Episode Summary

In previous episodes of our “Why I Left series,” we've heard the stories of people who have departed from various right wing political and religious traditions listening to the stories of individuals who have escaped these radical belief systems is important, but in this episode of the series, I want to put the pieces back together and look at the stories in the aggregate to see if we can find some broader trends.

And to help with that discussion, we’re featuring Blake Chastain, host of the Exvangelical podcast where he has interviewed many different guests about their own experience of leaving evangelical religious beliefs.

He's also publishing writing at the Post-Evangelical Post, which is a newsletter you can subscribe to on Substack as well.

The video for this episode is available

Transcript

The transcript is automatically generated from the audio and may not be entirely accurate. It is provided for convenience purposes only. Some podcast apps will cut off the text before the end.

MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: Welcome to Theory of Change, Blake.

BLAKE CHASTAIN: Thank you for having me.

SHEFFIELD: All right. Well, so, but before we get too far into the weeds here, let's start off with talking about the Exvangelical podcast that you are doing and what you do with it and how long you've been doing

CHASTAIN: Sure. So I have been producing the show Exvangelical since 2016. It is a show that's primarily focused on people's individual stories of why they have left evangelicalism, in particular, primarily white evangelicalism or white led evangelicalism. And really, my guests their stories sort of follow their biographical tracks with regards to starting in, say, like a three-act structure of starting in Act One.

The types of environments that they may have grown up in, the, what particular denomination, what their original experiences were growing up in it or if they were introduced to it later in life, then what led them to start questioning evangelicalism. And what may have led to their break or what has over the last several years been the common language that's proliferated [00:03:00] online and elsewhere is deconstruction what led to their deconstruction, whether it was 1 catalyst or sort of single traumatic event or death by 1000 cuts sort of thing.

And then finally, where they are now, I'm not. Primarily interest. I'm not interested in; I don't have a vested interest in people staying within the Christian faith or not. I'm just curious as to what led them to change their minds because that to me is the most fascinating thing. And there are so much individual and social consequence to making the choice to leave one of your faith of origin.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. I don't know how it was for you, but when I was in Mormonism, that perspective, it was almost hard to imagine for me. To the extent that I thought about and the people that I knew thought about, sort of former Mormons it would just.

Just be interested in talking about it and not trying to de-convert people, just, having it kind of a neutral perspective letting people do what they want and not judge them for it. I mean, is that something that you came to over time yourself or?

CHASTAIN: I think so. I think that's something that I've sort of grown into as I've continued to do the show.

I do remember one particular instance. There used to be this phrase that I would say, regardless of what someone's perspective was or what, where they had currently landed, so to speak with regard to their relationship to religion or to[00:04:30] religious groups. And I used to say something like, if there is a God, I'm sure that they would appreciate it.

Or respect your decision. And then there was a guest that I had on that had landed in a more non theistic or atheistic place who sort of pushed back very, very, very politely but they objected a little bit to that language and framing and then, I received that and have since sort of stopped using that because it did feel like I was trying to shoehorn people into, keeping an open mind with regards to things.

And there are some people that for whom the continued engagement with religious or spiritual practices Is too traumatic for them to continue to try to access and for me to do that is unfair. So that is something that I have learned over time, but at the same time, I think it is utterly valuable to society at large to continue to talk to people who have disaffiliated because they have something to offer people who remain in religious groups.

And also, they are valid. Allies and political arenas where the opposition is something like Christian nationalism.

SHEFFIELD: Well it's also the case that, these Christian nationalist groups, they ally with groups that are secular as well, and they have no problem doing that. And I do think that is [00:06:00] something that the people who oppose Christian nationalism have got to kind of pick up on a little bit better that, you don't have to, you don't have to agree with everybody in 100 percent way in order to ally with them to go for a goal to preserve, I mean, to preserve freedom. That's really what we're trying to do here.

CHASTAIN: Right.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, so, so you've been doing it since 2016. Have how much hate mail do you get nowadays? Is it less or has it decreased over time or has it remained kind of consistent?

CHASTAIN: I, As far as hate mail, I mean, by and large I'm not as active on social media as I used to be my sort of extremely online phase began to peter out in 2019 or so.

So., I have not been, as, as much a part of being, say, on the front lines of that and trying to either punch up to more powerful people within evangelical spheres as I once was. So I may be known to a lot of folks who have paid attention for a while, but there have been other voices and other people who have built larger platforms than myself in the intervening years, and they are likely probably more recipients of that because just because of.

If you are building something off of one of the social platforms and build to hundreds of thousands of followers, then you will likely run into that more. I'm sure that people still within the evangelical fold see [00:07:30] me as someone that's maybe leading people astray or something like that.

But oftentimes... Oftentimes, their critiques are, can be very nonspecific and not necessarily tied to a particular creator or commentator, but just, decrying this deconstruction movement or whatever else as something, but I mean, it is I think those comparisons comparing The online deconstruction movements and things like that to evangelicalism is not apples to apples.

It is not a direct comparison because those groups have far more sway within our society and more resources and more organization.

SHEFFIELD: Well, okay, so for people who haven't heard the term deconstruction, what does that mean?

CHASTAIN: Yeah, so that essentially the way in which it has been used over the last several years is not necessarily the same way that you may have learned it within the context of say a philosophy class.

It's not as specific as, as the way that, Derrida may have used it when or other French philosophers may have used it. What they are, how they are using that term is by essentially saying they're questioning the beliefs that they inherited from their faith of origin. So, and that can mean, say, within the context of someone who is evangelical or Mormon, and [00:09:00] I, you can absolutely speak to a Mormon experience.

I think that is distinct enough that I don't really talk to ex Mormons on my show because I don't have that direct experience. But there just as a quick aside, #exmormon or #exmo is an even more popular hashtag on Twitter than #exvangelical is. By like, I think #exvangelical has around between 1 and 2 billion views and #exmormon has like over 5.

So, but what deconstruction means is essentially you are questioning those beliefs, whether it's the teachings with regards to how you relate to society. About purity culture and sexuality or any other number of things, whether it's a theological question and then questioning those beliefs and then oftentimes realizing that you no longer affirm those beliefs and that can have significant consequences for someone's personal identity as well as how they relate to their faith group.

SHEFFIELD: Mm hmm. Yeah. Well, and I think one of the other things that probably I would suspect the former Mormon and former evangelical experiences have in common is that there are a lot of practices of the various churches that people sort of come to view them as doctrines deriving from the scriptures or whatever. But in fact, they are just customs.

And I think that discovering things in which you [00:10:30] might have had as a child placed extreme emphasis to you on that. 'This is very important. We're doing not doing this as a horrible sin.' And then you find out when you actually read the literature, it's not in there.

CHASTAIN: Yeah.

SHEFFIELD: So that is something that your guests have talked about pretty extensively a lot?

CHASTAIN: Oh, absolutely. I mean. One of one of my early guests was a friend of mine from college. I went to a Christian college and one of, one of the ways that he described that experience of having been taught a particular thing and then.

Learning from just living life after sort of leaving high school, college, these sort of protected places that often, would be called either the bubble or someone else called it a snow globe of sort of protecting people from the real world, so to speak, was that they were sold a false bill of goods and that they were The way in which they were taught to live did not function in any reasonable capacity once they were adults and say, married and doing and going about their lives.

One example is also. Even learning just historical facts around things like the teaching of the rapture, those things can be presented as eternal as having been part of the Christian tradition from the beginning, [00:12:00] but in reality. That teaching is only about 150 years old. It came about in the 19th century but so much of 20th and 21st century American Christianity is based on this teaching of the rapture and that the world is supposed to get worse and worse and worse, and then Jesus comes back.

So that de-emphasizes actually trying to make the world better. And that has a real impact on people's lives.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it really does. And you see it in a lot of different ways. But I think one of the most prominent recent ways that manifested was during the COVID 19 pandemic. I guess probably the most famous example of that was the governor of Mississippi, Tate Reeves, who had said that, we don't take this COVID stuff as seriously here in the South, because we're Christians and we believe in an afterlife and we believe that we're saved. And so if we die, we're actually going to somewhere better than the current place. So don't worry about it.

CHASTAIN: And that's such a nihilistic take on this life that we have on this planet and.

Even runs anathema to say the response to the Spanish flu from Christian groups in the early 20th century, those things were brought up by a number of commentators who were trying to push back on that sort of inherent nihilism. The other impact of this can [00:13:30] be people that are sensitive to these teachings develop severe anxiety and question whether they're saved and whether once the rapture does come.

If they would be one of the people that would be spared it's something that, that several years ago was a trending topic on Twitter called rapture anxiety. And now as part of the, parlance and vocabulary that we use to discuss these things amongst former evangelicals, whether they use the term exvangelical or not to describe themselves.

SHEFFIELD: Hmm. Yeah. Well, okay. So I guess you're saying then that people said that that was very common to have rapture anxiety.

CHASTAIN: Yes. Yeah.

SHEFFIELD: And not just as a kid, but also as an adult as well.

CHASTAIN: Right. Right. Right. Because those things are essentially sincerely held beliefs or like, formative beliefs that, that formed when you were young and then as you are an adult and say, go about go about your life and you may be deconstructing purity culture and, or that sort of thing and engaging in adult sexual behaviors, and then have these thoughts that, oh my gosh, what if what I was taught when I was a child is true? And am I going to be am I going to be damned or something like that just because of the acting like a normal human? And so those things can crop up even if [00:15:00] you even if you cognitively no longer believe in those things.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and then of course it also crops up even if you, still do believe everything. Just the idea that you're not how do you really know that you're saved? Because I mean ultimately, there is no official standard that somebody can say, 'Oh, that's it. You did it. Here's your stamp.'

 And I think that in some ways, a lot of the evangelical intellectual theological culture in, in a lot of ways, it seems to me that it's kind of continually reinventing the wheel, and having to go through controversies that Christianity as a larger faith tradition went through thousands of years ago and already was like: 'Okay, you know what? We're done with this one. We don't have to think about it anymore.'

I guess my thought example of that would be the idea of universal grace and salvation, that was a doctrine that developed out of this lack of surety with 'well, what does it mean to have been saved? And how can you really know?'

And the answer that people eventually settled on was, well, actually, we can't know. So, Jesus died for everybody, regardless of whether they acknowledge him or not. And I don't know. I mean, do you think that some evangelicals are having to come around to that, that insight that, other people came to 500 years ago?

CHASTAIN: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and I mean, that is a that is something that can cause trouble for people in, in [00:16:30] those evangelical circles. One famous example from within evangelicalism is that Rob Bell, who was Considered a celebrity pastor in the early, late nineties, 2000s. And around 2010, he wrote a book called Love Wins, and that's essentially what he, what the book was about.

