Episode 235: Midterms and Conditions

11/10/2022-- This week on The Horse Race, we have election results! After debriefing Lisa's late night pizza endeavors, the team walks through statewide results of the midterm elections.

From a predictable yet historic win by Maura Healey for Governor, to down ballot races we’ve kept our eye on, MA delivered sweeping blue results.

We also run through the latest on the results of the ballot questions and what polling looked like versus reality. Since recording, Question 1, or the Fair Share Amendment has officially passed.

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Full Transcript Below:

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:00:44] Welcome back to The Horse Race, your weekly look at politics, policy and elections in Massachusetts. I'm Lisa Kashinsky, here with Jennifer Smith and Steve Koczela. And I think the question that you all want to ask me is how little I slept last night or I guess two nights ago now. [00:01:01][17.1]

Steve Koczela: [00:01:02] Feels like an appropriate question for every election night is how much coffee? What did you eat last night and how much did you sleep last night? [00:01:09][6.8]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:01:11] Did I order pizza at 1 a.m.? Maybe. [00:01:14][3.0]

Jennifer Smith: [00:01:16] But did you order a 20 foot long sub? Was my question? [00:01:19][3.2]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:01:20] No! Did anyone get a picture of that? [00:01:22][1.3]

Jennifer Smith: [00:01:23] I don't know. I didn't see it. We should have trawled all of social media for it. But, you know, I hope I hope they were well-fed. I hope they enjoyed it. [00:01:31][8.0]

Steve Koczela: [00:01:31] I did miss both the 20 foot sub and election night pizza. I have to admit, I unfortunately was not able to do any election night stuff just because, as I've said on Twitter, I've had COVID very mild for the last week, but I did as a result miss like 11:45 p.m. sketchy newsroom pizza that there's like still two pieces sitting in the box there but you're just like starving so you eat them. Anyway, I missed that experience and it surely hurts me inside. [00:01:58][26.9]

Jennifer Smith: [00:01:59] I am so sorry. [00:02:00][0.6]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:02:01] Yes, I am glad that you are feeling better. But yes, that was precisely why I ordered my 1 a.m. pizza. Because people at the newsroom at Politico, you know, down in D.C. were tweeting about the pizza that had just arrived at midnight. And I was like, I would really you know, I had not had my election night pizza yet. And I was like, I have to I have to go there. There are tweets of pizza on my timeline. I must oblige myself. [00:02:26][25.6]

Steve Koczela: [00:02:27] You should honestly be able to expense that, right? I mean, like, that's that's something you should be able to put on your company card. [00:02:32][5.2]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:02:33] Editors if you're listening. [00:02:34][1.0]

Jennifer Smith: [00:02:37] It does seem like there could be a question about, though, like what is the quality of a 1 a.m. newsroom pizza. You know, as as time goes on do you basically switch from oh yeah. Like this is a fun kind of party vibe to we have moved to full subsistence mentality. This is not our choice pizza. This is not our chosen scenario. I don't know. I guess before we we move on to actual elections, Lisa, the important question is, how was your pizza? [00:03:03][25.8]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:03:04] It was it was good. It was just the perfect kind of like, you know, this is not any sort of artisan pizza that you're ordering and and newsroom pizza should not be of the artisan variety at least, you know, on election night, you want the pizza that's going to get cold that you can pick up 5 hours later and be like, you know what, this is a good snack. Jan is making a face here. But that is exactly what I did on the last day night, 24 hour hell of session. I walked outside of the state house at 2 a.m. with a slice of pizza and it was delicious. [00:03:38][33.7]

Jennifer Smith: [00:03:39] My late New Yorker blood is rebelling here. This is just very upsetting. [00:03:43][3.6]

Steve Koczela: [00:03:44] I don't know what it is like, what it is about election night or super late news nights and pizza. But there is something that's just like the perfect fit. It's just it can't be described unless it's experienced. [00:03:54][9.4]

Jennifer Smith: [00:03:55] Oh, well, I mean, we certainly have tried. Now, at this point, I hope everyone listening is pleased with our mostly pizza related report. I think I'm going to have to ask Lisa, aside from the pizza, are we here for any particular reason today? [00:04:09][14.2]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:04:10] Oh, gosh, I don't know. I mean, maybe the reason that we ordered the pizza, which was because there was an election that after months of talking about, we finally know the results too well. [00:04:22][11.4]

