides back on deportations, and engagement with Iran sprawls into more than bombing nuclear sites, the Midterm Elections will be a disaster for MAGA and for Trump’s final two years, as well as his legacy moving forward.

The ‘Third Term’

George H.W. Bush’s term was viewed at the time as Reagan’s third, the one that sealed the Reagan Revolution. But remember how Bush approached it at the convention: Kinder, Gentler. Basically, Reaganism without the rough edges (despite the Willie Horton ad, of course).

What would a “third Trump term” look like? More to the point, how will MAGA view Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, if things go sour on the Trump agenda and in the Middle East? It would create an opening for someone to run a counter-insurgency, but not from the middle. It would come from the right of MAGA.

Vance and Rubio would be viewed as letting Trump down. It would open opportunities for someone else to enter the fray like populist conservative podcaster and and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who was against the United States’s attacks on Iran. The short-term calculus of MAGA primary voters would be that no one thought Trump could win so why not run someone who is “Fully MAGA” and can complete the revolution?

Moreover, if the final two years of Trump’s term are fought on defense, against an unprecedented third impeachment, who else bubbles up in MAGA-world that we haven’t yet imagined? There’s only one left.

How much does MAGA talk themselves into believing that all that they have “achieved” in the past four years can only be “saved” by Trump himself? (This is akin to what the Biden team believed in his re-election bid. It’s also the Steve Bannon scenario, and it becomes, ironically, more “real” if Trump is less successful than more successful.)

The 22nd Amendment limits the number of times a president can win office to two terms. But how much are we willing to bet that the Roberts Court doesn’t vote 5-4 in support of Trump running again?

Right now, the betting money is on J.D. Vance, but Trump is … second. As with all things Trump, one should not dismiss what we don’t see. I’m no longer dismissing it. They just need to find the path, and they have 3.5 years to figure it out.

If Trump loses the midterms, it’s far more likely that he will at least try to run and the MAGA primary electorate will try to find a way.

Michael D. Cohen, Ph.D. is the author of the book Modern Political Campaigns, president of Cohen Research Group and a 30-year veteran of the polling industry. He writes The Levelregularly for 24sight News, analyzing polling and campaign trends with a keen eye and level-headed approach.

On Deck

Coming up this week, THE is 24sight LIVE on Wednesday at Noon ET.

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(Click those links to hop on when we go live.)

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Cheers, Tom L.

Without his turn as Donald Trump on The Apprentice it is likely a whole generation of future MAGA voters would have skipped the Manhattan celebrity in 2015, let alone hang with him in 2025.

It’s been a turbulent ride so far.

With apologies to my native Long Island icon Billy Joel, here is a short “We Didn’t Start the Fire” remake of what we’ve seen in the first three months:

DOGE, tariffs, RFK,
Stock market slide, not okay.

Kilmar, CECOT, Roberts Court,
Polling down, no support.

Goldberg, Waltz, Signal fire,
Karoline Leavitt is a liar.

Vance in the Oval, dress up nice,
Prices up, even rice.

Kristi, Tulsi, Pam, Pete,
Serving up the red meat.

Stephen Miller, NSA,
No effing way.

No one crosses Susie Wiles,
They end up as X-Files.

Russia, Ukraine still at war,
I can’t take it anymore …

It’s enough to make you want to look ahead, so let’s do that.

As the political calendar turns toward 2026 and looming lame duck status, Trump has two choices: go all in on challenging the 22nd Amendment limiting presidents or shape his legacy by anointing a successor.

While fighting for a third term is the ultimate troll, the obvious play here is for Trump to run a three-year final season of The Apprentice: MAGA Edition. Trump loves nothing more than Trump, and people who love Trump. Why not bask in that adoration for as long as possible?

Yes, Vice President J.D. Vance appears to have the inside track but … does he? He isn’t exactly out of central casting (beards and eyeliner), and while J.D. got MAGA points for targeting Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, that’s yesterday’s news. He became a meme in Greenland, showed up on Waltz’s Signal chatgroup, and appears to have been sidelined.

So, as it usually is with Trump, the question is who’s next?

For Trump, pitting his subordinates against each other is like managing his own family. It’s not personal; it’s business.

Who is the best play for long-term MAGA supremacy? For the past ten years that name has been Marco Rubio, runner-up for vice president in 2024 but seemingly being given an opportunity in the spotlight.

Consider these facts. In the past three months:

• Rubio was the first cabinet member to take on Musk, opening the door for others, and ultimately helping White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles get her revenge.

• He was tapped to manage USAID and the National Archives and Records Administration in addition to serving as Secretary of State.

• When Waltz was banished to the UN in New York by Wiles, Trump added national security advoser to Rubio’s portfolio, elevating him to a modern-day Henry Kissinger, the last to hold both State and NSA.

Rubio’s plum assignments stand in stark contrast to Vance’s don’t-forget-the-milk, honey-do list. They are also high-profile yet low-risk. Consider what Joe Biden gave did to Kamala Harris: Go fix the border! She was so successful within the constraints of the Biden policy that the 2024 presidential election was partially fought on that failure.

In 2024 MAGA won significant increases with diverse populations including Hispanics. To lock in that vote, why not Rubio for 2028? Trump could be the bridge to a dominant cross-cultural MAGA party as ably described by my friend Patrick Ruffini in Party of the People.

That’s the political business side. How about the personal?

Trump and Rubio have had a reproachment from their 2015 brawl where Trump called him ‘Lil Marco, and Rubio made fun of his small hands, both of which were entertaining. Rubio was the only one to lay a glove on him in the primary, and Trump remembers and respects that. Rubio has come to like Trump, and their Florida connection should not be underestimated (also, they both hate DeSantis).

But the “ice maiden” who you should never, ever, ever, ever, ever, and I mean, ever cross, Wiles, has a good relationship with Rubio. His personality is collaborative and polite, both of which will help soften Trump’s rough edges. He’s the embodiment of a kinder, gentler, MAGA. If this sounds familiar, you’re as old as I am: It’s Reagan to Bush.

The trouble with where Rubio is right now is there’s nowhere to go but down. The New York Times has him pinned as “The Secretary of Everything.” If Time wants crib death for Rubio, they could always proclaim him “The Republican Savior.” Oh, they already did that in 2013. A repeat performance there would hurt him with the boss, who hates the mainstream media but loves being on the cover of that magazine.

Let’s not underplay how much work Rubio would have to do ahead of a run, either.

Right now, Vice President Vance is at 49% for the GOP nomination in 2028. Rubio is way back at 5.1% trailing Kristi Noem (5.2%), RFK (5.9%), and Ron DeSantis (9.8%). The only one who is also in double-figures is Donald Trump Jr. (18.5%).

Still, we’re dealing with the OG Donald J. Trump, here. He will want an open primary once he loses his test of the 22nd Amendment, which he will say is a great victory for the American people because, like Obama’s birth certificate, it was unclear before he took us down the rabbit hole.

It’ll be the biggest, most beautiful, contest for the American presidency ever, and Trump will be right where he wants to be, the main character, even if it’s someone else’s show.

It might be The Final Apprentice election, but the lead will be the 45th and 47th President of the United States.

is the author of the book Modern Political Campaigns, president of Cohen Research Group and a 30-year veteran of the polling industry. He writes The Level regularly for 24sight News, analyzing polling and campaign trends with a keen eye and level-headed approach.

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We are entering a new era where we may not be able to tell the difference between real political communication and content created by artificial intelligence. Right now, we can pass a Political Turing Test, intuitively discerning what is real and fake. But the leap forward in campaign technology is testing the boundaries and over the next few cycles we will get closer to failing that test.

When we take a technological leap forward usually the largest campaigns benefit first. They have the most money and the elite expertise to make sense of it and incorporate the new tech into their campaigns. It usually takes two or three cycles for all campaigns throughout a ballot to benefit because the tech needs time to scale for the costs to go down far enough be affordable for everyone.

The release of Open AI’s ChatGPT generative AI tool was different. Everyone got the best new technology at the same time. The cost was either free or extremely affordable. Moreover, there were plenty of alternatives to ChatGPT and they were just as cheap. Everyone got the new toys at the same time, and this led to all the experimentation that usually takes cycles to be compressed into one.

What I found in my interviews for the second edition of Modern Political Campaigns: How Professionalism, Technology, and Speed Have Revolutionized Elections was that the benefits of generative AI were mostly found down-ballot. The top consultants tried using the technology but found them ineffective because voters rejected them, but smaller campaigns found them useful in other ways.

There were robocalls from “Joe Biden” generated from his voice that not only incited backlash, but criminal convictions. Ron DeSantis tried to generate Donald Trump’s voice, and the response was so swift and brutal that you can no longer find the ad online. The RNC generated video with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and they were creepy enough that they weren’t featured for long.

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State and local campaign teams I spoke with for the new AI chapter of the book found the new tools enormously useful. Some were using them to help grow their firms by using their successful pitches as a base for new business. Others were helping to upskill newbies to come up with better first drafts of social content and speeches. These drafts then led to deeper conversations within campaign teams on strategy and fit, instead of remedial editing on missed words, commas, or typos.

Beyond the basics, successful down-ballot teams used generative AI to draft quick, informed, responses to attacks. This kind of research usually takes teams days to accomplish but in the rough-and-tumble world of campaigns there is usually never enough time to do due diligence. Now, campaigns had the benefit of quick-turn research that would’ve been cost prohibitive in previous cycles.