It was about this idea that, that if God is loved and God saves everyone and pushes, push back on the idea of eternal judgment and hell and all of these things. And as a result. A number of the more conservative factions within evangelicalism pushed back and essentially tried to cancel him. That was not the terminology, that was not in our, our nomenclature at the time, but evangelicals have been doing things like this for a very long time.

And what happened to Rob Bell is he eventually resigned from his church. He, and this was a church that was more sympathetic to his type of view, but he was also pressured by more conservative people within the same ecosystem, media and otherwise, like John Piper, who wrote a famous tweet called, that said, farewell, Rob Bell.

And all of his books were pulled from. Christian bookstores, all of his books. So at Family Christian Stores, Lifeway, which is which was the retail bookstore chain managed by the Southern Baptist Convention, [00:18:00] they pulled all of his books and he was deprived of all those things and they've done it to a handful of other authors over time as well.

When Jen Hatmaker affirmed queer people. Publicly all her books were pulled from those types of locations when Ray Bolts in the 90s early 2000s came out as gay, all of his all of his CDs and music were pulled from stations. So, the boundaries of evangelicalism around theology and what is acceptable is very heavily policed and enforced.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it really is. And it has to be said, and I've said this a few times on this show, that the Christian right invented cancelling people for their opinions. This was their idea, and now they constantly say that they're the ones who are the victim of it, but in fact, they do it the most, even now. They still do the most.

CHASTAIN: Yeah. Yeah. There's a, there's even a there's even a, a book called The Radio Right, which looks at the rise of fundamentalist radio preachers in the sixties. And honestly, one of the first sort of consumer boycotts was around these hams that I forget, I think they might've been Polish hams or something like that.

I don't, I don't remember the exact context, but one of the first consumer, broad consumer boycotts was pushed and organized by listeners [00:19:30] to a conservative fundamentalist radio shows. And that book, I mean, the book is actually written by Paul Matsko, who is part of, I believe the Cato Institute and has, more conservative convictions than I do for sure, but the, the way in which he describes this is, it is categorically one of the things, and one of, one of the social innovations of these groups is to, to punish these people through consumerism and capital.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and it's also how they built themselves up. You mentioned Lifeway Christian stores being a owned and operated business of the Southern Baptist Convention.

I mean, in a lot of ways, the non evangelical Christianity in the United States has been sort of colonized, if you will, by evangelicalism. Because they have the megachurches, because they have the Lifeway Christian stores, because they have the TV networks, so they have the infrastructure to kind of push out their views into everybody else, and so as a result, they basically managed to sort of rebuild the other Protestant traditions in their own image to some degree, or just drive people out of Protestantism altogether is what it seems like.

CHASTAIN: Yes. Yes. And that's certainly true. A lot of 1 example from my own from my own sort of story is that I, I grew up going to United Methodist churches. And that is something that some folks would [00:21:00] consider. Okay. Okay. A mainline denomination, and it is in the historical sense. The one thing I do always say with regards to the experience is that it always takes on local flavor because it is broadly distributed across the country.

And that means that if you go to a small. Church in small town, Indiana, like I did, it's going to probably be a little more conservative as opposed to if you went to the Methodist temple in downtown Chicago, which will likely be more liberal or progressive. And one at that same youth group at the, at the youth group, I was exposed to things like Josh Harris's, I can stay and goodbye and to purity culture and to a number of things.

That are broadly evangelical and they were not necessarily tempered by the fact that I was in a supposedly more progressive denomination, one that does ordain women and things like that. And so that is absolutely the case that, that one of the ways in which they use soft power and influence is by generating materials that will be used by more progressive Protestants, and they may not they may not be as cognizant or were not at the time, so to speak to the types of messaging that is built into the material that they use.

I think they have learned those lessons since then. And there are responses to that. But [00:22:30] these evangelical publishing houses started in the late 19th century. And so they have been developing for a long time and are well established in our country.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And it is interesting for me to see, because when I was a Mormon, I was definitely aware that this was happening. Because we didn't have Mormon bookstores where we could go and buy stuff.

And so, basically, if you wanted some Christian books, you had to go to one of these evangelical ones. And but on the other hand, if you're just some other flavor of Protestant and don't have these unique attachments and doctrines that Mormons do, it is harder to see that this is happening to you.

 I don't know if it was deliberate that they intended to do it this way either. What do you know about that?

CHASTAIN: I would say, I mean, I do think that that's at least within evangelicalism. I don't know whether there was necessarily something nefarious, but and I can't ascribe, something nefarious to. To evangelicalism at large. I do think that these publishing houses were, we're meeting a demand. And then over time, they also helped to generate to generate a sense of like an imagined community or a public to which they could create a market.

There's a book. By Daniel Vaca, who is a Brown University historian called Evangelicals Incorporated, and it actually looks directly at the evangelical book market and how it started in in the 19th century and developed [00:24:00] through to the present day and. He largely argues that that this sort of force did help to generate and codify the white evangelical culture.

And, then those things permeate through things like the colleges that were built in the 1920s the Bible institutes that started a little bit before that. And on and on, as all of these alternative institutions were built. And then over time, yes, they did bleed into other more progressive spaces and those sorts of things but I don't, I don't know whether they were looking to try to temper the more progressive wings of American Christianity or other political parties in particular.

Other geographical regions, or if they were just, pursuing these things because starting at around the time of the 1920s, they, these groups didn't really intermingle all that much like evangelicals. Isolated themselves in a lot of ways. And what I mean by that is there was the national council of churches and the parliament of world religions and all of these things that were started in the late 19th century, early 20th century.

And whether, and a lot of evangelical groups or fundamentalist groups weren't really participants and then develop their own develop their, their own groups like the National Association of Evangelicals in the 1940s. So, [00:25:30] in a lot of ways, they stopped operating in ecumenical or interfaith spaces and just continued to cultivate their own sense of identity and culture.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and it's also interesting to the extent that evangelicalism has also been southernized because there were flavors of evangelicalism in every part of the country, but at this point, the other ones functionally do not really exist. Everything is a southern evangelical culture pretty much.

And some people might dispute that, but it's like, well, where are your bookstores? Where are your mega churches? Where are your books that people are buying? They're just not there.

CHASTAIN: Yeah. And even places like Orange County which is a stronghold of a lot of evangelical culture in California, a lot of those people were transplants from the South.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Especially Oklahoma in the Midwest. But actually I'm glad you mentioned Orange County, because of course there is a controversy with one of the biggest churches out there, Saddleback Church, just got kicked out of the Southern Baptist Convention. The Saddleback Church of Rick Warren, because, he was like, 'Well, look, it seems like there's nothing wrong with ordaining women, and so I'm going to do it.' And so they did and it's another example of evangelicals canceling people who disagree with them.

CHASTAIN: Yeah, yeah, and there's a whole, there, there's absolutely a [00:27:00] whole well documented history of what within the Southern Baptist Convention is called the conservative resurgence in the 1980s and moving toward, forward to today, which is essentially people a number of recalcitrant I'm sorry, I was going to say recalcitrant, and I don't think that's the right word, but just very staunch conservatives who, who refuse to examine or question their, their theological convictions and believe that the, the only proper thing is to is to stand firm in their convictions, even if it means Thank You know, alienating women or people of color or queer people and disenfranchising them and blocking them from having authority in their faith community.

And that was absolutely the response to, to prior movements like evangelical feminism, which was trying to make space for women in these spaces and they were told no. And that's the. To me, that is the reality of a lot of evangelical spaces is that they, they may decry deconstruction or people leaving or disaffiliating and those sorts of things, but.

The reality is that people have been trying to make it work in these spaces for so long and they have been told no over and over for generations. And so now people are just deciding to [00:28:30] no longer participate. And that is a meaningful and valid choice when you have, are given no volition or control over your own fate in those places.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, and a similar thing is kind of happening in the LDS Mormon tradition as well. That people are trying to get the church to change its policies on same sex marriage or, or things like that, and continually being told no.

And so now when you look at, and it's tough to say because the Mormon Church is different in that they count you as a member even if you don't go to their church, up until I think you're 120 I think is when they take you off the rolls. But when you look at polls, asking people, are they practicing Mormon or a former Mormon, there's actually more former Mormons than there are practicing when you ask people.

But the response of the church has been pretty similar to, I think a lot of evangelical ones, which is that at first they denied that this was happening that people were walking away, and then eventually they started realizing: 'Oh, well, those, those communist academics weren't lying when they said this stuff. But you know what, it's okay because Jesus said that few there be that would find a way to the, to life. And so if that's how it is, well then, oh, well, I guess that's how it is.'

It's an [00:30:00] interesting perspective, isn't it?

CHASTAIN: Yes, absolutely.

SHEFFIELD: But it just goes counter to the whole idea that your goal is to spread the gospel, but you also don't care if people are leaving your church, like it. Do they see the contradiction? Do they see that? What do you think?

CHASTAIN: Well, I think you pointed out the way in which a number of these sort of worldviews can help discount the, essentially, the evidence to the contrary. So oftentimes, scriptures like that can be used as a validation of them standing firm, and so that, that can often be the case in these insular communities, is that they will I don't use the language of the remnant or that sort of thing to, to bat, to remain staunch in their in, in their convictions and to not question things because To do so, they fear may lead them along that, that terrible slippery slope that is, that is talked about in so many places instead of doing the more difficult work of trying to reform their own practices and beliefs, but many people are just in a, in a position where, where they would rather choose to affirm them, their fellow humans than to affirm the beliefs of a church.[00:31:30]

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, and you certainly see that with the continual growth of the religious Nones, as they're often referred to, people who have none of the above religious affiliation.

So while this perspective that we're talking about here, it certainly exists and is empowered to some degree, you look at some of the conferences that the Southern Baptist Convention every year has their big annual confab, and there still are a lot of people out there that are pushing for racial justice and reconciliation and things like that.

And it's interesting to think about, because the other thing that I think the Christian right has become more aware of demographics than they used to be.

Because they were growing largely at the expense of other Christian denominations. And now they're no longer growing. The Southern Baptist Convention keeps losing members. And it's become more political as they have lost members.

And that seems to me that a lot of the people who are the biggest Trump fans, they tend to be people who don't go to church, but they still have the evangelical identity.

CHASTAIN: Yes.

SHEFFIELD: Do you agree with that?

CHASTAIN: Yes, yes. And there have been some, some studies and unfortunately I can't rattle them off, off the top of my head. But one of, one of them that does come to mind is that some folks who. Who utilize or identify with the evangelical label now, especially [00:33:00] since the age of Trumpism since 2016 has increased, even if their church attendance is non existent, they may actually adopt or relate to an evangelical label, but it is not necessarily one that is That is attributed to that church attendance or to church membership, but rather a broader sort of cultural identity that is not necessarily tied to evangelical beliefs and that is something that has remained.