Jennifer Smith: [00:04:22] I hope everyone kind of works on their if not surprised faces, best surprised voices because we're going to talk about a Massachusetts election run of results that I bet everyone saw coming except for exactly the parts that we had already thought might be a little bit tighter. So are you ready to sound shocked? [00:04:38][16.5]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:04:39] Oh. [00:04:39][0.0]

Jennifer Smith: [00:04:41] Beautiful job. Shall we? [00:04:41][1.0]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:04:42] Let's ride. [00:04:42][0.3]

Steve Koczela: [00:04:50] The votes are counted and the results are in. That's right. Of course, the midterms are now over. All the early voting, all the day of voting has happens now and votes have mostly been counted. Now we have results. We have tons of results all across Massachusetts and the country. So let's get into it. Lisa, what's your big takeaway? [00:05:07][17.4]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:05:10] Well, the big takeaway is that at the top of the ticket, there weren't too many or any really surprises Democrats. I know Jenn has her hands up like, oh, my gosh, a shock. Democrats, you know, as predicted, have their sweep of the state's six constitutional offices. The auditors race was the closest, but still not a Republican victory. And we just have, you know, this kind of cascading series of firsts. We have the first woman elected governor, the first openly lesbian person elected governor. We have the first black woman elected attorney general. We have the first. I'm trying to see if I can have all of these memorized by now. We have the first all female governor and lieutenant governor team, which is one of just two that were elected for the first time across the country on Tuesday. So no surprises, really, but just a ton of history being made. [00:06:07][57.3]

Jennifer Smith: [00:06:08] It's a really interesting night to be watching Massachusetts elections because nationally this was a big question about like, is this going to be the usual referendum on the party in power in this case, the Democrats? So, you know, there were questions about is there a red wave, a tsunami, a trickle, whatever it is. And I think Massachusetts kind of looked at its ballot and went, I mean, probably not here, though. So what was it like kind of looking at this from the Massachusetts posture, while also, Lisa, you've had to basically batten down the hatches across all of New England? [00:06:43][35.0]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:06:44] Yeah, look, I mean, New England really came through for Democrats. You know, this this midterms. And why do you think the vice president, Kamala Harris, came to Massachusetts? You know, they needed some bright spots to point to on a night that, you know, seems like it could be a drubbing for Democrats turned into more of a nail biter. You know, given the results that are still outstanding. But, yeah, Massachusetts was a bright spot, in in New Hampshire. All of the three vulnerable, you know, Senate and House incumbents won over their Republican challengers. Democrats held on in Rhode Island's second congressional district, which is another one that Republicans were really playing in with Allan Fung. Janet Mills held on against all of in Maine. Yeah, New England really just delivered for Democrats. [00:07:33][49.1]

Steve Koczela: [00:07:34] You have the story of the night, really, I think, is that even though it is a nail biter, even though the house is still too close to call at this moment, and even though the Senate is still too close to call at this moment, it's it's not the red wave that many were predicting or projecting or wanting to see. You know, it's going to be very interesting over the next few months to watch how people parse the data and sort of think about what where their biases came from or where their predictions came from. You know, because the data never really pointed that way, or at least not the nonpartisan data. You know, there were a lot of partisan polls, you know, Republican partisan polls that kind of pulled things in that direction. And I think we've all as a collective, I guess, if we want to call it a punditocracy, got bent so scarred by 2016 and 20. There's this desire now to acknowledge that things could be much further to the right than where the data suggests that they could be. But, you know, that's not you can't just say, well, this is where the data is, or let's add four points to the GOP. You know, that's not how that works. And that I think that's what to me last night showed. [00:08:39][64.6]

Jennifer Smith: [00:08:40] Well, let's do a little flashback to last night. Lisa, while you were up, you were tired, but one race was called with 0% of any votes in. 8:00 on the button. Maura Healey was considered governor. You were at the celebration at the Fairmont Copley. What was the vibe like and what was kind of the message that came out of that particular celebration? [00:09:02][21.7]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:09:03] It was so funny because it they called this race immediately and even, you know, people within Healy's camp and reporters and things like that, you know, we had thought that it would be maybe ten, 15 minutes. There might be, you know, some delay. Let some of the votes come in first. But no, they called that. And once more in Maryland, another Democratic governor flipped right at the start, and people in the room didn't know they had the TV that they had on a local channel had flipped to national coverage. So the governor's races didn't come through immediately. So there were people cheering when it looked like Fetterman, John Fetterman was up in Pennsylvania and stuff like that. But people for like 20, 30 minutes genuinely didn't realize that the AP had called this race for Maura Healey already. And then over, of course, to Geoff Diehl's camp, you know, where my colleague Sophie Gardner was. They were already coming out trying to, you know, contest this before eventually conceding. But it was just so interesting. And then, of course, eventually the cheers go up in the room. By the time Maura took the stage, it was just absolutely deafening. [00:10:05][62.5]