What does this all mean? The new wave of generative AI tools are not the society-ending weapons of mass political destruction the doomers envision. Our collective bias toward authenticity has neutered that strategy. It’s also not the solve for every campaign need. Early academic experiments have shown that using AI in content and disclosing it, creates a boomerang effect, reducing trust on the candidate who sponsors it.

The best practice I’ve seen is using generative AI as a drafting board, but with adult supervision. Content produced by these new services is clean but uninteresting, without the kind of creativity and context that moves voters.

Please RSVP here, we look forward to seeing you.

But it’s a starting point. The technology will get better over the next two mini-cycles — two years, then two more to 2028. By then, we expect to see models that can do more reasoning, in addition to pulling together research and content that is more interesting to the campaign audience. Moreover, we’ll see additional use cases in planning, organizing, and get-out-the-vote efforts.

AI will be everywhere and nowhere specific.

Much like in our lives now. I find use cases all over the place from replacing Google almost entirely — I’d really love to have it as my default search engine. It’s great for doing basic research on subjects that come out of nowhere, like tariffs. Subject for another piece, but it’s clear that the entire world is running the Threepio, “Let the Wookie Win” strategy.

But it’s painfully obvious that some writers, even here on Substack, are using generative AI as a crutch, or to create content while they are more actively engaged in other pursuits. I think this undervalues the relationship we have with our readers. As I once counseled a fellow author on his book, readers are here for our voices, not someone else’s. This might seem elementary, but every time we outsource our creativity to AI it chips away at our relationship with our audience.

This is the same challenge political candidates face with this amazing new technology. How much of the humanity of our campaigns will be resilient enough to survive the ease of use and creation that generative AI offers? The bottom line is this: I trust voters to sniff out what’s real and what’s fake. But, admittedly, that line is getting blurrier. As the models improve, we might find we can’t reliably pass a Political Turing Test to discern what is real and what is fake.

And that’s why no matter how close we get to generalized artificial intelligence we need to retain adult supervision. That’s the responsibility of the humans on the campaign: to ensure that our elections retain our collective and suboptimal humanity, with all the personal tics, weirdness, and inspiration that makes non-algorithmic democracy so much better than the alternatives.

Michael Cohen, is the author of the book Modern Political Campaigns, president of Cohen Research Group and a 30-year veteran of the polling industry. He writes The Level regularly for 24sight News, analyzing polling and campaign trends with a keen eye and level-headed approach.

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The digital currency of the modern political campaign is authenticity and the 2024 election exposed Gavin Newsom’s presidential investments. He played Democratic Party loyalist, supporting Joe Biden until he left the race. He supported Kamala Harris as his replacement, despite no votes being cast for her.

But it was all a ruse. The California governor wasn’t for she/her. When Trump’s transgender ad dropped, so did Newsom from the airwaves. If Kamala was for they/them, the Governor of California saw the moment for what it was for he/him and said barely anything. Never get in the way of your (future) opponent imploding.

The Pivot

There is a grand tradition of politicians changing their minds on issues, large and small. Our once and current President of the United States was once a Democratic donor and pro-choice before he expertly merchandised his political brand and ended federal protections to abortion access.

But Trump was always a last-name merchandiser and once he reached the bottom of the escalator at Trump Tower, he subcontracted the choice of future Supreme Court appointments to the right people on the Right, so it was no surprise when Roe fell, even though it felt like it in real-time.

Newsom, however, was a solid liberal brand. As Mayor of San Francisco, he issued the first gay marriages and parlayed that into a successful run for governor.

No one would ever look at Newsom’s record, his stay-at-home COVID instructions while dining out, or his slicked back hair and think, yes, that’s Real America.

In the aftermath of the 2024 election, what did Newsom do? The Los Angeles fire crisis became an opportunity for him to “work” with the Trump administration. But it seems like what he was really doing was taking notes. As the fires receded from top news, Gavin was about to make his own — but before that, some homework was needed.

Newsom seemingly read all of the postmortems. He learned:

1. Voters want authenticity

2. MAGA podcasts have reach

3. Woke is bad

Then Newsom did:

1. Show how much of a “regular guy” he is

2. Start a podcast featuring MAGA guests

3. Run from Latinx and trans kids

The Evidence

Did it work? If we go with the tonnage of think pieces (yes, I get the irony, this is one of those) then Newsom has already won his second term as President of the United States and is getting fitted for Mt. Rushmore.

But here’s the problem: primary voters. He just alienated virtually all of them. Look at who he had on his podcast recently:

1. Charlie Kirk, who is writing about not just painting over Black Lives Matter in DC, but ending the the symbol of that movement, George Floyd, and any monuments or murals of him or some of his last words, “I can’t breathe.”

2. Steve Bannon, who supports the far-right National front in France, is a conspiracy theorist not the least of which is that Donald Trump won the 2020 election Let’s not forget, went to jail for defrauding donors. The ADL summary has it all and more.

For what it’s worth — and it’s worth less than zero in a Democratic primary — both Kirk and Bannon had nice things to say about MAGA Newsom. The problem is he isn’t going to be running to be Vice President J.D. Vance’s or Donald Trump Jr.’s running mate.

The Democratic primary ads against Newsom are going to be brutal and, let’s face it, painfully obvious. Just put him with these guys on TV and play omnibus music, maybe something from Severance. Narrator: Gavin Newsom platformed these guys you hate. End card, end of campaign.

Need more? Here is Newsom talking about how he never used the term Latinx while in office and the proof that he did

How about the group that is championed by new Gen Z voters? Not Hamas, trans kids who want to play sports. Almost one in seven (15.9%) that generation’s adults identify as transgender and, back of the envelope, 99.9% are Democrats. What we do know is that 86% of LGBTQ+ voters chose Harris in 2024.

They hate Newsom now, and with good reason. He’s a phony.

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Authenticity Rules

Gavin’s pivot to he/him is a reminder that national campaigns, even nascent ones, are MRI for the soul. The problem is you can’t sever yourself from your primary motive: winning. He sees a lane for someone who is “moderate” but that’s not the story of his career.

This is what happens when someone sees the political environment and realizes he’s not fit for it, so he retrofits himself to it. But modern voters are smarter than that. They will not listen to the think pieces about how smart this move is. They will see a phony, someone who left his authentic self behind in the pursuit of an office, not to help others but to help himself. These people lose, and they should.

Gavin will, and on Super Tuesday he will be on the dais raising someone else’s arms, hoping for a cabinet position — if Trump hasn’t eliminated it first.

Michael Cohen, is the author of the book Modern Political Campaigns, president of Cohen Research Group and a 30-year veteran of the polling industry. He writes The Level regularly for 24sight News, analyzing polling and campaign trends with a keen eye and level-headed approach.

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Last Thursday, I watched a cringy and tone-deaf Semafor event billed as a “National Summit” on “Innovating to Restore Trust in News.” Kudos to Semafor for assembling an A-List group of interviewees on an important topic. I joined with an open mind, but as DC is (in)famous for these kinds of events my email and Slack windows remained opened, too.

The event was held at Gallup’s DC offices. If you’re not familiar with the area, it’s in the heart of downtown, and this was a very Washingtonian experience. A lot was said by important people in the most serious and self-aggrandizing tones. But not much of what was said was important, while everyone involved gravely felt like they had a lot to reflect upon afterwards.

Ignoring the Issues

It was virtually a waste of time. Thankfully, that’s how I participated in it: virtually. If you want to see it for yourself, here’s the link.

The discussions did not focus on innovation and they didn’t engender elevated trust either in the mainstream media or its alternatives. Instead, what we got was:

• From Gallup’s CEO Jim Clifton (and, by proxy, the analysts who did the two slides for him), trust in the mass media is historically terrible and that it has been since Watergate. Unasked question: So why are we talking about this now?

• From CNN’s Chairman and CEO Mark Thompson, we learned that he doesn’t trust mass media either and he’d rather have a “questioning audience,” which seemed to me an ostrich-like answer from the cable network in last place.

• From Megyn Kelly, the one person who is doing something truly innovative by betting on herself after leaving Fox News, literally nothing about innovation because Semafor’s Ben Smith didn’t ask her any questions about why she has succeeded.

• At the 56:06 mark, we learned that Fox News Anchor Bret Baier can throw a a sharp elbow. Smith read a quote by “former friend” Chuck Todd charging that Baier is no longer a journalist and just wants to have “teatime with the president.” Baier quickly replied that he had an interview with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer today and that he doesn’t know what Todd is doing (he was fired from Meet the Press and recently left NBC).

It only got worse from there:

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• Joe Kahn, executive editor of The New York Times, said that their solve for the lack of trust in the media is to defend their journalists. (It’s not working.)

• Katherine Maher, CEO of NPR said they’re totally okay with some stations using their own brand and not NPR’s, which is like you telling your mom that you think the casserole is “nice.”

• Wall Street Journal Editor-in-Chief Emma Tucker telling Ben Smith that she was told off-stage to “hurry up” because people had a “lot to say.” (They really didn’t, though.)

• Finally, the heel arrived, Brendan Carr, Chairman of the FCC. Like the spectrum he oversees, he controlled the interview from the jump and made some news in hinting that he’d be totally okay regulating new media if Congress gave him the authority to do so. I look forward to this Substack getting FCC notices someday.

Semafor’s editor-in-chief, Smith, did little to discuss the main issues of the conference, trust and innovation, so I will:

Trust in Media

The way to rebuild trust with an audience is to connect with them. Old style newsrooms were so well funded that they did not need to think about what might be important or should be important to their readers. This was an entirely editorial decision, not one connected to the wider world.