A slippery and difficult part of using the term evangelical is that within academic circles, there's since the 80s, there's been this term the Bebbington quadrilateral, which is essentially four different aspects of evangelical theology. And David Bebbington was a historian or is rather a historian of.

British evangelicalism, and he was using it for, for his purposes, for his academic purposes, but it's been used since then as a sort of way to, to Allied, it will remove problematic evangelicals from, from and a pro evangelical framing. And this is something that that was done, in the, in the pages of the New Yorker and in 2017 or so by Timothy Keller[00:34:30] utilizing the Bevington quadrilateral to say these people who are acting badly aren't evangelicals because they don't, their beliefs don't fall into these four academic buckets.

Evangelicalism could be ascribed to more closely to what institutions are a part of. And now it's changing again because it's essentially a vibe. It's like, it's this identity that people ascribe to that isn't related directly to their church attendance or membership. So the, what the notion of what an evangelical is continues to change, which is fascinating.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, but and another way that that's happening is, is the QAnon movement. I think a lot of people who, who covered QAnon, even they don't realize that the entire thing is based on evangelical theology just straight up. The whole idea of spiritual warfare and the evil, nefarious world, the world running these secret plots against everyone.

I mean, it's just, it is pure evangelical theology. But to that point though, this is another way that evangelicalism is sort of deteriorating because it is coming apart on the other side. So you got people who are leaving or saying, well, it doesn't work for me. I don't believe the ideas anymore, the doctrines, but then you got people coming out the other end who are [00:36:00] saying, I believe the ideas and in the identity, but it's just not as fun for me, so I'm going to go do QAnon instead.

And I've seen a number of stories of pastors of evangelical churches becoming alarmed and saying, my congregation wants me to preach about satanic pedophiles eating babies.

And to me, all of this kind of underlines the thesis of that book by Mark Knoll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. And the thesis being, of course, that there is no mind, was his point. I feel like some evangelicals are starting to realize that the critics were right, even though they may not be able to do anything about it. I don't know. What do you say?

CHASTAIN: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is the this is the difficult thing about moderate evangelicals is that yes, they're they really do not Have a place anymore, and there are people that may, really, really wish for those types of things to exist and for there to be a happy medium.

And I, I see that sort of in the, in the public career of Russell Moore. Russell Moore was. Got plotted in the, in the Wall Street Journal in the early 2010s for trying to be this, this new type of evangelical and even that language has been recycled several times new evangelicals as it was a term in the 1940s through the 1960s, people who were trying to resist the more [00:37:30] fundamentalist pole of these, of these groups, because the, but the history of evangelicalism is generally the history of the fundamentalists ousting the more moderate or progressive groups and being the ones that, that have most successfully held on to power within their groups.

So Russell Moore during, during his tenure at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission really did try to be a moderating influence within, within the Southern Baptist Convention. But during that same time, it was also overlapping with the Trump administration and a push within the Southern Baptist convention to be very contrarian.

And there were a number of black churches who were pushing to denounce white supremacy at as a statement of the Southern Baptist convention, which saw significant pushback, I believe in the 2017 convention and around within this same within this same timeframe, Russell, more famously resigned. And wrote a scathing letter that, that leaked to the, to the press that he wrote a scathing letter to the leadership of the Southern Baptist convention, talking about the sex abuse scandal, as well as the way in which it refused to refute white nationalism and other toxic aspects of their own faith [00:39:00] and their, and things that were prevalent within parts of the Southern Baptist convention.

And he was forced to resign. He was, his role was continued, continued to be more sidelined and in favor of these more reactionary positions. And he's now ensconced at, at Christian Christianity today and is has a place of leadership there. His, the person that he, one of the people that he replaced Mark Galley. He was the, he was the editor in chief at the time and said that he before he resigned, wrote an editorial saying, Evangelicals don't have to vote for Trump, and he was lambasted for taking that stance and eventually converted to Catholicism. So this is the reality for a lot of moderates, is that, that they, they are driven out as well.

And I wouldn't say that, that Moore is necessarily driven out, but his position is minimized. In comparison to those who may have more influence in this, in this present moment.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And, the other thing, I guess the other sort of getting people away from evangelical denominations is the growth of Pentecostalism as well, which is another sort of de doctrinalizing [00:40:30] of Christianity. I mean, you watch a lot of these televangelist ministers, a lot of them almost don't even talk about Jesus.

They certainly don't quote the Bible. And they don't have much to say other than stuff that you could find in a self help book at the airport. But at the same time, some of them also, while they may sort of dial back the theology, are very much still a hyper political and hyper partisan.

And that basically became how Donald Trump managed to get a toehold among evangelicals. And I think people forget that, and it's important to note that, the sort of evangelical establishment, they wanted Ted Cruz and then it was only the Prosperity Gospel Pentecostal types who went for Donald Trump at first.

CHASTAIN: Yeah. Paula White, Jerry Falwell Jr. Like those were the people who were his early ambassadors amongst evangelicals. And it was, you're right. It wasn't until around June of 2016 that the other leadership within. Powerful or elite evangelicals really started to fall in line on behind Trump after he made a number of promises.

SHEFFIELD: And yeah. And, and to be honest, he kept a lot of those promises to them.

You still see these articles about why are evangelicals are voting for Trump? And it's like, guys, did you pay attention that Trump did what he told them he would do? Like they were the only group that he ever told the truth to seems like [00:42:00] pretty much. And so, it obviously makes sense for them to do that.

I mean, Trump is in many ways just like them in that. He's a guy who doesn't go to church. He's a guy who has a Christian identity rather than Christian beliefs. And I think that's probably going to be the future of evangelicalism in the United States and probably around the world.

Can they do anything to stop that? I don't know, what do you think?

CHASTAIN: It's a great question. And I think a lot of people are thinking about that. And I, I know that certainly 1 thing that that is, that is utilized in a very interesting way within, within evangelical circles is the reality that the majority of evangelicals people who identify as evangelical are in the global South now, or in other parts that are not the Traditionally considered the West, whether that's in the United States or Europe or elsewhere because of the rapid growth of either charismatic expressions of, of Christianity or of evangelicalism, which may, could be historically traced to the missionary work during, especially over the last couple of centuries, but has It's turned into a has become over time, a local type of faith.

And also it's Christianity has been a global faith for millennia. So, but a number [00:43:30] getting back to how global evangelicalism is used to deflect from the criticism of Western or American in particular evangelicalism, I do think that that is a tactic to. To try to not look internally at the ways in which all of these types of things are continue to, to blossom and grow within our local Evan our, our context here in the United States and other parts of the West That essentially now is we, we talk about more in the terms of Christian nationalism and I would rather talk about Christian nationalism within.

Particular context like evangelicalism, because I think that can oftentimes let, let these groups off the hook if they're not trying to push back against these things and saying that they are not part of their faith or their understanding of, of good faith. And even though to an outsider.

Statements of declaring or stating that you're a Christian against Christian nationalism may seem like, may, may not seem very meaningful. It can be very meaningful to the people of faith within those communities to see those. Within their own ranks resist or reject those things.

And I think that [00:45:00] a number, the sort of issues that these groups face often are the same that, that even sort of more broadly, I would say that the media faces or other parts of our society and that Even though more institutions, their institutions and their, their say, say, for example, comparing the mainstream media to the right wing media ecosystem.

I don't again. I don't know that those are apples to apples to apples. And I'm, I'm. And I would love to hear your sort of take on that, given your experience within, within those ecosystems. Because I think some people think that, well, oh the right wing is pushing back against the mainstream, more progressive or liberal media, but the, the reach of these things are

When you compare them, they're, they're not the same and, and they're not the same. In what way? They're not the, you mean by that? Well, what, I mean, like, I think people underestimate the reach of conservative media. People within, within progressive spaces may under Can routinely underestimate the reach and effect of the right wing media ecosystem.

And I think sometimes it's people who have left one thing and moved to the other that have the insight that some people who've always stayed in one [00:46:30] particular ecosystem do not have.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, I think that's definitely true. Because a lot of people who had always been progressive and maybe, either in any tradition, faith tradition or non tradition, they look at things like the Daily Wire or they look at people like Andrew Tate or somebody like that, and they said: 'These people are idiots. They're stupid. They say nonsense. They have no idea what they're talking about.'

And they're right to say that. It's true, you don't get good information from these people. But the reality is, millions of people do get information from these people. And you can mock them, you can deride them. You can say they're morons, but nonetheless, they have more influence than the Atlantic. They have more subscribers than, I don't know, the New Republic. And in many cases, they have more YouTube views than CNN even, a lot of these people.

And that's just the reality. So a lot of people, it is hard for them, I think, to take it seriously because intellectually, it's not serious, but politically, it's deadly serious. And they can't see that because of that.

I mean, there's that phrase, the banality of evil, and I think that that certainly applies in this case here, that authoritarianism often is idiotic at the same time. And certainly that's the case with Donald Trump.

CHASTAIN: So yeah, I appreciate your comments [00:48:00] on that. because I do know that that is part of your experience as having been part of that media ecosystem and now operating in a different one.

SHEFFIELD: Well, Yeah. And that is definitely a point that I do try to make to people is to get them to understand that. Look, you don't have to take it seriously, but lots of people do.

CHASTAIN: Lots of people do, exactly.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And the same thing is true with these-- and I do, like I've seen similar tendencies in the religious realm, like when people look at someone like Ken Ham, the creationist activist or any of these other guys, the things they say are ridiculous and absurd, but millions of people love this guy and they want his stuff to be in public schools. They want it to be in public school.

And so you have to take this stuff seriously. And you can see that also with some of the stuff that this evangelical college up in Michigan, Hillsdale College, they have created a program with Charlie Kirk and Turning Point Faith, and now there's Turning Point schools to get this explicitly Christian propagandist stuff in.

And to be clear, it's also explicitly right wing evangelical flavored Christianity, it's against progressive Christianity and all that, and get it into public schools. And now they're in Oklahoma, they're in Florida, and I think one other state as well. And so this stuff, it really matters, even though the beliefs are ridiculous and not supported.[00:49:30]

CHASTAIN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I, and I mean that, that is absolutely the case is that that oftentimes we, that's how we view other people's beliefs, right?

As, as absurd or as incredulous, but those, those beliefs you have to. Take another person's beliefs. You have to try to understand them. And I think doing that is, is valuable. And that's why I think try also understanding how people change their minds is So fascinating.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, speaking of that, though, now let's talk about your own journey, if we could for a little bit.