Jennifer Smith: [00:10:07] So as much as this was, as you noted, a historic win here was also an extremely expected outcome. So how were those two things kind of melded here? Massachusetts wasn't in any real kind of risk or at any real expectation of sliding into kind of Trump Republican territory. But also, you have Maura Healey, who in the primary was running, is actually the more moderate candidate. [00:10:31][23.5]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:10:32] Yeah, I think that there were some people who may have wanted to see a bit more from her speech on Tuesday night. She kept it very similar to her campaign stump, the broad strokes, saying that she would cut taxes, help people that were struggling economically. I honestly can't remember if she mentioned the climate corridor, but, you know, there are basic things that she always had on the stump that were kind of the contours of her speech Tuesday night, you know. But, look, we're going to get an idea, more of an idea of how she's going to govern. You know, in the next few weeks, she's had these issue groups meeting quietly for weeks now on climate, health, workforce and economic development to kind of produce guides for her agenda as governor. So we'll see. And remember, the Democratic you know, Democratic legislative leaders are also more moderate and she is probably more progressive than they are on several key issues that are going to come up in the next session. So there could be some friction there and maybe she doesn't end up quite as moderate as she seemed on the trail. [00:11:35][63.4]

Steve Koczela: [00:11:36] Another thing that looked very conventional about this was the map. If you go back and compare, for instance, that, you know, Joe Biden versus Donald Trump map in 2020 in Massachusetts, it looks almost exactly like almost exactly like the map that we saw this week. You know, very little movement and kind of a familiar map now for that kind of 30, 30 plus point victories that Democrats have kind of become starting to become accustomed to. You know, it's it's a map where you've got a big, huge sort of blue ocean around Boston that used to sort of be a blue lake. But slowly, you know, the waters have been expanding, we'll say, and then a red part in the middle of the state and then another blue one out west. And as these contests have become more democratic, then you know that that red spike in the red area down the middle of the state has just gotten sort of thinner and thinner. [00:12:25][48.9]

Jennifer Smith: [00:12:26] Well, dig into the numbers a little bit, though, not just kind of on the spread geographically, but how demographically were people voting? [00:12:34][8.4]

Steve Koczela: [00:12:35] Yeah, that was quite interesting because, you know, oftentimes party contests, partizan contests come down to things like gender gaps and age gaps and the Republican wins men and, you know, Democrat ones, women. And it just depends on kind of who wins, which by more sort of thing. But Maura Healey won pretty much everything. She won men by 12. She won women by 29, you know. So there was a gender gap. Women pretty much always vote more Democratic. But, you know, she also won among men in terms of age. She won all four age categories, according to the AP vote cast data. That's the data source I'm looking at here, including even old people she won by 16. So age 65 plus, you know, education and other split where we've become accustomed to seeing, you know, we're used to now seeing where people without bachelor's degrees are much, much more likely to vote for Republicans than Democrats. But she won people without bachelor's degrees by five with bachelor's degrees by 35. And religion also was another very interesting one she won among Protestant voters, unaffiliated voters, those classifying and other religion. The only group that was even close where she had only a slight edge was among Catholic voters, which she won by three. So scanning through the entire set of demographics, the one that I found where Geoff Diehl did have a pretty sizable win was Republicans. But beyond that, it was pretty much Healey all the way down. [00:14:03][87.1]

Jennifer Smith: [00:14:03] The most critical demographic group in this one is whether or not you identify as a Republican. That's just kind of a funny twist. Well, I think it also does align with Lisa's point about the kind of campaign that Maura Healey did end up running, where there was a real effort not to alienate. I don't know if you'd call them Baker voting Democrats essentially where where she didn't take a lot of swings at the outgoing governor in the in the race itself. And even though initially kind of running as a progressive prosecutor for AG, her race for governor was not really centered around making a big kind of progressive stir in the primary or the general. So I think the the demographics that we saw really did bear out the success of that campaign, the strategy. It's not going to get people kind of terribly excited outside of a symbolic enthusiasm. If what you were looking for was whatever Massachusetts version of a blue wave might be, the only way to go is left. [00:15:07][63.9]