Over the years, beginning post-Watergate, and now through the Decade of Trump, the big news brands have lost trust because of a lack of reporting. In just the past 10 years, mainstream outlets missed stories on what happened before the Capitol insurrection, before the fall of Afghanistan, and Joe Biden’s mental and physical decline.

Sorry, books about Trump after his first term or an upcoming book from Jake Tapper after he’s out of office are not what we expect. We expect reporting in real-time, not after the fact. The overall impression we’re getting is that they’re holding the good stuff for their books.

Trust needs to be rebuilt upon the news itself. The big brands, network news, cable news, national newspapers, will need to connect you with reporters who are doing great work. I think of Wired magazine’s political team, which is doing amazing work now on DOGE. You don’t need a legacy name to do great reporting.

Innovation in Media

I have faced questions of innovation in my business, where response rates on surveys have dropped, we have shifted to multi-modal ways of connecting with voters. Older and have a landline? We’ll call you. Younger and always on your iPhone, we’ll text you so you can take the interview on the web.

The insight is to meet people where they are. You are overwhelmingly getting this through email, and so we are not going to nuke your iPhone with a notification, unless you want it. News needs to understand that its audience’s consumption habits are shifting and meet them there.

Fewer people are on Twitter/X and are shifting to alternatives. Fewer people are going to websites or spending a half hour watching television news. Pivots to video are silly without context of what audiences want from you.

We don’t want metaphysical innovation in news. We want the news, the actual news, where we want it, when we want it. The evening television newscasts I grew up with made sense when we all gathered around a dinner table to discuss our days and the news of the day. We’re now always in contact with each other so we don’t need a half hour of that.

Instead, simply ask your audience how they want your content. Yes, it means surveys and focus groups or some combination of both.

But all of this requires keeping an open mind, like I did for Semafor and the titans of mainstream media. The problem is their minds are closed and off-topic, and that’s why they’re losing us, and why those of us experimenting with new channels for news, like Substack, are winning.

Michael Cohen, is the author of the book Modern Political Campaigns, president of Cohen Research Group and a 30-year veteran of the polling industry. He writes The Level regularly for 24sight News, analyzing polling and campaign trends with a keen eye and level-headed approach.

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Donald Trump’s polling honeymoon has been nasty, brutish, and short.

During the English Civil War, Thomas Hobbes described in Leviathan a life without government: chaos and people in constant fear of violent death. After a month of DOGE nastiness, the chaos is real and the “death” of new public servants brutish, as their careers were cut short.

It’s starting to catch up to the recidivist president, who is likely now underwater on job approval, as it catches up to his personal ratings, which are also tanking. The current averages from 538 show Trump with a 1.6% positive on job approval and 1.6% negative on opinions of him, personally.

Basically, it’s a wash and well within the margins of national survey error.

You can pick out polls where Trump is up and where he’s down, but look at the overall trendlines. You don’t need 30+ years of polling experience like I have, the eyeball test points to bad.

Short Honeymoon

A fair question to ask is how does Trump’s honeymoon compare to previous presidents? The TL;DR here is simple: short.

Trump likely won’t make it past the next round of polling to be viewed negatively in the job and personally. Possibly by the end of this week.

Former president Joe Biden, who spent most of his presidency underwater in terms of approval ratings didn’t cross the streams until September 2, 2021, one week after the disastrous exit from Afghanistan.

In contrast to Trump, Biden’s personal favorability took a bit longer to go negative — September 17, 2021. Ultimately, Biden never recovered on either metric.

Afghanistan undid his presidency.

If Trump’s ratings turn negative, that’s a full six months before Biden lost the American people due to a singular disaster in the Afghanistan withdrawal. Remember, Biden was also dealing with a national vaccination effort in the face of a persistent pandemic and an economy that was rebooting. Trump came into office with a relatively clean slate.

Chaos King

Instead of focusing on unifying issues including inflation and peacemaking, Trump has taken his barely-a-majority victory and tight margins in Congress to unleash mass chaos in the federal government and around the world.

His quasi-appointment of Elon Musk to lead the DOGE effort to find waste, fraud, and abuse has turned into a daily stream of WTF stories. It has gone beyond weeding out DEI officials to “find me someone I can fire” regardless of importance or performance. Two examples: DOGE fired then tried to rehire nuclear weapons workers at the National Nuclear Security Administration and key personnel working on bird flu at the FDA.

As with Biden, the tipping point may come through a self-inflicted wound internationally.

Trump’s statements against Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, calling him a dictator, while giving Russian President Vladimir Putin a pass on his electoral legitimacy. Right now Europe is reevaluatinghow they will proceed forward without the United States’ support, which has eroded, particularly among Republicans, reflecting Trump’s viewpoint on the war.

Trump might be in step with the GOP right now, but this might change very quickly if Russia overruns Ukraine like the Taliban overran Afghanistan. Worse, if Trump completely sells out Ukraine to Russia and Europe decides to step up and defend it, it would mark the de facto end of NATO and chaos could easily ensue.

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The darkest example of this was outlined by The Bulwark, arguing persuasively that our allies are likely to decide they need their own nuclear weapons because they can no longer rely on American security umbrella. If that happens, Ukraine will be the least of our worries and the chaos will spread to Japan, South Korea, and elsewhere.

The Two-Year Presidency

Chaos reigns home and abroad, and we haven’t even discussed the likely negative impacts of the upcoming fight over reconciliation on Medicaid or Trump’s assertion that Gaza should become a beachfront resort without its current inhabitants. What is the point of all of this, and does Trump even care?

Trump likely sees his honeymoon, as in his personal life through three marriages: fleeting. He has a short window in which to act, take his retribution, and remake government and the world, before a judgment arrives from the American people during the midterms.

This is why he is moving fast and breaking things.

But this is short-sighted.

Once the narrative shifts with Trump’s tanking poll numbers, we will begin to see the slide toward the midterm elections, where his administration’s performance will be on the ballot.

The Senate seems safe for the GOP but the House is, as Cook Political Report’s Erin Covey and Matthew Klein said, will be a knife fight.

If Trump loses the House, he can surely find himself on the other end of an impeachment or at least a complete legislative roadblock and executive oversight. Trump knows this is coming — it’s any minority party’s playbook, even the politically hapless Democrats.

Trump isn’t looking at four or eight years: he’s looking at two. He doesn’t think long-term. It’s all crisis management, even and especially when it’s of his own making.

By delegating retribution to Elon Musk this first month allows him, not Trump, to take all the direct hits when things go south. If you think that Trump vs. Musk isn’t going to happen because the latter has been so loyal, you haven’t been watching the two-term president for the past ten years.

No one is immune from being dumped, when necessary.

There are additional signs to watch. In a recent poll by Reuters/Ipsos, 59% of Americans support DOGE’s efforts to downsize the federal government, which includes a third of Democrats. And yet, almost the same percentage (58%) said they were concerned about cuts to popular programs such as Social Security and student aid payments.

If DOGE goes too far, and let’s be real: it will. Trump’s honeymoon will end but not with voters. Trump will end the nasty, brutish, and short-lived DOGE effort. He will thank Musk on the way out because, after all, MAGA still needs to buy those black hats. Maybe we’ll even get a post on X from Elon saying he’s leaving to spend time with his growing family or just exile him lead the first expedition to Mars.

Michael Cohen, is the author of the book Modern Political Campaigns, president of Cohen Research Group and a 30-year veteran of the polling industry. He writes The Level regularly for 24sight News, analyzing polling and campaign trends with a keen eye and level-headed approach.

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Given the decades-long assault on the news industry, I think it’s time for those of us who seek information to take a step back and reevaluate what a free press is and how we can support it.

I find myself in this weird place where I grew up watching the evening news with Peter Jennings on ABC at dinner, which spurred conversations about the country and the world. The oddity of it is now there is so much information but so little of it is news.

What Happened to the News?

Quite literally, news is new.

This means that what you are consuming has been brought out of the shadows into a new place where you can see it, evaluate it, and react to it as a citizen. Reporting should show us what truth is, put it in context, and show us why it matters.

The problem with most of what is available is that it is derivative. The news happened, and we are reading reactions, increasingly by people with whom we agree.

This is a major problem because we are no longer being challenged, just reinforced.

We see this a lot in comment sections and social media. Instead of pressure-testing the news or opinions, too much of it has the vibe of “you’re bad because I don’t agree with you.” Both Red and Blue believe they are defending Democracy. Those relatively few in the middle just want to avoid the discussions altogether and vote quietly.

Online, we have seen X become the home of the Right and Bluesky the new home of the Left. We’ve opted out of even seeing each other’s content, let alone the news itself.

This is both a reflection and a result of our political polarization. We no longer see ourselves as Americans but people who have strong opinions and associate with those who are on the “right” side of them.

Consensus is weak. Conviction is strong.

We’ve even self-sorted into living communities where we are more likely than not to live near people who agree with us.

News, the reality of what is happening in the public square, is expensive and requires a level of commitment to objective truth that seems almost naïve.

Of the major cable networks, CNN’s audience share is lagging behind both Fox on the Right and MSNBC on the Left. CNN was once the default for understanding what was happening, and that would inform your opinions.

Now we have Left, Right, extreme outlets that do this in reverse, sometimes never ending up with the news itself.

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The Problem is Us

I’m becoming increasingly convinced that this is a demand-driven problem. It’s on us. If we want our biases to be comforted, we are willing sliding back into the Partisan Press Age.

There is a grand tradition of this going back to the nation’s founding where proto-bloggers like Thomas Jefferson would write under pseudonyms about the Washington administration to attack his future opponent John Adams. The vice president also employed this tactic, of course.