CHASTAIN: Sure.

SHEFFIELD: How did you get into the idea of leaving evangelicalism?

CHASTAIN: I mean, I was. I was the sort of kid that was, that was all in, so I was, I was born and raised in, in, in Christianity and, and I mentioned earlier that the tradition, United Methodist tradition and, there were certain things that, that made questioning other parts of evangelicalism easier because of that one example being that the, the church Had always, or at least in my lifetime, had ordained women, and that is not something you mentioned earlier, that Saddleback was excommunicated or removed from the Southern Baptist Convention for the very same thing.

So in some, in some traditions, that [00:51:00] is considered... Wrong or heretical or whatever sort of unorthodox, whatever type of adjective you want to use, but it's not something that is part of orthodox belief or practice. But I, I was all in, I was sort of just always a religiously oriented kid at in high school.

Like I was. A 90s kid. So, 90s youth group culture was really powerful. I think in the 90s, like Newsweek had like a cover story about, Christian kids and their, their rock festivals and stuff and, and all of these things. So it was sort of a cultural moment at the time. And I was heavily invested and at the ripe old age of 17 felt a call to the ministry and chose my school as a result.

So I went to Indiana Wesleyan and during my first full week of school is when 9 11 happened. And that really changed the tenor of a lot of my experience. I was a double major in history and biblical literature, and a lot of my initial. Faith crisis was around the fact that in my history class, I had essentially, I couldn't say this at the time but the, the head of the department was teaching a type of Christianity or Christian theology called Christian Reconstructionism that is really based on things like biblical worldviews and [00:52:30] all of these other aspects presuppositional thinking and, and all of these other things that are part of that And in my Bible classes, I was reading the Bible in Greek and learning about how the Bible was developed over centuries and also having, my first sort of independent political thoughts and during the run up to the war in Iraq I felt a lot of inner turmoil and had my first genuine crisis of faith over the fact that Well, this person that we're learning about is called the Prince of Peace and was killed by the state and all of these things, and here are a number of my colleagues and professors championing this this run up to war. And really trying to wrestle with, like, the just war theory from a custom and other things like that.

And that is when I really started to feel a divide between myself and some others. And this is as a white guy. So, like. And as far as like the pyramid of privilege within evangelicalism, I was at the top just by virtue of, of birth and but I still felt like, like even voicing moderate leanings felt risky.

And then when I voted for John Kerry in 2004, the first election I was, I was eligible to vote in, I had friends like praying for my soul and then [00:54:00] after that that's sort of, That sort of continued to develop and I, I felt a distance from evangelicalism and went through some period of time where I was after graduating where I was what people would call unchurched.

I wasn't attending regularly. And then in grad school, I did get married fairly young. And then in grad school, I discovered a type of theology called Creation Care Theology, which is essentially looking at narratives of ecological stewardship and the biblical narrative and other parts of the Christian tradition, and really Had sort of revitalized my, my faith in a way that I wasn't expecting and I pursued that for, for a while at the same time, we also through circumstances of, of friends and other things ended up going to a ended up going to a fundamentalist sort of storefront church in Chicago and was there for several years and even though like we never became full members my family, because we were egalitarian and that became a sticking point eventually after we stayed for several years and we tried to talk it out with the pastoral leadership there and they wouldn't budge.

They essentially agreed to having a number of discussions around the issue, and then those talks fell [00:55:30] apart, and we had to leave, and there was essentially, there's a term called holy ghosting, where, like, we left and we lost all of our local support group because we were no longer a part of that.

And that was a lot of grief and that, that happened in 2014 and that's when I started to really consider. Why so many people that I knew from my school from my college had left evangelicalism, even people that I was only connected to online, that I saw the things they posted and they were not in alignment with evangelicalism, they were in alignment with a more progressive view of the world, a different type of view of the world.

And that is when I started to explore the idea of having a show about it and, and at the time it felt like the right sort of medium to do that would be podcasting as opposed to say, like launching a blog in 2014, 2015, 2016, no one was really reading blogs anymore at that point. And so the idea was just that, that people could tell their story in their own words.

And then over time. I could build a body of work that would show the various narratives or the various commonalities between all of these individual stories. And that's where my, my work really, really started. And then since then have [00:57:00] had, I have continued that work throughout the, the ensuing years.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. All right. Well I appreciate the background there. And I appreciate what you're doing. Having to talk about this stuff, it's exhausting for the people who have to live it, but it's probably even more exhausting for those of us who have to talk about it.

And I don't say that very often, but I think it's worth pointing out everyone.

CHASTAIN: Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure like I'm sure whenever you've had to talk about leaving Mormonism, like it, you're sort of picking at a wound in a lot of ways. Things that aren't easy and sometimes even holding space for other people's stories can be discouraging or difficult and have impacts on you in a way that you don't really anticipate.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and also just seeing people who are being harmed by their beliefs, but they can't see it because they're in the bubble. But I mean, we're both proof that people can leave the bubble. I mean, there's no guarantee, of course, that anyone will escape it, but people can, and you shouldn't necessarily give up on them, if you don't want to.

CHASTAIN: Right, right. Yeah. Especially if you're in relationship, in relationship with them already. Sometimes they, they need time. Sometimes they need to see other people thriving in ways that they're not able to in their environment. You never know exactly what the catalyst might be.

SHEFFIELD: [00:58:30] Yeah. And often, the best argument is a life well lived in many cases. Because according to these fundamentalist traditions, you can't have a good life. Your life will be miserable and horrible. I mean, that's part of the threat of keeping people in is saying that your whole life will be ruined if you're not succumbing to what we tell you to do.

And then when seeing people who have a good life and are pleasant and that shows that that's not the case, that those are not valid arguments.

CHASTAIN: Right, right. Absolutely.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. All right. Well, so Blake where can people find your stuff for people who want to keep up with you?

CHASTAIN: The best place to go. Thank you Matthew for asking is post evangelical post. com. So that's my, my newsletter and it is hosted on Substack. Most of it's free. There is a paid tier as is often the case with Substack.

But yeah, post evangelical post. com. I post every new episode of Exvangelical and other writing and, and everything else. I pretty much left Twitter or X or whatever we're calling it, so that's the best place to follow me. I'm dabbling in some of the other Twitter alternatives, but head over to Post Evangelical Post to keep up with my work.

SHEFFIELD: Okay. Sounds good. Right. Well, thanks for being here then.

CHASTAIN: Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

SHEFFIELD: All right, so that is the program for today. I appreciate everybody for joining us for the discussion, and you can always [01:00:00] get more episodes if you go to theoryofchange.show. I've got the video, audio, and transcript of everything, and if you are a paid subscribing member, you get complete access to the archive, and I appreciate everybody who is supporting the show in that way. And if you are not able to do so, please do give us a nice review on your favorite podcast platform that is helpful to get more people to see the show and tell your favorite podcast about what we're doing here as well.

That can be helpful as well. I'd love to do shows on other people's as well. And then of course, we are part of the flux.community network. So go to flux.community for more articles, podcasts about politics, religion, media, and technology, and how they all intersect. And I definitely do appreciate your support in that as well. So thank you very much. And I will see you next time.

House Republicans continue to be in a hilarious disarray which is also illustrative of larger historical and philosophical trends.

Timecodes

01:51 — Jim Jordan is horrible and horribly incompetent

12:21 — Republicans can't pick a speaker because they're "individualists" instead of conservatives

19:13 — Elon Musk says he wants to charge $1 per year to use Twitter

22:08 — Musk's politicized removal of fact-checking is allowing disinformation about the Israel-Hamas war to proliferate

27:22 — Far-right people haven't realized that society doesn't need to debate basic things

31:01 — Fox sports commentator uncorks conspiracy theory about tap water

Join the Conversation!

Matt

https://twitter.com/mattsheffield

https://mastodon.social/@mattsheffield

https://www.threads.net/@realmattsheffield

Kali

https://twitter.com/kalihollowayftw

STJH on Twitter

https://twitter.com/stjh_pod

Theme song

Easy Lover: “The End of Our Deceit”

Lyrics and Vocals by Kali Holloway

Music by Jeremy Wimmer

House Republicans continue to be in a hilarious disarray which is also illustrative of larger historical and philosophical trends

Timecodes

01:51 — Jim Jordan is horrible and horribly incompetent

12:21 — Republicans can't pick a speaker because they're "individualists" instead of conservatives

19:13 — Elon Musk says he wants to charge $1 per year to use Twitter

22:08 — Musk's politicized removal of fact-checking is allowing disinformation about the Israel-Hamas war to proliferate

27:22 — Far-right people haven't realized that society doesn't need to debate basic things

31:01 — Fox sports commentator uncorks conspiracy theory about tap water

Join the Conversation!

Matt

https://twitter.com/mattsheffield

https://mastodon.social/@mattsheffield

https://www.threads.net/@realmattsheffield

Kali

https://twitter.com/kalihollowayftw

STJH on Twitter

https://twitter.com/stjh_pod

Theme song

Easy Lover: “The End of Our Deceit”

Lyrics and Vocals by Kali Holloway

Music by Jeremy Wimmer

Chaos continues to reign supreme among Republicans in the House of Representative after Jim Jordan became the third person to be rejected for Speaker of the House. The GOP's right hand doesn't know what its far-right hand is doing and we are here for it.

Timecodes

00:20 — Jim Jordan loses Speaker of the House vote on first ballot

06:51 — Matt Gaetz, who started Republicans' speaker drama said he's "tired" of it now

08:31 — Lauren Boebert busted for using campaign donor funds at Beetlejuice boyfriend's restaurant

10:21 — Donald Trump hit with gag order in criminal trial after attacking judge and prosecutors

16:40 — Paramount+ and Kelsey Grammer team up to reboot "Frasier," why?

20:16 — Taylor Swift's "Eras Tour" film rakes in big bucks after bypassing studios

23:42 — Far-right website Daily Wire is making a Snow White movie

The video of this episode is available on YouTube.  

Follow or die!

Doomscroll

https://www.instagram.com/doomscrollshow/

https://www.youtube.com/@doomscrollshow

https://twitter.com/doomscrollshow

Rick Rosner

https://twitter.com/dumbassgenius

Lisa

https://www.instagram.com/olympianlisacurry

https://twitter.com/lisa_curry

Matt

https://twitter.com/mattsheffield

https://mastodon.social/@mattsheffield

https://www.threads.net/@realmattsheffield

Essayist and memoirist Leta McCollough Seletzky discusses her father-daughter memoir, "The Kneeling Man: My Father's Life as a Black Spy Who Witnessed the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.," which tells the story behind the famous photograph of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on the balcony of Memphis's Lorraine Motel. In the photo, there is a man kneeling over Dr. King holding a towel to Dr. King's fatal gunshot. That man was Marrell "Mac" McCollough, an undercover officer for the Memphis Police Department, and Leta's father.