Steve Koczela: [00:15:09] Think you're spot on on that. I mean, you you're at independents, for instance, and she won among independents, which was one group where, you know, the deal campaign had a small lead. You know, they needed a much larger, larger lead. But even that small lead proved to be a mirage. You know, and it makes me think back to the polls that were done kind of very early on in this race that that said, you know, voters basically want somebody who's going to kind of govern like Baker. You know, Baker is somebody that voters liked and somebody that people kind of wanted a similar kind of governor. And that's, as you point out, that's how Maura Healey ran. She was kind towards Governor Baker and sort of warm and generous. And what she said about him, a lot of the messaging wasn't very like sort of stridently left. You know, even her comments on Fair Share were very sort of tepid, not really like, yes, we need to stick it to the rich guy. We need to, you know, do all the lefty things. There was really none of that in her campaign. So just very, very interesting in terms of strategy. [00:16:02][53.5]

Jennifer Smith: [00:16:04] Okay. Well, pivoting to some of the other statewide offices, you mentioned that all of the statewide offices, even the ones that looked a bit more contested, did stay in Democratic hands here. What did we see? [00:16:14][10.7]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:16:15] Just a terrible night for Republicans, you know, in most races all the way down the ballot. And you saw it start with the Senate, probably the most closely watched legislative race. The cycle was between state Senator Rebecca Rausch, a Democrat, and state representative Sean Dooley, a Republican who was trying to unseat her. You know, he was well-liked in the district, from what I heard. And this was a race that pitted, you know, two pretty hardline candidates, you know, one of the most progressive lawmakers versus one of the most conservative, you know, in the entire legislature. And Becca Rausch ended up pulling it out, you know, winning that race, winning that district, which is a more purple district. And there were some other state House seats that Republicans were either hoping to keep from people who are leaving or thought that they might have a chance, you know, open seats that they could play in. And they ended up losing those, you know, kind of in the North Shore, in the Merrimack Valley as well. [00:17:12][57.1]

Steve Koczela: [00:17:13] It definitely adds some urgency, I think, to the Mass GOP's, you know, quest to figure out its identity. You know, if they want to get back to winning elections, it's pretty clear that the path that they're on is not one that's going to lead them to that place, you know, with all the ones you've run through already, of course, auditor also, you know, that was the other one which we thought could potentially be close and didn't end up really being that close at all. Of course, Diana DiZoglio was the Democratic candidate and ended up in the in the mid fifties, Anthony and Amore in the high thirties, depending on kind of exactly where the final votes come out and then some for the third party. And then, of course, the other thing that the GOP had put their money on or put their hopes in was questioned for. You know, that's, of course, the one about, you know, repealing the law that would have given driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants. And that one we just heard as we're recording the yes has been officially called for the yes side. So just a lot for the GOP to think about as far as where they go from here. [00:18:10][57.0]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:18:11] And the chairmanship fight has already started. The vice chair of the party, Jay Fleitman, emailed members Wednesday morning saying that he would be running for state party chair for an election that's expected to be held in January. And he said in an email that it's because they got swamped, you know, his words, not mine, but it is what it is. And that was even before we knew about question for which, you know, the GOP surprised some folks when they were able to even get that on the ballot as a repeal effort in the first place and had put a lot of resources, you know, volunteer, not money, because that's one of their kind of enduring problems into it and weren't able to pull it off. But that chairmanship fight is really going to be something to watch because people people are tired of the party infighting and, you know, the focus on that over, you know, as at least she told me in a brief, brief chat on Wednesday morning, the focus on that over getting people elected. [00:19:09][58.5]