Today, under the guise of authenticity, we have “news influencers” who simply read and react to others who gather the news and then put on a Red or Blue hat POV to connect with their audience.

I think this is not only limiting but inauthentic. Most people hold heterodox views and we shouldn’t be forced into silos. We should be more than that. We should expect more than that in our media diets.

The problem is that we are not asking for more.

We want to spend our valuable time in a cozy sweatshirt, not a tight-fitting muscle shirt that exposes our flabby middle-aged dad bod (okay, that’s me).

Recommitting to Citizenship

Instead, and this includes yours truly, need to find voices that are reporting news but from other points of view. We cannot pressure test our own views without hearing from and understanding other voices and news we might not like.

- There were reporters who were focusing on Biden’s decline that I avoided, who I should’ve paid more attention to in the moment. Like many, I was shocked by the debate, but others had reported on it long before, and I tuned out.

- I actively ignored reports of the border becoming more problematic because it didn’t fit with my worldview that immigrants are a net-good, when it’s clear that border states are not equipped for the mass incursions.

- I overlooked the reporting of the fall of Afghanistan in part because I couldn’t get myself to engage the sheer humanitarian disaster but also because I had no way of finding out if a female student who was elected to office was okay.

That’s all on me. Maybe you feel this way, too, on these or different issues. The bottom line is we need to be more inquisitive about the news and not simply accept the Blue or Red colored screens we are presented with by our preferred cable talking heads or social media algorithms.

I don’t have the answers on who to watch, read, or listen to for news. But I do know that I am opening my mind to other voices that, frankly, I have ignored because they didn’t fit with my worldview. We live in an unprecedented era of freedom of information and expression.

But we need to heed what Alexis de Tocqueville warned us about ourselves, “Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom.”

We have freedom, but instead of supporting a free press, we are supporting the voices that comfort us. Freedom isn’t free, and neither is a free press. We need to think outside of ourselves and support those who are willing to report the truth and challenge our reality.

Michael Cohen, is the author of the book Modern Political Campaigns, president of Cohen Research Group and a 30-year veteran of the polling industry. He writes The Level regularly for 24sight News, analyzing polling and campaign trends with a keen eye and level-headed approach.

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Having ripped Make America Great Again from Ronald Reagan’s ‘80s two terms, Donald Trump is now moving onto the next two-term President of the United States of his prime: Bill Clinton in the ‘90s.

In personal ways, Trump and Clinton had the standard Boomer scandals on avoiding Vietnam and extramarital affairs. But what’s underreported is just how similar Trump’s second term in the 2020s is mirroring some of the cultural wars of the Clinton 1990s. 

And even some of the same Clinton-era characters are back. Dick Morris, who just wrote about Trump’s “Big 2024 Comeback” and former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who played an integral role in Trump’s third run for the White House and staffing the new administration.

For Trump, these are his people, contemporaries who understand that monogamous marriage is hard for powerful men and voters don't care about a politician’s personal life, anyway. (Clinton proved that for Trump in the 1990s.)

But what we’re living through now has a decidedly Clinton-era political subtext.  

In the 1990s, Morris famously helped Clinton focus on a set of relatively low-stakes cultural issues that were both broadly popular and relatively easy to implement either because you get credit for just talking about them or those impacted were relatively powerless to fight back.

Clinton

While he was Building a Bridge to the 21^st Century, Clinton was paying outsized attention to technology and kids, at levels disproportionately popular in messaging, but not impact. 

The first of these was Clinton’s support for v-chips, actual computer chips embedded into televisions to block out violence. 

The public support for it was 72% in a 1995 public opinion poll, which drove it into the State of the Union Address in 1996. 

“Our first challenge is to cherish our children and strengthen America’s families,” Clinton said at the time. “I call on Congress to pass the requirement for v-chip in TV sets so that parents can screen out programs they believe are inappropriate for their children.” 

The provision ended up in the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Ultimately, the issue was much ado about not very much as parents never widely used the technology.

That same year, Clinton staked out space in the perceived political center in a radio address about providing “a new manual” to local school districts on how to adopt school uniforms to “break the cycle of violence” in our schools. 

This was a reaction to student killings over expensive sneakers and other designer clothing. 

The polling was supportive: 70% of principals felt school uniforms reduced discipline problems. However, as of five years ago, only 19% of all schools require uniforms but 57% of private schools do. 

Again, big issue, low adoption.

Trump

While Trump is heralding a New Golden Age for America he has picked up the Clintonian high-messaging-low-impact focus on technology and kids. 

Lost in the flurry of DOGE-related activity was a late-week pivot to something that is broadly popular and commonsensical: America’s near-universal hatred of paper straws. 

A 2023 poll showed that while 59% of Americans would prefer a plastic straw and 74% have used one in the past week. I suspect Dick Morris has more recent polling that reinforces Trump’s instincts that reversing the Biden-era plan to phase out plastic straws by 2027 by executive order is an easy political win. 

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Echoing Clinton in wanting to protect children from violence, Trump signed an executive order banning biological boys from competing in girls sports. The NCAA followed with a similar ban. 

Where is the public on this? From 2021 to 2023, Gallup found an increase of 7% to a 69% supermajority of Americans who believe students should only be able to compete in the sports that match their birth gender.

So it’s a Big Message win for Trump, consistent with his campaign, but how widespread of a problem is it? A story from Newsweek said it was 15 high school students nationwide and “likely” less than 100 at the university level.

Both Clinton’s high-visibility issues and Trump’s masked other issues for which there were broader societal implications. Clinton’s partnership with Gingrich on moving people from welfare to work was viewed as a centrist move at the time and was widely supported. This met the public views of welfare of the moment.

Trump’s actions on foreign aid, specifically on USAID, are also broadly popular but impactful to the societies the agency was helping. A 2024 online survey found that only 26% of Americans said that defending human rights in other countries should be a top priority.

In both cases, Clinton and Trump, they had/have the public on their side for both the small ball and large ball issues, making critics seem small by comparison. Note: at this writing, Trump’s approval rating is +5%. Reminder: small ball wins.

Obama?

Now that Trump owns Reagan’s messaging and Clinton’s micro-policymaking strategery, what’s next? 

Trump has already cribbed from Reagan and Clinton, which leaves only two more modern two-term presidents: George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Bush is still viewed as a failure, but Obama isn’t.

Which leads to this obvious scenario: Trump goes for the trifecta of a third term, and hires the Obama Pod Save America crew, who will be looking for a second act in 2028.

(If you think either one of these is completely a joke, you may want to double-check just how many Overton Windows have moved lately.) 

Joking aside, small ball is all about messaging and juicing popularity to move the things you really want. In Clinton’s case it was reelection. In Trump’s case, it’s a third term he still believes was stolen from him.

Michael Cohen, is the author of the book Modern Political Campaigns, president of Cohen Research Group and a 30-year veteran of the polling industry. He writes The Level regularly for 24sight News, analyzing polling and campaign trends with a keen eye and level-headed approach.

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Now we know what a fully professional Trump administration looks like. Beyond the executive orders, some performative, but far more substantive, there has been a whole of government shift. Career professionals fired. Agency walls painted gray, covering up inclusive messaging. Elon Musk and DOGE, and the corresponding circus of a congressional subcommittee are testing the boundaries of federal law in the pursuit of … budget savings, scorched earth, or both?

President Donald Trump’s nominees are making it harder for senators to get to yes because they hold such extreme views on vaccines, what a traitor is, and January 6, 2021. But fear not, senators will get to yes because they see the end of the Trump era in four years and primaries are the ultimate inconvenience.

None of this includes the worst plane crash in a generation, at DC’s hometown airport. (Trump, as I’m sure you’ve heard, felt it was “common sense” that DEI was partially to blame, although he also conceded there was no evidence of that being a factor.)

What’s obvious to me is that taking a flight out of a clearly over-congested DCA with overworked and now targeted air traffic controllers isn’t smart — and that’s exactly what I have to do on Monday and back on Tuesday. Sigh.

And yesterday we launched a Trade War with our neighbors and China.

It follows his standard playbook. Trump announced his tariffs and everyone freaked out everywhere. This is the Trump “maximum pressure” move. It’s meant to force concessions, any concessions. Weak players will give back a lot, stronger ones less. Neither matters. Trump gets something for nothing, lifts the tariffs, calls it the best deal ever, and MAGA wins.

So that was January. I’m sure I missed things because even I can’t read every story about the changes and, more importantly, who they impact. This is what happens when Americans don’t take Trump literally or seriously. Trump said he was in for a second term for retribution.

This is what retribution looks like with a professional at the wheel: White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. Surgically efficient, and no drama in the execution, as long as you’re not the one being executed, (metaphysically, for now at least.)

But, again, it’s just February 3.

I am not going to claim that I am against everything this administration is doing or is going to do. I don’t think that’s reasonable or *coughs* on The Level. There were some real issues at play in the 2024 presidential election and it remains to be seen if any of them will be addressed in the long-term by (waves hands) January.

Here’s what we can do as citizens before we get to vote later this year, next year, or in 2028, to stay afloat.

Step 1: Stop Drowning

You must commit to being informed enough to understand what is happening, but not spiral down rabbit holes on social media, Reddit, or even well-intentioned group chats. It’s far too easy to find yourself in a place where you’ve spent 45 minutes on the three-page opener to the Trade War the White House released at the end of January and think, oh, I see where this falls apart.

No, that’s a waste of time and energy. The Trade War is something you and I will be impacted by, not something we can impact.

We’re all going to be okay.

In fact, those closest to Trump, including oligarchs like Jeff Bezos will want a quick wrap to this soon because this is why he gave $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee and destroyed the Washington Post: he’s all about business.