Leta McCollough Seletzky is a National Endowment for the Arts 2022 Creative Writing Fellow whose work has been featured in The Atlantic; The New York Times; O, The Oprah Magazine; The Washington Post; and elsewhere. Her essay "The Man in the Picture," published in O, The Oprah Magazine, was selected as a Notable Essay in BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 2019.

https://www.electorette.com/podcast

Rate & Review on iTunes: https://apple.co/2GsfQj4

Also, if you enjoy the Electorette, please subscribe and leave a 5-star review on iTunes. Also, please spread the word by telling your friends, family, and colleagues about The Electorette!

WANT MORE ELECTORETTE? Follow the Electorette on social media.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Summary

It's election season again, which means that public opinion surveys are constantly in the news. Trying to figure out what likely voters want is on the minds of everyone who works in politics or journalism. But what about the unlikely voters? What do they want?

At first glance, it may seem a bit absurd to ask about the political views of people who aren't registered to vote, or who are registered but rarely do turn out to the polls. But the reality of American politics as it stands right now is that elections are often decided by such small margins that mobilizing non voters could be and likely has been crucial to winning elections, Barack Obama roused some of them in 2008 and 2012. Donald Trump appealed to them in 2016.

When it comes to figuring out what unlikely voters think, there is no one more expert on the subject than David Paleologos. He's the director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, which is known for its public opinion surveys, particularly a poll series they conduct of people who say they have no interest in voting.

Timecodes

02:01 — What is an "unlikely voter?"

09:02 — Unlikely voters have moved toward Trump after preferring Obama

11:45 — The difficulty of determining a correct poll sample is harder with unlikely voters

15:23 — Non-voters seem to know less about politics than voters

24:00 — Unlikely voters more negative toward Biden today than Trump in 2017

26:38 — How Republicans better utilize non-policy arguments than Democrats

32:24 — Unlikely voters overwhelmingly uninterested in alternatives to Biden or Trump

34:17 — Voting isn't too difficult, unlikely voters say

42:12 — Could alternative voting methods increase public interest in voting?z

46:50 — Trump's simpler messaging helps him with lower-knowledge citizens

52:06 — Wrap-up

Transcript

This text is automatically generated from the audio and may not be entirely accurate. It is provided for convenience purposes only. Your podcast player program may cut it off before the end.

MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: Thanks for being here today, David. Welcome to Theory of Change.

DAVID PALEOLOGOS: Thank you. Great to be in Flux.

SHEFFIELD: All right. [00:02:00] Excellent. Well, all right. So, let's before we get too deep into the subject here, let's define what is an unlikely voter. As you have done in these surveys here.

PALEOLOGOS: So, an unlikely voter really falls into two categories: 1) People who are not registered to vote, obviously, they're not a vote if they're not registered to vote, and 2) people who are registered to vote, but who indicate on surveys that they're not likely to cast the ballot.

So, normally posters will begin a survey and they'll say, how likely are you to vote in the upcoming election?

Very likely somewhat, not very, not at all. If respondents indicate not at all or not likely, they get screened out. And in this survey, we did the exact opposite. If they said they were very or somewhat likely, we screened them out. And we proceeded with people who said that they were not likely or not at all likely to vote.

SHEFFIELD: And how reliable are those indicators when people claim that they're not likely to vote? Tell us about the research about that particular [00:03:00] self-identification.

PALEOLOGOS: So some people actually say it so that they will be disqualified from the survey and that they can hang up in a civil way.

Some people genuinely are not likely to vote. And when we probe a little bit further in the survey, we get an idea about whether or not they voted in the past or whether or not they have a Democrat or Republican leaning preference. But when you look at the data that's from the U. S. Elections project. They do calculations based on voter eligible population for every state and nationally. And what we found is that it's not just a few million people that don't vote.

It's a lot of people. We're expecting 90 million people who are eligible to vote in the United States in 2024 will not vote either because they're not registered to vote or they’re simply fed up and they won't vote. [00:04:00]

And that's, that's a, an ominous number when you think about it, 90 million people.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. What's the percentage?

PALEOLOGOS: Well, it's more votes than were cast for Joe Biden and Joe Biden set the record for most votes received by any presidential candidate in 2020. He was in the 80 million plus range and 90 million people exceeds that.

90 million people are saying they're not going to vote even though they're eligible to vote. And that's a huge problem.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

PALEOLOGOS: So pollsters do these niche surveys, Democratic voters only, Republican voters only, caucus voters only. And these are very small subsets compared to the 90 million people who are Americans, they're citizens and they, they're just not going to vote. They're fed up.

And so we thought back in 2012, why not pull them and figure out what's going on and then track [00:05:00] it. And we followed up with a survey in 2018 and now here in 2023, and there are some common threads in the data, but also some red flags and also some opportunities for candidates in terms of trying to convert those nonvoters into likely voters.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and I mean, again, we're talking about such a large pool of people here that there's no question that not even 20 percent of them could easily make the difference for any presidential candidate. And certainly for a lot of congressional, or gubernatorial or, whatever down the ballot. I think there's no question about that.

And there has been some research that indicates that Donald Trump was able to do that to some degree in 2016 and that that was a big thing he was interested in doing in 2020 as well, trying to identify nonvoters, disengaged people who were sympathetic to him.

So it's, yeah, like this is something that's already happening, and you guys kind of were [00:06:00] ahead of the curve in that regard.

PALEOLOGOS: So, yeah, I, I think so. And I'm surprised that people didn't copy. Usually people copy some of the work. Pollsters scoop questions and poach questions and different things from each other. It really hasn't been done.

I think I understand why it hasn't been done, because it's really expensive. I mean, we do live caller surveys and you can get in and out of a live caller survey in three nights, three days, four days max. Getting nonvoters is tougher. Because these are people who aren't used to being polled, they're tougher to reach, they're disproportionate minority, they're disproportionate young, lower educated they're also disproportionate disabled.

There's a much higher population of disabled people who have just given up on politics, they're just trying to survive because of their own issue or disability or family disability. So they're a tougher population to reach, but we think [00:07:00] it is essential.

And I do think that it helped Donald Trump in 2016. It also helped Barack Obama in 2012, if you remember. Back in 2012 we did the survey, I think in August, which is kind of the low point of Barack Obama's numbers. He was really suffering a lag effect after the big 2008 win, hope and change. And then a lot of people hadn't really seen it on him, but they didn't have the same intensity.

And he figured out that if it was just a persuasion campaign, he was probably going to have a real challenge. And so I think he, the, the DNC, from what I understand, just like Trump did in 2016, used the data to go out and find non-persuadables, people they didn't even have to persuade to vote for Barack Obama.

They felt that if they could get them just out to vote that a high percentage of them would vote for Barack Obama. And that's exactly what happened. [00:08:00]

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And in the 2012 poll that you guys did Obama was the-- I mean, he wasn't the majority candidate, but he was definitely the preferred candidate of these unlikely voters in the survey that you conducted at that point.

Now, you guys found a kind of a partisan reversal, if you will. That Donald Trump got more support than Joe Biden did.

PALEOLOGOS: 2023. Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. And the exact opposite dynamic if you look at people who weren't registered to vote. It's about a two to one break for Donald Trump over Joe Biden.

If you looked at people who were registered, but not likely to vote, it was a two and a half to one spread of Donald Trump over Joe Biden. And so what that suggests is the same advantage that Barack Obama had in 2012. Technically statistically Donald Trump has as an advantage, he needs to find those people and, having pulled it 3 times, it's tough to find the people, but if you do find the people, [00:09:00] again, he would not have to persuade as much.

Unlikely voters have moved toward Trump after preferring Obama

SHEFFIELD: Now there were some other kind of interesting little splits when you looked at the numbers. So like women who were registered to vote in this sample, 32% of them said that they were in favor of Donald Trump. But only 11% said that they were in favor of Biden. But it was split evenly basically among men who were registered.

But then by contrast, among unregistered men, they were much more likely to go to Trump. Whereas that dichotomy didn't exist so much for women who were unregistered.

So these are small sample sizes though. So I don't know how much we can delve into it. But on the other hand, the disparity between these two different groups, is certainly higher than the margin of error, even for the smaller subsets. What's your take on all that is there anything to be gained from looking at these numbers?

PALEOLOGOS: That's exactly the case. I mean, with smaller subsets, you're absolutely right. And your viewers should know that they take on a higher margin of error because they are [00:10:00] smaller sample sizes. So once you get to a subsample of 70, 80, 100 people, it's significantly higher margin of error than it is a subsample of 400 or 500.

400 or 500 subsample, you're in the plus or minus. 4 percent range, or thereabouts 4, 4, 4 and a half percent range, but then when you get down to 100 subsample, you're plus or minus like 9%. So, yeah, I mean, you want to be careful looking at some of the subsets, but the common thread male or female registered or unregistered is a disappointment with both choices.

I mean, to be fair, the polls generally show that a third-party candidate is the top choice, not Trump, not Biden. And in 2012, it was really all about a third-party candidate. And you've seen that not only in this poll, but in other polling data where people just don't want it to be a Trump-Biden matchup again.

Whether [00:11:00] you're a Democrat, Republican, or independent voter or nonvoter, and you're seeing the same kind of dynamic here. Most people were opting for something else, a better choice than, than those. But if they had to choose between Biden or Trump. Trump was getting the plurality of support over Biden.

And that speaks to a number of issues that are important to men and women registered or not registered. Be it the economy, immigration, parenting. You mentioned some of the female respondents for Trump. That's a big issue for a lot of people, independent as well, independent women. So a lot of these dynamics are in play here in 2023, as they were in the two previous surveys.

The difficulty of determining a correct poll sample is harder with unlikely voters

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, now with the sample, I mean, you had mentioned that it did take a lot longer to be in the field as the term goes in polling, how confident are you that this-- I mean, because statistically speaking, there is, there is the [00:12:00] concept of margin of error, but it's possible that the sample could be not quite accurate.

I mean, like people have raised concerns about that with election polling that the percentage of people who answer the phone might be more inclined to have certain opinions or whatnot. And that's why the Pew Research Center and some others, and maybe you can talk about your own organization in that regard, has tried to make some adjustments to try to find people who might not be wanting to answer the phone or take a phone poll. I mean, let's maybe talk about methodology here, if we could.