Jennifer Smith: [00:19:11] And it really does tie it into the sort of national question right now, which is, does the Republican Party have the bead on the interests of the electorate that it was basically claiming to have going into this election? And that's true on the national level, where there was a real downplaying, for instance, of the significance of the Dobbs decision and the impacts on abortion. There were five states that had constitutional questions about abortion, and every single one of those came down on the side of either preserving or enshrining access to abortion. But then on the Massachusetts level here, you do have what seems like an eternal question, which is, is the mass GOP responding to a real desire or or real interests from Massachusetts voters here? You know, Charlie Baker is no longer going to be in office. The only candidate he was really out hustling for, Anthony Amore, didn't manage. To to clear that bar. So what question, Lisa, do they think they're trying to answer? They're talking about getting swamped. But is there is there a sense of it being because of infighting or because they're not actually selling something that the voters are interested in? [00:20:24][72.9]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:20:25] I think people believe that it's more about the infighting and that it's just kind of distracted them from finding a palatable message to, you know, to Republicans, but more so to independents who are now over 60% of registered voters are, I guess I should say, unenrolled voters in Massachusetts. And that was something that Jay had mentioned to me Wednesday morning. [00:20:47][22.1]

Steve Koczela: [00:20:48] In a way, I think it is a microcosm of what's happening nationally where, you know, the party, of course, only exists in some ways as like a response to what its voters are saying. And the voters, you know, nationally are saying a certain thing. And in Massachusetts, they're saying a certain thing. You know, the Republican Party base, Republican Party primary voters are saying, you know, what they want in terms of the types of candidates that will represent them. And what they wanted was Geoff Diehl, what they wanted were more sort of Trumpy candidates. Trump, you know, has had very positive numbers in Massachusetts, and that's who they put forward. That's who they put forward in primaries. That's what they said they wanted when Charlie Baker was still thinking about running for reelection and, you know, was losing in the primary polls, they said they'd rather have a Trump style candidate rather than a governor who would basically certainly have been reelected. You know, and that's why we are where we are. [00:21:40][52.4]

Jennifer Smith: [00:21:41] And a very telling set of races here that we've talked about over the past few weeks were for particular law enforcement races to district attorney races and to sheriff's races. Lisa, run us through these. It turned out that of these kind of contested spots, Democrats took three out of four of them. [00:21:59][18.3]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:22:00] So I'm going to start over on the Cape actually with this one, because something that state Senator Julian Cyr said to me and to some other reporters on Tuesday night is just how, as he said, seismic it is. The Democrats were able to pull off some of these wins, you know, in the Cayman Islands district attorney race and in the Barnstable County sheriff race, both of those are long held Republican seats that came open in this election. And Democrats were able to win both of them. And they also won a state representative race down in Barnstable to replace one of the Republicans who lost one of those law enforcement races. But the bigger story really is that Attleboro Mayor Paul Hereaux, a Democrat, was able to topple a 25 year incumbent Republican, Bristol County Sheriff Tom Hodgson. It just it's it's really that might be the one that's more seismic, honestly. [00:23:01][60.8]

Jennifer Smith: [00:23:03] And that's in sharp contrast as well with what we saw in the Plymouth County D.A. race, where Timothy Cruz was able to hold on to that seat there against Challenger Rahsaan Hall in actually what turned out to be the most blow out of all of those races where Cruz got about double the vote count of Hall. So it's it's an interesting mixed bag. But certainly if you're narrowing in on the Cayman Islands, it seems like that area in particular really did decide to come out and vote reform yesterday. All right. While Lisa is off to hit one of the billion press conferences and media hits on her schedule today. But Steve, I think you and I can still handle the question about the ballot questions. We referred to them a few times so far in the podcast, so let's get into it. Question one. [00:23:52][49.8]

Steve Koczela: [00:23:53] Yeah. So right now it's got about a four percentage point lead and we have 89, just over 89% of the vote that's been counted. So it seems to be in a pretty safe spot. You know, it is close. We saw this coming in a way where we saw it, you know, support sort of eroding as the summer went on. And as we've talked about many times, the people who remain undecided as ballot question voting day approaches tend to default toward the no side. So, you know, it wasn't clear that it was going to be this close. I'm not going to pretend that the polls were super awesome on on this one, but it was kind of headed in the direction of of tightening as Election Day approached. But at this point, at 1230, it does look like question one is going to pass. [00:24:33][40.5]

Jennifer Smith: [00:24:34] And we do have calls on question two, which is the dental insurance question, basically about regulating dental insurance in a way that's comparable to medical insurance. If Steve never has to hear a thing about this again, I'm sure he will be absolutely thrilled. So that is going to be yes. On question to question three has also been called in the opposite direction and it was a little bit closer. [00:24:56][21.3]