(Disclosure: I am an Amazon Prime member and, no, I am not going to upend how I buy things and sacrifice my time because Bezos is doing what every other major corporation did. I unsubscribed from the Post, however. Too much brain drain. Upside: more money for Substacks like this one, this one, this one, or anything on the platform.)

Step 2: Refocus on Community

Not everyone is going to feel the same impacts of major policy changes. I have a close friend in the Midwest who went to fill his gas tank yesterday because of the looming Trade War. My wife and I are going to Uncle Julio’s Mexican restaurant tonight because we (1) Have an awesome coupon and (2) We are going to miss avocados and guacamole.

Since I live in the DMV (District, Maryland, Virginia), a lot of my work life involves people who work in politics or for the federal government, or who are vendors and contractors. D.C. really is a company town.

This means that everyone is on edge at some level. People are asking quietly, is Elon Musk targeting … me? For a brief moment my wife wasn’t allowed to talk with her client who is a fed because of a memo that was basically rescinded afterwards.

The disruptions are real.

Beyond work, it’s important to remember that you live in a community, not just a country.

Reengage that part of your life.

Pick up the local rag and find out about what’s being built in that new shopping center. What hot restaurant are you not going to yet? What local groups are doing good work that you can be a part of instead of doomscrolling? Is there a pickleball league? (Scratch that, as a tennis player, pickleball is a gross perversion and more dangerous.) Take tennis lessons instead.

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Step 3: Help the Impacted

Finally, fully embrace the Truth® that Trump absolutely doesn’t care. So we need to care; but not about what he does, but who he impacts. We need to be there for those people in our lives being marginalized, targeted, fired. Be generous with your time and your personal and professional networks.

Provide support and soft landings.

What does this mean, practically?

For me, I have a handful of close friends who have transgender kids. I am checking in with them more often to let them know I support them and to listen to what they are going through. Needless to say these are difficult conversations and the uptick in bullying is real.

Most of these kids were doing really well and a few of them are now struggling.

You don’t need to agree on every aspect of policy. Support their struggle.

For those being targeted or who have been fired, it is crucial that those of us with large professional networks engage them to help through the transition. If we want our public servants to do the right things when they are unjustly targeted or fired it is up to us to make it right.

Everyone I know wants to help. It is our job as leaders to make those connections.

It’s going to be a long four years (at most). It’s already been a long two weeks. The only way to survive the Trump Flood is keep swimming together.

Michael Cohen, is the author of the book Modern Political Campaigns, president of Cohen Research Group and a 30-year veteran of the polling industry. He writes The Level regularly for 24sight News, analyzing polling and campaign trends with a keen eye and level-headed approach.

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As I was updating the evolving structure of the 119^th Congress for our apps, one caught my eye immediately: The House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency.

That’s DC-speak for the DOGE (sub)committee, a Capitol Hill proxy for Elon Musk’s White House-supported (for now) effort to address the massive debt both political parties have run up over the past three decades.

We’ll get to the Musk/DOGE effort in a minute, but let’s recap what we’re facing as a nation first.

A Serious Challenge

We know intuitively that the United States of America has been running up the national debt, particularly during and after the pandemic, but how bad is it? It’s worse than you might think. As of January 24, 2025, at 3:25pm ET the federal debt is:

According to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, the national debt is being driven by our aging population, driving increasing costs of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Add to that rising healthcare costs and tax rates that don’t zero out deficits and we have a very challenging national problem.

The political constraints are significant. With the national consensus that immigration should be limited, the United States will not be growing the population of workers to help subsidize these vital programs. If Trump is successful in deporting 11 million illegal immigrants, the overall workforce will contract, lowering revenues and increasing the debt.

There’s no obvious way out of this, which is why bringing in someone from outside government, someone who has been so successful at cutting costs, as well as working with the federal government to streamline major efforts, is a solid move on paper.

Tapping Elon Musk seems like a serious move. It’s not.

Successful Efforts

Since the mid-1980s, there have been three relatively successful bipartisan efforts at reducing the United States budget deficit and paying down the national debt.

1. The Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget Act was signed by President Ronald Reagan on December 12, 1985. Sens. Phil Gramm and Warren Rudman were Republican and Friz Hollings was a Democrat. While the effort ran up against roadblocks from the Supreme Court, it laid the foundation that efforts like these needed to be bipartisan.

2. The Budget Enforcement Act of 1990 was signed by President George H.W. Bush in November of that year, a disaster for him personally, as it revoked his “Read My Lips, No New Taxes” pledge but restructured deficit reduction in terms of “pay-as-you-go” so that Congress was forced to offset spending with revenues, resulting in deficits that wouldn’t increase. It was a bipartisan effort and it worked.

3. The Balanced Budget act of 1997 was signed by President Bill Clinton in early August, a bill that was introduced by Republican John Kasich. Related bills in the Senate included efforts to lower costs of housing, veterans, and welfare benefits. It also focused on Medicaid reforms to contain costs. Again, bipartisan, and it worked. Between 1998 and 2002 spending went down.

The bottom line is that any serious plan to reduce the deficit, let alone address the national debt, needs to be a bipartisan effort led by pros who know where the potential savings are, and how to handle the inevitable political traps.

Today’s cluster of activity is anything but that.

An Unserious Effort

Even before the inauguration, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been loud on chatter (“The Manhattan Project of our time”), and low on professionalism. Musk has tried to lower expectations from savings of $2 trillion to $1 trillion, saying it’s a “good shot.” He has already cannonballed DOGE-startup partner Vivek Ramaswamy out to Ohio to run for governor. It is unclear who the “top 1% of applicants” were chosen to do the staff work for the pro-bono team.

What about that new DOGE Capitol Hill effort I mentioned at the top of the page? Surely, there are professionals there who could help Team Musk with sorting through the fine nuances of government funding and spending.

In a word, nope.

DOGE is set up as a subcommittee under the least glamorous standing committee in the House of Representatives, Oversight and Government Reform. That committee cannot tell Appropriations (where money is allocated) or Ways and Means (where revenues are designed) what to do. It’s a dark corner of legislative activity, usually meant for messaging, not progress.

If it’s set up to have limited impact, then the people assigned to the subcommittee better be heavy hitters to get anything done. Let’s breakdown the rosters:

Republicans

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., is not exactly a Legislator. The three-term, safe-seat, Red state representative is a reliable Trump force and has all the incentives in the world to make nice with MAGA star Elon Musk. You don’t look at her and think, yes, this is the bipartisan dealmaker we need to solve this massive problem.

Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., appears obsessed with UFOs and DEI. Eric Burlison has been in Congress for a term and a half. Brian Jack and Brandon Gill are freshmen.

Of the others on the committee, the only one with any kind of reform background is Rep. William Timmons, R-S.C., who gamely worked on the unheralded yet Select (full and separate) Committee on the Modernization of Congress.

Rep. Michael Cloud’s membership on DOGE seems like hazing, considering he’s also on Appropriations. Same for Rep. Pat Fallon, R-TX, who is on Armed Services. I’d be surprised if either one makes all the meetings.

Democrats

Rep. Melanie Stansbury, D-N. M., sits on the National Resources committee, not one that has any authority over taxes or spending. She’s in her fourth year of Congress. That’s how serious Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries is taking this subcommittee.

The Republican lack of expertise is cloned on the Democratic side. Rep. Robert Garcia, D-CA, came to Congress in 2021, Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-TX, and Rep. Greg Casar, D-TX, are in their second terms.

The Democrats do have two veterans on the committee but neither with elite influence, longtime Massachusetts Dem Stephen Lynch sits on the Finance Committee, the younger sibling of the Ways & Means Committee. And Washington, D.C.’s Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton is ironically on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, given she went viral for her epic fail at parking, and caring about how she parked, on Capitol Hill.

The DOGE committee, like the meme department itself, looks like it is set up to spark social media posts, not substantive policy options for Musk’s White House team. Neither the speaker, nor Jeffries believe this is a serious effort, or they would have given the committee more heft and more political firepower.

It’s likely just what President Trump wants: a subcommittee full of newbies that Musk can dominate on the way to a few targeted cuts to left-of-center priorities such as funding for Planned Parenthood, education, and reducing the federal workforce, while ignoring suggestions from Democrats.

As a very young John McEnroe might quip, “You cannot be serious,” and he’d be right. This is not a measured, bipartisan, collaboration at eliminating the deficit or reducing the debt.

Like Mac’s meltdown, it’s a sideshow.

Michael Cohen, is the author of the book Modern Political Campaigns, president of Cohen Research Group and a 30-year veteran of the polling industry. He writes The Level regularly for 24sight News, analyzing polling and campaign trends with a keen eye and level-headed approach.

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🚨🚨 Please welcome , 24sight News’ very first intern! I’m very excited to have Kaylie on board, she’s a senior at Fisher College in Boston, studying journalism. She’s coming on at one of the wildest moments in modern American history and will be writing, researching and more here. Welcome, Kaylie, to the 24sight family! 🚨🚨

Programming notes: Catch 24sight News editor Tom LoBianco on LiveNow from Fox with Andrew Craft immediately following Trump’s inaugural speech, recapping the big themes and promises from the 47th president and what’s in store the next four years.

Then hop on over to the live video on the Substack App for live coverage of Trump’s inauguration, analysis and reaction with the 24sight crew: , , and more.

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Tom gamely asked me if I wanted to look back at Biden this week or look forward toward Trump. Since I’m all up in my feelings about Old Man Biden and this is, after all, “The Level” I chose the latter. Let’s look ahead to the impending rollout of Donald J. Trump’s Empire Strikes Back moment — immigration.