PALEOLOGOS: Yeah, sure. So for us, we wanted to go state by state and look at how many eligible voters didn't vote in the last two presidential elections. So we have real data on that. It's not subjective.

We have data on how many vote-eligible adults in each state did not [00:13:00] vote. And what we did was we grouped those state by state into regions and made sure that those quotas reflected what the quotas reflected were actually for the last two presidential elections. So, in some states, obviously California has a lot of people who are transient, who are not registered.

Some of them are just inhabitants. They're not legal citizens. Therefore they're not eligible. But we were only looking at people who were eligible to vote state by state that did not show historically high probability of voting. And you're right, it is tough to find those people, because people who are voters, people who take surveys, especially the super voters, the good voters, they're used to taking surveys. They're familiar with the question formats.

People who aren't voters or who aren't registered. It's [00:14:00] really difficult, especially if you have a 15- to 20-minute study to keep them on the line and ask why they're not voting in many different ways or what would motivate them to vote. And it's very difficult to get all the way through to the end with respondents like that.

So it does take a lot of time. It really is expensive when you're doing live calling. But one thing you asked about confidence. The one thing for sure is that we feel quite confident that the people that we reported in the survey were not voting, said to us that they were not voting either because they weren't registered or that they were not voting because they were done with the political system as it were.

Some people could be motivated to vote and that's kind of what we talked about earlier. And the onus is on the campaigns to find those [00:15:00] people who might be on the fence who might be telling us in a survey. Yes, I'm registered, but no, I'm not voting next year.

Those people might be persuadable to vote. But at this point, polls being a snapshot in time at the time that we did the field, they were not voting next year.

Non-voters seem to know less about politics than voters

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. All right. Well, so let's get further into the tables here and we'll have a link in the show notes for people who want to check out the complete results. So this is a population overall that seems to not know as much about politics as regular voters. You have a question in here about who is the vice president, and 70 percent of the respondents correctly gave the name Kamala Harris or some semblance of her identifying her, who she was.

[00:16:00] And that was probably, that was higher than when, when you asked this poll in 2018, it was around 50 percent said Mike Pence.

Now they also they also, there were, there were some interesting breakdowns, I thought, with their, with their ideologies. When you go through and you asked them to sort of place themselves on the ideological spectrum, 32 percent said they were moderate, 18 percent said liberal, and 16 percent said conservative. How do those match up with the voter samples you guys conduct?

PALEOLOGOS: Yeah, so it's more of a perfect Bell Curve, right, in terms of sentiment with moderate being in the middle. And you would guess that, right?

You would guess that of a people who don't have a leaning, don't have an interest in voting, they probably self-defined as being moderate. It's at it actually runs a little bit left of center for most polls. Most polls skew slightly conservative. Most national polls skew slightly conservative [00:17:00] where there will be a big chunk of moderate but slightly higher amount of people say conservative or very conservative than they do liberal or very liberal.

So this poll is slightly left of that. And that kind of makes sense when you think about people who don't vote, who tend to be younger persons of color, lower income. And even a disproportionate amount of disabled Americans who have given up on the political system as well.

SHEFFIELD: Okay. And then, but at the same time, you also did ask if you did vote in 2020, who did you vote for in it? And there was a slight plurality of the respondents said that they had voted for Donald Trump. Do you see a dichotomy there between people who are identifying themselves as left leaning, but are more likely to be supporting Donald Trump. Like what's, what's the deal with that?

PALEOLOGOS: Yeah. So I think there were two separate questions and it's a great [00:18:00] question. And number one, and this was really one of the takeaways for me is that Trump's narrative that the system is rigged, it's not fair, government doesn't work, government is frozen, has actually turned off some of his own base. Which explains why slightly more people had said, not a lot, but slightly more people had said that they had previously voted for him and that's worked counter to his narrative, he's used it to motivate people to vote to say, you need to get out and vote.

For me, because the system is rigged, because Washington D. C. doesn't work, because your vote is being thrown away by these corrupt Democrats or whatever his narrative is, but it's had the opposite effect according to this data. This data is suggesting that those people have actually listened to him and they aren't voting because they [00:19:00] don't think that He'll be allowed to be elected or that the system is rigged and that their vote really doesn't matter.

And that they're very disillusioned about the system. And they have been convinced by Donald Trump and others that it's just a waste of time. And so people who may have previously supported him thinking the system was going to work when he got elected now believe there's no point.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, at the same time, I think you could also say that it is showing that Biden's message, that there may be some similarities that he's facing with that Hillary Clinton faced in 2016, in that the message of, things are fine, don't worry about it, the Democrats have got it under control, that's not persuasive to a lot of people. They feel like whether it's their own lives or, however they're coming to this opinion, they feel like [00:20:00] that the system has failed, and they're not interested in somebody telling them everything's fine, don't worry about it.

PALEOLOGOS: They do believe that. And the reason really Biden prevailed was he was viewed as a calm, steady hand to lead the country from the omnipotent tweets of Donald Trump. Someone who was clean politically, and someone who could reach across the aisle.

Now with this issue that we're dealing with where, we have a divided Congress. And we can't get consensus on a lot, even though, there was 1, 1, bipartisan bill that obviously that President Biden is talking about, those are all in question. Now, forget about his age and competency. That's been an overriding issue. It's worse now.

But if he is seen to not be [00:21:00] squeaky clean, honest, by virtue of either the Hunter Biden issue or these allegations against Hunter Biden, and whether there's a connection with President Biden remains to be seen, if that is tainted and his ability to reach across the aisle and to make things happen, if that is tainted, you're taking away a couple of important legs from the table.

That was a strong table for Joe Biden. And then you add into that, whether or not the immigration issue is going to become better or worse next year, and whether the economy is going to be better or worse next year, you've got a lot of variables in play that could potentially give him the kind of negatives that Hillary Clinton had in 2016.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And I guess one of the other things that's stands out for me in this sample in terms of their demographic differences from likely voters is where they look [00:22:00] for news from. In this sample, it was much more, they were much more internet driven. With social media websites 34 percent said that that's where they got their news from.

That was tied with television and cable news networks. And that's, and then newspapers and magazines are, were only 10%. And then radio down to 4%. So, I mean, that's that seems like another big difference. Maybe that's a function of age of this sample or what, what do you think?

PALEOLOGOS: Yeah, I think that's part of it, but I mean, it shows, tells me that you're in the right media doing podcasts because we're seeing a straight line down for TV.

In the old days, everybody wanted to be on TV. It was like a big deal. But I mean, I have my two boys are in their early twenties. They are not TV watchers. My son is at U. S. C. He doesn't even have a TV in his room. He projects on the wall from his laptop.

So if you're under [00:23:00] 35, TV is not your bag. You are watching podcasts and listening. You're getting your information from other sources and the, the whole TV presence is dying. It's not just among unlikely voters. It's among likely voters too. Viewership is dropping right across the board. Everybody's feeling it. MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, they're all dropping or trying to maintain that, that critical demographic that, the 25 to 54 demographic that everybody yearns for.

But, it's just like staying afloat. Nobody's really growing an audience because everything is rotating to social media and this is why it's so important to get good information to listen and watch podcasts and so on and click on some of the links that you can see and do your own research because television is really an old person's game right now.[00:24:00]

Unlikely voters more negative toward Biden today than Trump in 2017

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, definitely is. And to that point, one of the questions that you asked people in the pool here is what do you think of when you hear the name of the current president, Joe Biden?

And the first answer that people gave was old, it was about 19% said that about Biden. How did that sort of thing compare to when Trump was president? When you guys did this in 2018, what did people have to say back then?

PALEOLOGOS: Well, the, the, the words offered on Trump were more vulgar. But they weren't, they weren't as bad in, in terms of total, total responses.

So, it wasn't just old, it was just, cognitive skills and so on. People are a little bit more civil. With Biden than they were with Trump. But the total amount of negative sentiment was pretty high against Joe, for which one for, for Joe.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, I'm saying with the negative with Trump, like what was the percentage with that?[00:25:00]

PALEOLOGOS: It was about 10 or 15 percent total negative sentiment, lower. So I think it was like in the high 30s, if you, if you aggregated the negative comments, it was more like in the high 30s, then the negative sentiment towards Biden. So, and you can't do anything about age. I mean, you can do something about.

Maybe competency and, a good political team can, can at least create the perception that he is sharp and that he's getting better and that he's making better decisions. But it's tough, it's tough because the age situation just doesn't go away. And it puts more pressure on 2 In line for the presidency, which is Kamala Harris and her numbers are bad among likely voters.

And I think a lot of people, more people know who she is in this poll than Mike Pence was because Mike Pence really flew under the radar. Kamala Harris has been [00:26:00] thrust into the spotlight. In a positive way by left leaning media, but also been thrust into the spotlight by right leaning media, trying to show that she's not competent and not a good second choice.

And I think the, the combination of both of those media sides, if you will, have, impacted people, even who are not likely voters to recognize who she is. That may not necessarily be a positive thing that more people recognize who she is. It's just that they do recognize who she is and it could be a factor among likely voters next year.

How Republicans better utilize non-policy arguments than Democrats

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And I would say that that's a real difference between the way that Democrats and Republicans conduct politics. Because when you look at presidential campaigns over the years the messaging from Republicans, it tends, they offer both political and non political reasons to, to go against the opponent.

[00:27:00] Whereas Democrats tend to focus more on policy, generally speaking. So like for instance, you shouldn't vote for. Michael Dukakis because he looked funny in the tank, or you shouldn't vote for John Kerry because he went windsurfing and, he, he was French whereas the, on the, the Democrats generally, the only sort of non political thing they kind of offer is, well, they're stupid and they don't really focus on anything else, and the age thing actually is, really interesting as an attack line against Biden, because, I mean, as everybody knows, Trump is basically the same age as him.

And so for them, but so for Democrats, if they were to say, well, look, Trump's old too, that doesn't help Joe Biden at all. Because you're basically saying, look, our guy's old also. And. So that's, it's, it's actually a really interesting and vulnerability for Biden in that regard.

PALEOLOGOS: It's going to be an interesting year next year because and this is just a [00:28:00] sort of a sidebar to, to your original question, but I think it's important, when you look at Dianne Feinstein, Mitch McConnell, and they're all leaders in, in, in Congress as well, in addition to, to Joe Biden, and then you're going to see.

The graphs of the average age of the U S senators and, and how few people are, under 40 years of age and so on. So, the, the aging competency is being weaved together against Joe Biden, whether it's fair or not fair. It it's it, it, and less so against Donald Trump. People acknowledge the years, that the, the age of Donald Trump, but It's a question of, do you think he can do the job?