Steve Koczela: [00:24:57] Yeah, that one. We have 55%. No, 45%. Yes. As of right now, again, with just under 90% reporting. You know, both of these it's like, okay, we voted on them. We have now established a medical loss ratio for dental insurance. Like what do any of us even know about that? And then on question three, it's like the no side wins, which going back to our episode on this means large package stores can't increase their number of beer and wine liquor licenses based on this ballot question. But in a weird twist, as Jon Chesto sort of told us, it actually makes it more likely that they'll be able to get even more licenses than that, because instead they'll go to the legislature. So it's this weird chess game means that like the vote that we cast on Question three has almost nothing, if not even the opposite impact of what the question actually said. [00:25:45][48.8]

Jennifer Smith: [00:25:46] Oh, you got to love the idiosyncratic and very, very technical ballot question that I bet a bunch of people got to and just went. I have no idea. Probably no. [00:25:56][9.6]

Steve Koczela: [00:25:58] Sounds sketchy. Let's just say no. [00:25:59][1.2]

Jennifer Smith: [00:26:00] Exactly. But then that takes us to question four, which also looks pretty close, but as you referenced earlier, also looks pretty likely to pass. [00:26:07][7.9]

Steve Koczela: [00:26:08] Yeah. Question four actually, as we've been recording, we have a call on that one which the Yes side have now been called by the Associated Press. So just as a quick refresher, that means that the law will stand the law that was passed that grants that basically enables undocumented immigrants to get driver's licenses here in Massachusetts. It will not be repealed. That would have been a no vote. And we now have a call on that one. [00:26:30][21.8]

Jennifer Smith: [00:26:31] All right. Well, this takes us to, as we've alluded to, your favorite segment every time we have an election night run, which is when I stare at you aggressively and say, Steve, are the polls bad? [00:26:42][11.3]

Steve Koczela: [00:26:43] The polls were not bad this time. The polls were good. It was kind of it's kind of nice to not wake up and have like a flood of messages in my inbox asking me to explain my colleagues. You know, because the irony for the last couple of cycles has sort of been our polls have been fine, like our polls in 2016 and 2018 and 20 were all fine. But, you know, as a pollster, I guess maybe it's similar in the legal profession. I don't know. But you're asked to kind of account for your colleagues a lot of times, you know, where it's like all these other pollsters messed. So, Steve, what what? I mean, what what have. [00:27:18][35.0]

Jennifer Smith: [00:27:19] Steve explain yourself. [00:27:19][0.7]

Steve Koczela: [00:27:22] And nothing like that this time. So it's good. You know, they gave a sense of a very close national environment. You know, a lot of the states I haven't looked at all of them, but many of the states that I've seen, they kind of did a pretty good job. They showed the race for governor being in the high twenties in terms of the margin for Healey, which is right where it's going to end up. So overall, I think a pretty good night for polls. [00:27:41][19.3]

Jennifer Smith: [00:27:42] Well, how much of that comes down to kind of saturation and coverage like regular polling throughout the entire campaign? One thing that I've appreciated as we've kind of done this podcast over this election season is that we have gotten a sense of, for instance, the support for question one, for instance, eroding slightly over time. So we've really been able to kind of track that. So did the polls, do you think, give us a good sense of how public opinion was actually changing or did they become more accurate over time? Like like help people understand the temporal nature of the polling. [00:28:17][35.4]

Steve Koczela: [00:28:19] Yeah. For Massachusetts see that in terms of the main results they showed Democrats winning, you know from the very beginning when all of this was theoretical, you know, they showed if you nominate somebody like this as the Republican Party, Democrats are going to win literally all the races, which is what happened. On the ballot questions on question one particularly that's the one which has been around the longest and the one where we have the most polling, you know, because of course, this goes back even years to when this was just going to be a regular old ballot question, not a constitutional amendment. So we saw support erode from like the low seventies all the way down to the mid-fifties, you know, and it looks like it's going to end up in the low fifties based on kind of what we're seeing today. So we definitely saw some some movement directionally in terms of the yes side on that. I did show that tighten up. You know, the thing I think that we that we see every election cycle is just kind of the very sharp rise in the no vote as Election Day approaches and that pretty much all the undecideds. You know, I'd love to do a turn on this, actually. Maybe we'll do that to show like where was the yes percent week out from Election Day and where did it end up? Because that seems like it's been the most consistently reliable way of reading where an elect where a ballot question is going to end up. [00:29:33][74.4]