Surely, this is the one issue not only he understands intuitively, but he understands how the base of the MAGA movement feels about it. Biden reversed many of Trump’s executive orders on the border only to have a late campaign conversion back to them too late to change the narrative before Biden glitched during the debate and the rest was history.

How We Got Here

But how did “the border” become such an animating issue during the COVID recovery period? The vaccine rollout was in full force in early 2021 thanks to a collective win by Trump (Operation Warp Speed) and Biden (100 Million Shots in 100 Days). Under the radar, the GOP was shifting gears back to its base and the border.

Here’s former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and current DC persona-non-grata, on the Ides of March 2021: "It's more than a crisis. This is a human heartbreak," McCarthy said at a press conference on Monday after a tour of the El Paso Processing Center. "This crisis is created by the presidential policies of this new administration."

Biden hadn’t reached the 100 million shot mark yet and the GOP had already started to lay the groundwork back to immigration, a better issue for the party. It also helped that a wave of immigration was real. From the New York Times on December 11, 2024 (gift link), “The immigration surge since 2021 has been the largest in U.S. history, surpassing even the levels of the late 1800s and early 1900s.”

Even though the border was becoming a major issue, it took a while for Republicans, then a majority of Americans, to catch up to the reality and the rhetoric.

A majority of Americans said in Feburary last year that illegal immigration is a “very serious problem” and they support building a border wall.

In one campaign year, from 2024 to 2025, Americans who said that immigration should be a top policy priority went from about a third to half.

McCarthy restarted the conversation Trump put on the map in 2015 and 10 years later, the incoming President of the United States has won the argument.

But remember, it took 10 years.

Where We Go From Here

Not only did Trump obliterate Biden in their only debate, he almost won a majority against Vice President Kamala Harris with 49.8% of the popular vote. That’s his best showing in his three races for the Oval Office. He has a skinny mandate to improve the economy and do something about the border. The easier one for him to tackle is the latter.

Trump was consistent about the problem and his proposed solutions. He wants to close the border and mass deport illegals at “light speed.” This will not catch anyone by surprise like the Muslim ban did after his relatively surprising win over Hillary Clinton.

Complicating factors for any counter-majority resistance, it was a long election cycle for Democrats where they got swept nationally, even after dislodging their elder statesman, and there appears to be little juice on the protest side and mass pessimism about the future of the party.

Winning the way they did, GOP optimism is way up.

Trump’s base has his back, the Democratic Party is in disarray on the issue, and a majority supports the concepts of Trump’s plan.

This provides a window of opportunity for the second Trump administration to push quickly on their illegal immigration and border efforts. The resistance simply won’t be there yet. It will take time and potentially a countermovement to push back on what’s coming.

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An Eventual Backlash?

Ten years in the making, the Democrats appear to have no answers for the very real problems at the border and, more importantly, how Americans feel about it. Will public sentiment change over time? Perhaps, but not quickly.

Here’s what to look for:

1. A change in how people experience immigration policy.

Will prices go up on products driven by a lack of undocumented workers? Will services become harder to get? Will people start seeing undocumented people they know “disappear” or kids separated from their parents?

The reason why inflation was such a potent issue is because everyone experiences it. The reason why it took ten years for this to become an issue was that everyone doesn’t experience it directly. That’ll need to change.

2. A change in how Americans see the changes in immigration policy.

This is an opportunity for the politics of this to flip from leadership to grassroots. A mass sharing of the consequences of the Trump policies, human stories that will no doubt be heartbreaking, will need to break through the noise.

It will likely begin online, like Black Lives Matter after Floyd’s murder. The social movement will take time to build and it is not guaranteed that it’ll line up with the midterm elections to force change or be undermined within the coalition itself.

3. The experiences may eventually push institutions to change.

We have seen the elite media pick up #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, and other social movements over time. We saw politicians and political parties address them and construct countermeasures.

Who speaks up matters. Will we be hearing from Nancy Pelosi, AOC, or someone else like John Fetterman? Who takes up the mantle to push back on behalf of those affected by the new policies.

But there are no guarantees here.

In short, Donald Trump waged a decades-long campaign to put himself in the position to make the changes he is seeking. He moved his party and the country enough to open an early opportunity to push through any lingering resistance and is likely years ahead of any movement setting up a potential backlash.

What we will see soon is the culmination of a movement, way ahead of a counter-movement that has yet to have rationale, leaders, and a plan.

Michael Cohen, is the author of the book Modern Political Campaigns, president of Cohen Research Group and a 30-year veteran of the polling industry. He writes The Level regularly for 24sight News, analyzing polling and campaign trends with a keen eye and level-headed approach.

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Programming notes: New episode of The Ground Game posting tomorrow with as well as fresh content from Mr. , proprietor of “The Booboisie” here on 24sight News.

Catch Tom LoBianco in-studio with Julie Mason on SiriusXM Channel 124, Wednesday night 8-9p ET, during President Joe Biden’s farewell address.

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There have been two times in my professional career where technology instantly changed the world and I ran to meet it. The first was the release of the iPhone in 2008. It ushered in the Age of Mobile, which has hyper-personalized our lives as well as our politics. I didn’t just want one on Day One, I wanted in on the shift.

I remember watching Steve Jobs deftly introduce the new thing and immediately knew what I wanted to do with it. That became Congress In Your Pocket, a suite of mobile apps which help connect voters to Capitol Hill with not only members but their staff who do majority of the hard work for constituents.

The second shift was the release of ChatGPT and the dawn of generative artificial intelligence.

It has ushered in the Age of AI. The underlying technology has been around for years and widely used in the political world. The big advance was that generative AI could create political content, not just analyze it or voter behavior.

I immediately knew what I wanted to do. Congress In Your Pocket’s mission was to help connect voters to their government’s first elected institution. Its new directive was going to be to help voters understand what they’re doing. This meant adding legislation summaries to the app for everything Congress debates.

My team launched Congress In Your Pocket AI (CIYP/AI) last week, and it’s magic. We were first-to-market again, this time with AI helping voters understand improve their understanding of what’s inside the bills being debated in Congress.

Evolving past a simple hashtag of #ReadTheBill took more work than you might expect. I won’t reveal all of how we accomplished that here, but I will give a peek.

First, I had to convince my partner and chief technology officer that it was worth it. Would what we spent in time and treasure result in a net profit or was this just one of those things worth doing without a solid business case for it? We felt that the technical cache of being first-to-market on mobile was worth it and time will tell if we’re right.

Next, we had to figure out how to build it.

The first year and a half was difficult because the open-source tools were not great and not widely available. But around the turn of year in January 2024, we started seeing some models perform almost as well as ChatGPT. Later in the year, they were effectively operating at the same capacity and efficiency. So, we began with open-source and built our custom large-language-model on top of it.

The core issue to solve was that congressional legislation is long and so your basic chatbot experiences won’t do. We had to figure out how to break legislation into finer pieces for processing then recombine them into a summary that made sense for the average voter. On that, I’ll keep the details private but let’s just say there was a lot of hard work involved.

The result is that you can now get a summary of any piece of legislation distilled down into a couple of paragraphs, generally one or two screens on an iPhone. We also offer the full text of the bill so you could read the whole thing if the summary piques your interest.

We envision this for two separate groups: voters and policy professionals. Voters can get the most benefit because they generally don’t follow even major bills closely. After hearing about a major health, immigration, or tax bill they can look it up and get a quick summary. If they want to learn more they can see who is sponsoring it, where it is in the process, as well as the entire text if they have that kind of time.

Policy professionals, or those like Tom who covers them, can benefit from monitoring more bills at once, diving deeper when the topic is on point, and scanning the others that might be important someday just for awareness. It amplifies the teams of nonprofits and trade associations that have small government relations teams. One of our clients, IBM has a very small team.

In both cases, CIYP/AI doesn’t solve information overload, instead it helps move us toward a broader solution.

That’s what I’m seeing more broadly in the political marketplace. This past cycle, we saw presidential campaigns experiment and discard ads that used fake voices and fake video. It turns out fakes are easily spotted and almost universally cringy. In our Age of Authenticity, voters prize the real, unvarnished, and definitely-not AI created candidate.

But under the hood and downballot, outside of the view of voters, campaigns were inching their way forward, using generative AI tools to draft content, test messaging, and model potential voter turnout projections. There are even firms that are working on ways to use generative AI to draft campaign plans, but I am not concerned that robots will be running campaigns anytime soon.

I’ll have a lot more to say about AI in the second edition of my book, Modern Political Campaigns, due out in late April. You can subscribe to the Substack here.

We need to pump the brakes on looking at AI as the solve for everything or the end of all things. It’s not. In technical parlance, it’s a framework, albeit a powerful one, that is becoming more useful in all facets of our life, including our politics. This is progress we should celebrate.

Michael Cohen, is the author of the book Modern Political Campaigns, president of Cohen Research Group and a 30-year veteran of the polling industry. He writes The Level regularly for 24sight News, analyzing polling and campaign trends with a keen eye and level-headed approach.

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** Programming notes. Make sure to stop by the 24sight News livestream on the Substack app at 4p ET for our de facto Friday Happy Hour.

Launching Monday, something invigorating, a proprietary concoction of holistic ingredients culled from the wild by a man of medicine, a man of letters. His time in the jungle changed him, imparting ancient wisdom and revealing new paths, and now he will distill it all for you, dear reader, in 24sight’s newest column. Look for this effervescent find in your inbox bright and early Monday. **

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It was not until Thanksgiving that I learned my mentor and friend, M. Robert Carr, had died in August. Reading through the “In Memoriam” piece in POLITICO Playbook, I felt terrible; I missed the opportunity to thank him for his mentorship one last time.