Do you think he, whether you like the job or not, the question of, do you think he can do the job is a different question and that's what, why I think it doesn't, it doesn't work to Biden's advantage to go down that road. I mean, Mick [00:29:00] Jagger is Joe Biden's age and people don't think Mick Jagger, falls short on, on, on a lot of different things singing, dancing or anything else at his age.

And, so it's not strictly about his age. It's, it's about whether or not he's confident. I mean, the foes of Joe Biden are going too far in my opinion. They're basically, all they do is just point out gaps and his stuttered speech, or he turns the wrong way or whatever it is. And that's just, I mean, that's just cherry picking video to create a narrative.

And it's just not fair. I mean, it's not fair to him. It's not fair to older people. Even though a lot of older people in the polling would prefer a younger candidate. Just on it's fair. It's just not fair.

SHEFFIELD: Well, and that's an [00:30:00] interesting point you make there because, the, the Republican electorate is overwhelmingly over 50.

Like the majority of them are, I, I think it was what in the last election, what was it? Like 57% I believe, of their electorate, maybe closer to 60 was over the age of 50.

And so yeah, it's paradoxical because you're having people who perhaps might be younger than Joe Biden who are saying: 'Well, I feel like I am not what I used to be. So he can't be either.'

And they really can't know that. I mean, people age in different ways. But you know, politics isn't fair, and it never has been, right?

PALEOLOGOS: Yes. So I think Democrats, they, they have to, exactly kind of step back from what you said about policy only, and they can't run a policy campaign against Trump and or whoever the Republican nominee is.

They have got to do some really in depth [00:31:00] polling focus groups and test a number of different, not only issues, but characteristics and try and piece together the coalitions that they need to piece together because right now, Joe Biden is pulling, I mean, his disapproval is in the fifties, high fifties, and even higher when it comes to immigration and The economy, and just based on those numbers, whether or not a 3rd party candidate runs or not doesn't really matter.

If your disapproval is at 55. I think you almost want a 3rd party candidate in there to split up that disapproval of 55 because if it's a binary choice, the disapproval of 55 is going to go to. Whoever Biden's opponent is and if there's a third party candidate, maybe there's a buffer where they won't vote for the Republican, they can't vote for Biden who, based on how they feel, but they have a third party alternative.

I mean, we've been [00:32:00] talking, the polling community has been talking about how a third party candidate could hurt the Democrats, but there could be an argument to be made that it. Third party candidate might, might hurt the Republicans if you give people two options among the people who disapprove of Biden instead of one.

Unlikely voters overwhelmingly uninterested in alternatives to Biden or Trump

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no, that's true. Although it was interesting that you guys did offer some various. potential candidates to the, to these people and, not, not Trump, not Biden but they weren't particularly interested in any of them. I mean, Bernie Sanders was 2%, Michelle Obama, 2% RFK, like 2 percent was the highest.

Candidate choice. And, and overwhelmingly the answer was, so the question was, is there anyone you can think of who you would be certain to go to the polls for? If that person was running and [00:33:00] 48 percent said no. So, I mean, what does that, what does that say?

PALEOLOGOS: Well, it, it says that there's a hardened group of people who aren't going to vote despite anybody. I mean, so they're telling us I'm not going to vote. I'm not going to vote. The system is rigged, all throughout the poll. Then we finally say, okay, look, is there anybody who would motivate you to go vote? And like, like you said, I mean, 2 percent here, 2 percent there, Barack Obama, Michelle Obama.

I think we're on to Santa's got a point. Bernie Sanders, but not enough really to matter among people who aren't candidates. So that tells us that, nearly half of them, you could put. Maybe we should have named somebody else or maybe they should have thought of somebody else.

I don't know who that might be. Maybe Taylor Swift or something. [00:34:00] I really don't know. But, but obviously the people that would immediately come to mind didn't come to mind.

And that just gives you a, an idea of why this kind of polling is so important.

Voting isn't too difficult, unlikely voters say

SHEFFIELD: And, and of how alienated people feel yeah, and so, one of the other, one of the other questions that you guys ask that I think undermines a lot of the. A lot of, a lot of Democrats have this idea that people don't vote because it's too difficult for them to vote that voter registration requirements or photo ID or whatever, that they just are too scary to people.

And, your poll overwhelmingly finds that that's not the case. So you ask them, the question of, do you think, That voting is easy to complete and can be done quickly. And the answer, 67 percent [00:35:00] said yes, and only 11 percent said it takes too much time. And then there was some unknown, don't know and not decided.

But I mean, it's pretty overwhelming in this regard that people. They don't feel like it's too hard to participate. They just choose not to.

PALEOLOGOS: Not to participate. And that's their choice. I mean, I heard, I, as I say, I monitored some of the calls the first couple of nights and people were actually saying, it's my right not to vote.

 So what do you say to that? I mean, hey, it's my right not to vote. So what are you going to say about that? And, and, and, and it wasn't about ease of registration. I mean, and by the way, that 67, that two thirds number has run through all three polls that we've done going back to 2012. Majority, a clear majority of people know that it's not that difficult to register and they just don't want to, they want to have nothing to do with it.

Some people didn't want to vote because they didn't want to be on a jury list. They didn't want their name to pop [00:36:00] up. Some people, there were some people who were felons or who had criminal records. They didn't want to be on anybody's radar. I mean, there were a bunch of different reasons, but the overwhelming reasons were, they just don't believe the system works anymore.

They don't believe the vote counts. It has nothing to do with registering to vote. It has to do with them just giving up on the system. And some of those people were Trump voters and they've given up.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. When that is the irony that so while Democrats believe that, more voting, like people are not voting, they're, they're wrong to think that people aren't voting because they, they don't know how to, or it's too hard.

The Republicans are also wrong to think that non-voters. Are not interested in them. I, I think, your survey shows that, that they, at least on a certain level are willing to entertain them and maybe it is just Trump. I mean, like that's, I think that's kind of the wild card that, that we don't know yet [00:37:00] because the previous two surveys that you did, the, these non participant people, the unlikely voters, they didn't like the other Republicans before Trump.

And so. That, that remains to be seen. And you kind of see that with the difficulty that all these other Republicans have had gaining traction. And I keep seeing that, more kind of like Republican consultants or, or commentators. They have this idea in their head that Donald Trump is the weakest of our major candidates in the general election. And I think the opposite is true that, he's got a lot of people who would never vote for Ron DeSantis, who would never vote for Nikki Haley because they strike them as, corporate overlord types who are repulsive.

Whereas they see Trump as, kind of a vulgar guy that they can identify with on a certain level because he's not, he's not, he's not, he's not, hoity toity above it all kind of person. I mean, what [00:38:00] do you think?

PALEOLOGOS: Yeah, I think he, I think he connects on a granular level with. lower income, lower educated voters, union households those have a trade or a vocational education. You're absolutely right. He's hitting bases that a lot of these other candidates like DeSantis, Nikki Haley are not hitting.

You add to that the most recent polling that shows Donald Trump beating Joe Biden by nine points in the last, the latest ABC News, Washington Post poll. And even if it is an outlier, which they believe it is an outlier, but even it, if it is an outlier, the fact that he's leading or tied, he being Trump is leading or tied with Trump with all of his legal troubles in what's supposed to be a strong economy is going to be a concern and the polling does indicate you're absolutely right. The polling does indicate it's Trump or bust for a lot of these Trump voters. And we've asked the question, if Trump does not get the [00:39:00] nominate of among likely voters, if Trump doesn't get the nomination, what would you do?

A considerable amount of people wouldn't vote. A considerable amount of people would vote third party. Some would even vote for Cornell West. A few would even vote for Joe Biden. They would not vote for the Republican nominee.

So, I mean, in a way Trump has the Republican party hostage right now, because if he wins, he's going to be vulnerable in a general election on issues like abortion, which he's trying to moderate his position on and, and other issues. But if he loses his a piece of his following, it's just going to walk away. And that will set up a resounding victory for Biden or whoever the Democratic nominee is.

SHEFFIELD: Mm hmm. Yeah. And what happens after him? I mean, one way or the other, in 2028 he's not going to be running. And so what Republicans do after that point, it's anybody's guess.

But they're now at this [00:40:00] point where they've got probably, I mean, it depends on how you plumb the percentage, but you know, somewhere between 35 percent to 55 percent of the Trump voters don't like Republicans.

PALEOLOGOS: That's a big problem. That's a big problem. And that's why we've had this debate about the third party and the No Labels candidate, is someone going to, fly in, run as a third party candidate, whoever that might be. And what's the impact going to be in the swing states and in the 2024 election?

I mean, I guess the bench really for 2028 for the Republicans is Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Scott Youngkin. Maybe governor Sununu. And that's it. It's kind of a short bench on the Republican side, you've got the people who have run before, Elizabeth Warren, she also got Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris.

And, some of the up and comers. Yeah. [00:41:00] Yeah, of course. And it, and there's a big void, but there's a big void on, on both sides. One of the, I. We haven't asked this question on, on our next I mean, on our previous polls, I'm considering asking it in the likely polls that we're going to be doing in the future, but you know, like who would Republicans like to see as a VP?

Would they like to see Nikki Haley or whether or not that's even feasible or DeSantis or Scott because he has so many, he has so many detractors right now. And within the ranks that you know, and that might be an important decision that we really haven't factored in. Because if he would have picked somebody from a state that is purple or even blue that could flip to, to Trump, that changes the calculus a little bit.

Or if he would have picked somebody like we haven't had anybody Hispanic on a ticket. If he, if he were to pick a Republican [00:42:00] who was Hispanic, what would the impact be, beyond what we know now in the likely voter pool? So still a lot of I mean, still a lot of variables that are out there.

Could alternative voting methods increase public interest in voting?

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. Well now in terms of the I mean, like thinking about third party candidates here, obviously the American political system is heavily-- it wasn't deliberately done this way to minimize the impact of third party candidates, but that is the effect of it. And, some localities have experimented with some other ways of doing elections.

So like in California, where I live, there is a multi party primary election and everybody runs in the same primary. And then the top two candidates are in the general election. And then you got other states where they have multi party voting. So you can vote for more than one candidate if you want to.

And then they have a runoff after that. And I mean, like, it seems like that that's, people want [00:43:00] alternative electoral systems but it is interesting that, when you, you mentioned No Labels, and then you've got Andrew Yang, who's got his Forward party. And what's interesting with all these, non Republican, non Democratic advocates, they're not focusing on alternative election systems.

And the reality is you can't get anywhere as a third party unless the electoral system has changed. You're running a hopeless effort that maybe, you might get a particularly fantastic candidate or a rich candidate like a Ross Perot or something. But that's a flash in the pan. Like people he only knew who he was because he had a billion dollars and was throwing it all the, flushing it down the toilet on these TV specials that he was spending all this money on.