Jennifer Smith: [00:29:34] And you also probably see ties as well to the candidates running for office and to what extent they decide to go in really weighed in on any of the particular ballot questions. So you saw a lot of the more progressive candidates. You know, Becca Rausch obviously comes to mind because Lisa had brought her up earlier. But, you know, a lot of them were out there campaigning for the Fair Share Amendment, whereas Maura Healey certainly did not make that a centerpiece of the campaign. So where there was statewide attention focused, it was not necessarily also focused on this particular ballot measure as much as it was earlier in the year or earlier in the cycle. [00:30:11][37.7]

Steve Koczela: [00:30:13] Yeah, I wondered from that too if if they were looking at their own internal polling and kind of hedging a little bit in terms of their support, you know, just because it's this has been an article almost of faith for the Democratic Party for so long. You know, fair share that to see her support that tepid was quite surprising or quite I guess maybe not surprising but at least at least notable. You know, but then the other thing that's happened in those intervening years, as we've gone from a place where we didn't, we really did have a revenue problem to a place where now, because of, you know, record years of tax collections, we really have not had a revenue problem. So there could also just be some genuine policy shifts where it's like, do we really need this money as much as we once did? And people feel differently about it than they did when it was first proposed? [00:30:57][44.1]

Jennifer Smith: [00:30:58] Well, I assume everyone like us is going to continue to refresh the AP website to see what else gets called as the day goes through. Again, the day was the past. You've already heard it. You've been refreshing your screens. Congratulations on your victories or your losses. Steve I would like to take this moment to say anything interesting happened in your home state. [00:31:21][23.0]

Steve Koczela: [00:31:23] You mean Massachusetts. [00:31:23][0.3]

Jennifer Smith: [00:31:24] Your native state? [00:31:25][1.0]

Steve Koczela: [00:31:27] Oh, yes, of course. In my home state of Wisconsin, they have called the governor's race for Democrat Tony Evers. They have called the Senate race just now for Republican Ron Johnson. So, Jan, how about your home state of Utah? [00:31:39][12.9]

Jennifer Smith: [00:31:41] Yeah, this was clearly an absolutely transparent pivot to talk about the local Massachusetts connection of Mitt Romney, who has been spending this entire Utah Senate race trying his absolute best not to weighed in on it. He will be once again joined by perhaps the personal bane of his existence, Mike Lee, back again in the Senate. The two of them have butted heads over a particular approach to Republican governance, as Evan McMullin, the independent who ran initially against Donald Trump back in the day and pulled a decent chunk of Utah votes, polled a decent chunk of Utah votes again, but not enough to unseat a Republican incumbent. So Mitt Romney probably sitting somewhere quietly thinking this is not his problem. [00:32:28][47.4]

Steve Koczela: [00:32:29] It's a big job in Utah running as a Democrat or even as an independent. But that brings us to our final question of the day, which is what do we do now? Like what? What happens now? In a word, policy podcast, but also in elections podcast. Like what do we do now, Jenn? [00:32:45][16.2]

Jennifer Smith: [00:32:46] Oh, no, I wasn't even ready for that one. Do we? I think we just have to kind of sit back and watch Twitter dissolve like a Terminator into lava. I don't I don't know. Is it just now a spectator sport as society tears itself apart online. [00:33:05][18.2]

Steve Koczela: [00:33:06] But says in the script the response to take up new hobbies. And I suppose that could be a new hobby. Twitter itself apart, you know, or maybe like take up classical guitar. [00:33:14][8.7]

Jennifer Smith: [00:33:15] Or maybe I'll get back into knitting. [00:33:16][1.1]

Steve Koczela: [00:33:18] Back into knitting. I like that. But seriously, to all of our listeners, I do hope that you have treated yourself well during this election season and that you have engaged in some good self-care, anxiety management. These are tough times. We all acknowledge that, and we hope that you have done well through election season and that you have big plans ahead. We wish you well. [00:33:37][19.0]

Jennifer Smith: [00:33:37] That's right. And that is all the time we have for today. I'm Jennifer Smith, signing off with Lisa Kashinskyi and Steve Koczela. Our producer is Elena Eberweid. Don't forget to give the horse race a review wherever you're hearing us now, subscribe to the Massachusetts Politico Playbook to see Lisa's coverage of everything that happened since we stopped reporting and reach out to the MassINC Polling Group if you need any polls done. Thank you all for listening. See you next week. [00:33:37][0.0]

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