Like so many close to him over the years, Bob took an interest in my career, and changed me for the better.

He guided me in my rise from startup app creator and pollster to professor and published author, all with a selfless interest and deep interest in his fellow man. 

Close to 10 years ago, Bob reached out to me after buying Congress in Your Pocket, my ultimate passion project. It was the first public affairs app on the App Store – Apple had featured it a dozen times – and fast became the de facto address book for members and staff on Capitol Hill.

A nascent tech entrepreneur, lifelong pollster and consummate politics and government nerd, I was admittedly intimidated. Bob was a “Cardinal” of the powerful budget-writing House Appropriations Committee. After losing re-election, the Michigan native stayed in D.C. to teach a course on Ethics at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management.

I was in awe, a well-regarded member of Congress and professor not only used my app, but wanted to learn more about it, and me. (This was years before apps became as commonplace as hot takes in Washington.) 

We grabbed lunch at a low-key place on the Hill, likely Hawk and Dove, but it’s hard to remember exactly where because it was just a couple of dudes eating burgers and bullshitting about how much we loved politics for two hours.

I was intimidated until we sat down. Bob was tall, a solid half foot taller than me, at least, with a deep voice. But he matched it with a disarming smile, making it easy to see how he’d become a successful politician. 

He had talked up the app to several of his former colleagues who were still in town and had some solid suggestions for who to chat with now serving in Congress.  He sent emails, made calls, and advocated for me well before we met.  

This was all shocking to me. This was D.C., after all, one of the most competitive cities on the planet and, at its worst, one of the most self-centered. I was the kind of person who does whatever they can for people I knew, sharing my network, working through professional challenges, and listening. But in that moment, Bob taught me that the very best of us do it for people they don’t know.

I wanted to be like Bob.

Not long after our first meeting, Bob helped get me a teaching position at GWU, starting a long career teaching others.

(It’s ironic, because I had applied to the political management master’s program at GW years before but couldn’t afford it. And a good thing, as staying at the University of Florida to complete my Ph.D is how I met my wife of 25 years, Lisa.)

We’d see each other often on campus and chat. Every conversation was a second doctorate. And at the core a discussion of ethics. 

He was the first person I met in my 20 years in Washington whose singular focus was doing the right thing and teaching others how they could walk that same path.

Bob had battled cancer before and won. My wife, too, battled cancer and defeated it — we learned that often warm socks and a blanket are the best gifts for those in the fight.

But this second time, cancer and Father Time won and we lost Bob, a beacon and a mentor who guided many.

 After I learned of Bob’s passing, I reached out to another mentor who I hadn’t spoken with in years, Tony Fabrizio. Tony has been the lead pollster now three campaigns in a row for a candidate I could not support, and is a big reason former president Donald Trump is now President-elect Donald Trump, again. 

Tony supported me and my family many times over the years and it had been too long since we talked. After the election I reconnected with him, offering my thanks and gratitude. He gave me the trademark thumbs up. 

Whomever your mentors are, and however long it has been, trust me, they want to hear from you. You are not interrupting them. 

I learned this from Bob. 

Michael Cohen, is the author of the book Modern Political Campaigns, president of Cohen Research Group and a 30-year veteran of the polling industry. He writes The Level regularly for 24sight News, analyzing polling and campaign trends with a keen eye and level-headed approach.

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After a national election, it’s common to give the president-elect a honeymoon period where the incoming administration gets both good vibes and the benefit of the doubt. This is usually reflected in overly positive approval ratings that come down to earth at some point during the first year of the new presidency.

But what if the president isn’t new? What if that president left office in disgrace? After 10 years of running for, serving, losing, and returning to the presidency, does Trump get a honeymoon period? Like all things Trump, the answer is more complicated than it seems on the surface.

The venerable Cook Political Report’s Amy Walter doesn’t seem to think so. As she noted yesterday, a recent YouGov poll shows Trump’s favorable/unfavorable ratings tied at 49% and Gallup had it at 48% in November, his best rating since 2017. Her big question of can Trump hold it misses the larger context of how we got here.

Post-January 6 Bottom

A quick peek at the trends on RealClearPolitics shows a much more interesting story. Trump has been building his post-election honeymoon since … January 27, 2023.

What was going on during that period? The classified documents case. On January 9 photos of the bathroom boxes were everywhere and a 37-count federal indictment was unsealed. On January 17, the 15 boxes were recovered from Mar-a-Lago. Finally, on January 27, the National Archives asked all former presidents and vice presidents to “check for classified documents.”

The result was that Trump’s post-January 6th approval rating bottomed out at 37%, while his disapproval rating reached its apex of 58%, a truly terrible -21% net rating.

The Climb Back

As we all know, this wasn’t the end of Trump, but how did he get there? It began in Georgia on August 25, 2023. Trump flew to Atlanta and was booked at the Fulton County Jail on election interference charges, took a mug shot, and promptly released it on his own social media platform, and printed it on merchandise to fund his comeback.

The GOP rallied behind Trump, his mug shot a symbol of defiance. Primary opponents like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the cases against Trump amounted to the “criminalization of politics.” Democratic reaction reinforced Trump’s message that this was political lawfare. Biden made light of it, quipping Trump was a “handsome guy, wonderful guy.” Even MSNBC called it “instantly iconic.”

His disapproval rating would never get close to 57% again.

Campaign and Honeymoon

In fact, contrary to what usually happens during a campaign for President of the United States, his approval ratings rebounded. On January 3, 2024, Trump’s net negative rating was -15%, a 25% gain since late January the previous year. On the cusp of reelection, Trump was down to -7%, a 66% improvement over the same period.

The campaign was good for Trump, particularly when matched against an out-of-gas Biden in their only debate and Vice President Kamala Harris, who was easily tagged as an out-of-touch liberal after her successful rollout as the heir apparent.

Harris opened an early lead but Trump’s net disapproval rating kept dropping. The decline was so consistent that even after Trump was shot, his net disapproval only dropped by about 2%. By Election Day, Biden’s net disapproval rating was 15%, more than double Trump’s 7%. With Harris choosing not to separate herself from Biden, it is amazing the election was so close.

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The difference between Trump’s net disapproval rating on Election Day and December 1 is 2 percentage points. That’s it, that’s the honeymoon … so far. It’s not much, and it’s the continuation of a long rebound that only looks like a honeymoon because of the calendar. The data isn’t there to support it … yet.

With all of the discussion about landslides and majorities, we have hit parity, which may be the very best Trump could expect of our evenly divided politics. With all the talk about controversial appointments, and the loss of Matt Gaetz for Attorney General (no one in Washington seems to think it’s a loss), the polls keep improving.

It will take time to reestablish Trump as POTUS, and then he will be evaluated based on his performance, again. But at least until that first day back in the Oval Office, Americans are in a festive and, perhaps, forgiving mood. The election is over. We are well into the holiday season. The second Trump presidency can wait until January.

Michael Cohen, is the author of the book Modern Political Campaigns, president of Cohen Research Group and a 30-year veteran of the polling industry. He writes The Level regularly for 24sight News, analyzing polling and campaign trends with a keen eye and level-headed approach.

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“What Did We Learn From the 2024 Presidential Election?”

In preparation for our latest Px3 podcast (posting later) with the good and wise Justin Robert Young, Tom and I were prompted in our group chat with this question. Even in our hour-plus conversation, we missed some of the things I saw.  So, let’s consider this a bonus lightning round just for our friends here at 24sight News.

1. Campaigns: There are no shortcuts.

This was Presiden-elect Donald Trump’s best campaign, and he hired professionals who kept him focused on the prize: becoming the first president in over 100 years to return to the White House after losing it.  The power trio of Susie Wiles, Chris LaCivita, and my former boss Tony Fabrizio did an amazing job of running a low-drama, effective, and inspired operation. You want to win? Hire and then listen to pros.

The handoff between Joe Biden and Kamala Harris looked good on paper early but lost its cohesion in October. The melding of the two teams got them to the convention with a solid lead in national polling, but the messaging shift to democracy seemed a little too remote and Bidenesque and helped bring Trump back to where the race was, which was a toss-up favoring the former president. I look forward to Tom’s reporting on this as well as the books from others to follow. There are no shortcuts in the permanent campaign. You can’t just cut and paste teams, and win.

2. Strategy: Don’t accept that you can’t grow the electorate.

Perhaps the most interesting thing most of us got wrong was that Trump had a “ceiling.” In pollsters’ parlance, it’s the largest percentage of the vote you can expect a candidate to achieve on Election Day. We all thought he’d cap out around 47-48%.  He’s now at almost 50%. Trump’s team rejected the conventional wisdom that they had maximized his ceiling and went at traditional groups including young men, Blacks, and Latinos. Trump even outperformed with women. Lesson? There’s always room for growth.

3. Tactics: You can’t run from the media if you’re running for office.

The Harris-Walz team were hyper-concerned about losing their early lead so they avoided doing sit-down interviews until it was already too late.  This tactical error masked the reality that (1) you get points for showing up, as Trump and his team understood, and (2) Harris needed to fill in the “why” part of her candidacy, as in why are you running and why should voters choose you in this environment? No answers for voters shows you’re running from the election, not running to win.

4. Issues: Even post-Dobbs, the economy and inflation ruled.

In addition to the great documentary, someone ought to give James Carville a spot on Mount Rushmore for electing presidents. His key insight in the early 1990s that “it’s the economy, stupid” needs to be relearned every political generation. This time we were told that there were Romneyesque binders full of women voters who would support Harris-Walz because of a single issue: abortion. Wrong. Voters gave Trump a pass on the pandemic and his convictions because they remembered the economy was roaring four years ago and they wanted it back. Future candidates might want to take this into account before running because your boss had a late-life crisis, or a bad meeting with Nancy Pelosi.

5. Values: They still matter, but framing matters more.

Harris was at her best when she was talking about freedom, not democracy or decency. Again, in October that messaging got muddled and she lost the lead. What worked for Trump, particularly late, was a subtle shift into the values debate. What’s the most important thing to a parent? Their kids. Trump’s last ad’s tagline was, “Kamala is for they/them, and Donald Trump is for you.” The message was that Trump wouldn’t allow trans boys to play girls sports, and potentially harm your kid. The ad was brutal, as trans kids already have a difficult path to navigate outside of politics.  But it also was powerful, and Harris’s largest super PAC Future Forward said it accounted for 2.7% of support for Trump among those who viewed it. Bottom line: values matter, but how they are framed for voters is more important.

6. Culture: Trump’s 10-year realignment is complete.

Democrats misread American culture. Their messaging on Trump was all about “this is not who we are.” But it is. Americans quickly bore of heroes who are too good, because they don’t seem authentic. Anti-heroes, flawed celebrities, and even villains are all the rage. I’m concerned about this. I’m a fan of Luke Skywalker over Han Solo, Captain America over Iron Man. Take your conflict and I’ll go all in on the light over the dark. But that’s not who the country is writlarg. Tyson and Paul broke the internet and which fighter did you root for? While others have made the argument that the GOP is now a working-class party (see: Patrick Ruffini’s Party of the People as a great example), culture overwhelms. Candidates need to be of the culture, not outside of it.

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7. Polls: Pollsters did a great job learning Trump, less so on Harris.

Over the last month of the campaign on the Px3 podcast with Tom and Justin, I continuously said that we’ve figured out Trump from a polling perspective but didn’t have enough data on Harris to know who was going to show up for her on Election Day. I was right, and so were the polls, not just nationally but in the battlegrounds. In fact, this was the best performance by pollsters since Trump began running in 2015.  They still undercounted his national support and in the battlegrounds but it was within the margin of error. What this says about polling is this: we learn.  Pollsters should be taking victory laps but instead we’re talking about Ann Selzer’s bad poll in Iowa, which she shouldn’t have released (more on this in last week’s post).

8. AI: Still early, generated content runs against authenticity.

I’ll have a lot to say about the use of AI in campaigns when the second edition of Modern Political Campaigns gets released next year — I just filed my updated edition to the team at Rowman & Littlefield last week, make sure to pick up the latest edition when it publishes, possibly as soon as mid-April. Despite fears of widespread disinformation from content generated by AI, it is widely used as a drafting tool in campaigns, particularly downballot. Everyone understands the tech isn’t quite there yet so using these tools in finished products comes off as inauthentic, which kills campaigns. It might get there eventually, but there will be a slower roll than we anticipated.

9. Money: Less important than earned media.  

Harris and groups supporting her outspent Trump $2.3 billion to $1.9 billion, and most of it was in media buys. Trump was able to spend less because of his celebrity, his first term in office, remaining in the public eye due to his court cases, assassination attempts and repeated campaign rally antics and threats. He has spent his entire adult life earning media attention, cultivating reporter relationships, and knowing when and how to make news through controversy. If money is there primarily to help you get your message out to voters, earning media is the great equalizer.

10. Media: Silos rule.

Mass media is dead. For weeks the discussion around the Harris campaign was would she do a network sit-down interview. This was a conversation for the 1990s, not the 2020s. Instead, Trump understood that sitting down with Joe Rogan for three hours would not only get a large audience, off network, but produce network effects in it being shared on social media. Harris went on 60 Minutes and the post-interview conversation around it was whether CBS News selectively clipped the best 20 minutes for the Democrat. Future candidates will lean into their silos and largely avoid national news interviews.

Michael Cohen, is the author of the book Modern Political Campaigns, president of Cohen Research Group and a 30-year veteran of the polling industry. He writes The Level regularly for 24sight News, analyzing polling and campaign trends with a keen eye and level-headed approach.

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Friends, I’m excited to announce the launch of a weekly column from the great and thoughtful Michael Cohen, author of the book Modern Political Campaigns, president of Cohen Research Group and a 30-year veteran of the polling industry. I’ve long relied on Michael as an even-keeled source with keen insights into politics and the electorate, and am honored he’s agreed to be the very first 24sight News columnist, now delivering his insights directly to you.

Look for more as I continue building out, and shift gears for the second phase of 24sight News — the mission of clear, grounded, objective journalism remains the same. But now with some new features and content.

Enjoy!

Tom LoBianco
National political reporter and co-founder, 24sight News
tom@24sight.news

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Even Tom Brady lost two Super Bowls.

I thought about this as a different GOAT hung it up after a celebrated career.

Ann Selzer, the best pollster in politics, announced last week she is retiring from conducting her top-rated Iowa Poll, published since 1997 with the Des Moines Register.  By her own admission, it was a tough exit, coming after she published a catastrophic outlier of a presidential poll which missed the mark by16 percentage points, with a stunning finding that more that  Harris was winning men in the state by had 3 percentage points.  

Combative even (and especially) in victory, incoming president Donald Trump, claimed Selzer “knew exactly what she was doing.” (He also said he wanted her investigated, though he did not say by who or how.)

Well, what if that flop of a poll wasn’t premeditated, as the president-elect alleged? 

We’ve all seen the signs (and maybe Selzer has seen them, too): The Trump Years have been a mixed bag for pollsters of all stripes. In 2020, Selzer pulled her final poll during the Iowa Caucuses because one candidate’s name was left off the list in the survey. But, her final Iowa Poll in the general election 2020 had Trump ahead by 7%, which nailed the outcome. 

Then came Tuesday, where Trump won Iowa by 13% and didn’t lose by 3%. This error was not marginal.

What does this say about polling? 

Let’s look at the overall averages nationwide. The final polling average from Real Clear Politics had the race essentially tied at Harris +0.1%. As of this writing, Trump is up 1.8% nationally in the popular vote, with some House races yet to be entered into the final tally. If you are looking at this fairly, where polling at best can get you to about a 3% margin of error, being off 1.9% is a defensible result.

What about the battleground states? Overall, the polling average showed Trump was leading in the battlegrounds by just under a point on Election Day. But in the only poll that matters, the election itself, Trump outperformed in each, but well within the margins of polling error: Arizona 1.7% in Arizona, 2.5% in Nevada, 1.2% in Wisconsin, 0.9% in Michigan, 1.4% in Pennsylvania, 2% in North Carolina, and 0.9% in Georgia. Pretty solid for a margin of error of 3.5% for most statewide polls.

Contrary to the seemingly universal feeling that polling is broken, it is just as good, if not better this time. In 2020, the battleground states’ actual results all fell within the margins of error — and Pennsylvania was perfect. But Wisconsin was a polling disaster. The average showed Biden ahead of Trump by 6.7%. Biden won by 0.7%.

Based on what we have seen, Trump polls somewhere higher than we’d expect but not necessarily outside the margin of error nationally and even in battlegrounds. “The Polls” weren’t wrong; Selzer was, and on the one day you cannot be wrong. Selzer lost Iowa, forfeited in 2020 during the caucuses and got blown out on Election Day 2024.

And the big winner in the predictions game this past election? A French gambler who won an estimated $48 million on Polymarket hedging for the “shy” Trump vote. 

So let’s return to the broader question: What does the persistent undercounting of Trump voters say about polling?

The core problem that remains with modern polling is modern voters.  

Since 2016 Trump has relentlessly attacked polls as fake, much like he attacks as the news that covers them. Trump’s supporters are unusually bought into his worldview and they have, around the margins, exited polling as an activity they participate in during elections.  

Our public life silos have hardened, including everything from the words we use, news we consume, the policies we support, as well as the candidates. We can no longer debate politely. Politics is beyond personal and now definitional. It’s exhausting.  

There are just enough Trump voters unwilling to be counted before Election Day that we undercount them on Election Day. In close races, this is where things can go wrong.  

This creates non-response bias, a problem that surfaces when you do all the right things: questionnaire design, sampling, and weighting, but end up with the wrong estimates. There is something different about the people in the surveys compared with the people who refuse to participate in them.  

We are no longer just bowling alone, we’re voting alone, cutting ourselves off from the broader conversation and pollsters.

My view is this doesn’t self-correct in 2028, which may be a reason why Selzer exited the public political polling business. The only way through this is expensive: commit to interviewing a subset of voters who look like our samples but who refuse to do surveys. It is no longer an honor and a privilege to be chosen for a poll. It’s a pain-in-the-tuckus and it might out you in a way you’d rather keep private.  

Here are three suggestions for identifying gaps in traditional polling:

1. A more significant time commitment, 4-5 days instead of 2-3. This will allow people time to respond. Political polls are notoriously quick for publication exercises.

2. Cash payments to respondents because their time is valuable. We are inundated with requests for money from politicians, paying respondents flips that.

3. Polls need to be paired with one-on-one in-depth qualitative interviews, not focus groups where social biases can limit truthful conversation. We need to understand why they don’t do polls and how much of an undercount they believe exists.

Selzer’s exit from the polling industry is a canary in the coal mine crying for those of us who conduct polls to do more to get us closer to the truth.

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