Like that's how people knew who he was. But you guys did find there's a strong appetite for third party candidates.

PALEOLOGOS: I actually remember the Perot election back, believe it or not, in, in 92, and he won two [00:44:00] of the three televised debates in post debate polling. So he had the money, but he also he simplified the country's problems in a way that mainstream Americans needed the issues to be articulated as.

And so, you talk about alternative methods of voting. Look at rank choice voting. I mean, if there was a third party candidate that ran in 2024, what do you think would happen with rank choice voting? You've got Trump voters who would never vote for Biden, Biden voters who would never vote for Trump. But they probably would vote for a third party candidate. And if you had rank choice voting, a third party candidate would do quite well in a national election.

And that's because it's the lesser of the two evils.

SHEFFIELD: You're no longer in that position. Yeah.

PALEOLOGOS: That's right. [00:45:00] I mean, and the evils are so polarized that, someone from the middle would have a better chance than either left or right. And if even if the no, I mean, in the column I wrote, I was talking about the comparable election in a poll.

This poll in 2018 showed that. Only 9% were voting third party, and now it's three times that. And the 9%, I think translated to like a few percent of people in the 2000 in the in the, the 2012 election. And now in 2024, it's three times that. So is that going to be 8 or 9% of people voting third-party.

If that's the case, it's going to really, really shift things in some of the states that matter like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan, and Nevada.

So, I mean, you've got a lot to think about. I mean, look at [00:46:00] Nevada's ballot. You're from you're from being from California. You're familiar with Nevada's ballot. Nevada has a ballot option. None of These Candidates. That's an actual ballot option. You can go to the polls and vote None of These Candidates.

I think there were like 5 candidates or 4 or 5 candidates for president on the ballot in 2020 and still people were saying, imagine that you go to the polls, or you vote by absentee in Nevada and there are 5 candidates for president and you don't select any of them. You voted, but you voted None of These Candidates.

And these are people who are likely voters. Forget online. These are people who actually went to the polls in Nevada in 2020 and selected None of These Candidates. It's crazy. Yeah, that's the kind of thinking that's out there.

Trump's simpler messaging helps him with lower-knowledge citizens

SHEFFIELD: and I guess we have to acknowledge that a lot of these unlikely voters, they don't know as much about politics. And maybe that's why they might not like candidates, [00:47:00] that's possible, right?

And what it suggests, though, is that I think there's another possibility is that the major parties, they're not adequately explaining themselves or carrying the message to people who might actually like what they have to say. But they just think it's too difficult to understand them when they talk.

I mean, you constantly hear Democrats say that Biden did all these things, and nobody knows that he did them, like about student loan forgiveness, or spending on infrastructure projects. And they're correct to point that out, that people don't know that stuff, but ultimately, the blame for that lies on them, not anyone else is responsible for that. If you don't carry your own message, who's going to do it for you?

PALEOLOGOS: Absolutely. I mean, there is a messaging problem. There is a messaging problem. And part of it is, and Republicans do the same thing. There's a lot of infighting. There was a lot of infighting, in the Republican party, there still is. You'll see it, at the next Republican debate out in [00:48:00] California and there's infighting in the Democrat.

We should be doing this. No, we should be doing that. We have to do more of this. And so when you're spinning your wheels like that, time goes by and the message never gets out. It's not, it's not a reinforced message. But, even with all of the good news, and there is a lot of good news in the government statistics that are being released on employment numbers.

But even with all of that, I mean, the poll we released last week, which was a kitchen table poll on the economy we found that it, we gave people seven categories that people spend money on seven out of seven categories. People will make it under 50, 000 of cutting back. On basic stuff, food, groceries, clothing, their electricity, they're cutting back on 7 out of 7.

Now, people make under 50, 000 is a good chunk of them that a Democratic voters. They're either students who are just starting out 1st job. They're not making 50, 000 right out of their [00:49:00] college, whether it's a. Good college, community college, or whatever, or older people who are on fixed incomes. They're getting social security, whatever they may be, taking in 30 grand or 40 grand.

They may not have any debt, but that's all their income is 30, 40, 000. And they can't put food on their table. So, you could put out all the positive messaging you want policy wise. And that's great, but if people are stressed out at the end of the week because their credit card bills are through the roof or they can't pay their bills, how are people supposed to feel?

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, yeah, no, it's true. And I think Democrats, they missed the boat on gas prices and inflation with that. They didn't pay attention to it as early as they could have. And then Republicans, again, like Trump is, he is very different from a regular Republican in that he is so much better at, touting his own [00:50:00] accomplishments or at least claiming some, right?

And so he's able to get a lot more people aware of him. And again, these are people that are, that would have probably been predisposed to him in any way. So, but he really understands communications a lot better than any other politician in the game right now, I feel like.

PALEOLOGOS: Yeah, he does. And the good news for Democrats is they have time, they acknowledge they have a messaging problem. They acknowledge there's a vacuum there. And this is in October of 2024. It's a year, a year away plus, and they have time to figure that out. If Trump is the nominee, they're going to make the election about democracy.

Here's a guy that tried to overthrow the country, the country and change an election. And they're going to do due diligence to try and make that happen.

If Trump has any legal victories between now and then, even if it's-- not just court delays, but any legal victories, he's going to tell that as you see, I was innocent. They were coming after me and, [00:51:00] and all of that.

So it's going to be a fabulous story month to month to see which of the forces prevail.

On the one hand, if the economy rebounds and immigration, the immigration problem begins to have a delta that's going in the right direction, it's going to be hard to vote Biden out of office. If the economy continues to be on a tailspin and our poll, our kitchen table poll shows that people are really stressed out and spending less, which is going to impact corporate earnings, which is going to impact layoffs, interest rates are high. Capital is going to be tough. If that spiral continues into next year, it's going to be tough for people to vote for Joe Biden.

Especially if the border issues aren't going in the right direction. So all of the cultural issues that you hear about and teaching, parental rights in schools and guns and opioids are all important issues, climate change abortion rights. But if people can't survive from week to week [00:52:00] in terms of their own kitchen tables, it's going to be a really difficult election.

Wrap-up

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, the other stuff doesn't matter nearly so much.

Yeah, so let's maybe wrap on one topic that was not in the poll here, and hasn't been in the previous ones is religion. You did not ask people's religious opinions on that.

And I think that that's, and I'll say as somebody who used to do polling when I was at The Hill, I've always tried to make it religious questions more of an issue because I think that people have wrongly used education as a proxy for worldview, and religion probably gets closer to that in terms of how often they're attending or what their beliefs are about religious fundamentalist viewpoints.

So like, asking them, do you believe in evolution, humans evolved? Or do you believe the earth is 7, 000 years old? Like those, I believe are[00:53:00] probably the biggest predictors of what your vote's going to be on how you answer those questions. And so just want to put that in your, put that in your, in your ear, if I could at this juncture here. Do you have any thoughts on that?

PALEOLOGOS: No, we did, we did ask questions about religion in earlier election cycles. We haven't. And I don't think it's just Suffolk. I think a lot of pollsters have kind of put those questions aside. I'd be happy to sort of revive that you have put it in my head and because I think it's something that hasn't been done a lot.

Part of the reason is because people just it's like everything else, especially people who are not likely voters, they're certainly not devout anything. Especially those people who are at the end of their lives or disabled or, I mean, I believe that a lot of people have organized religion is [00:54:00] another one of those institutions that is really failing. And maybe it takes times like these and times of crisis to bring people back into that.

SHEFFIELD: All right. Well, so, we've been talking today with David Paleologos. Your name literally means old word.

PALEOLOGOS: That's right, "ancient word." Ancient word, right?

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yep. Okay. Well, thanks for being here, David. It's been a great discussion.

PALEOLOGOS: Absolutely.

SHEFFIELD: And so that is the program for today. I appreciate everybody for joining us for the conversation. And of course, you can get more of this show at theoryofchange.show. You can get access to the video, audio, and transcripts of all the episodes. And we have both free and paid subscriptions to the show.

If you have a paid subscription, you get access to a little bit more content, and I definitely appreciate your help with that. And if you are not able to support the show financially, I do definitely appreciate you leaving a nice [00:55:00] review on Apple podcasts or whatever other podcast platform you are using to listen to the show.

And if you're on YouTube please be sure to like and subscribe to the show so you can get it sent to you whenever we come out with a new one. Thank you very much for that. And I will see you next time. [00:56:00]

Episode Topics

* People are taught by society their personal self-worth is at least partially a function of their relationship status or how much sex they’re having. It’s a toxic narrative that manifests in many different ways but must

* Rapper Doja Cat provoked her fans by wearing a shirt of a neo-Nazi, after she earlier had been demonstrated to have used racial slurs and alt-right memes. But she’s not alone in being a non-white young person who flirts with racists.

* How violence, terrorism, and oppression in Israel are dividing the American left

Timecodes

00:00 — How women and men are taught opposite lies about sex and relationships

07:43 — Doja Cat and racist non-white people

23:52 — Israel and Palestine are dividing the U.S. left

Join the Conversation!

Matt

https://twitter.com/mattsheffield

Kali

https://twitter.com/kalihollowayftw

STJH on Twitter

https://twitter.com/stjh_pod

Theme song

Easy Lover: “The End of Our Deceit”

Lyrics and Vocals by Kali Holloway

Music by Jeremy Wimmer

Episode Topics

00:00 — People are taught by society their personal self-worth is at least partially a function of their relationship status or how much sex they’re having. It’s a toxic narrative that manifests in many different ways.

07:43 — Rapper Doja Cat provoked her fans by wearing a shirt of a neo-Nazi, after she earlier had been demonstrated to have used racial slurs and alt-right memes. But she’s not alone in being a non-white young person who flirts with racists.

23:52 — How violence, terrorism, and oppression in Israel are dividing the American left

Join the Conversation!

Matt

https://twitter.com/mattsheffield

https://mastodon.social/@mattsheffield

https://www.threads.net/@realmattsheffield

Kali

https://twitter.com/kalihollowayftw

STJH on Twitter

https://twitter.com/stjh_pod

Theme song

Easy Lover: “The End of Our Deceit”

Lyrics and Vocals by Kali Holloway

Music by Jeremy Wimmer

Timecodes

00:11 — Trump rages at getting kicked off Forbes 400 richest list

04:35 — RFK Jr. launches "independent" candidacy, gets bashed by Republicans who fear he'll take their voters

08:59 — Florida Republican activist indicted for voter fraud

16:23 — Mike Lindell's lawyers are refusing to work for him anymore after he stopped paying them

21:05 — Biden's dog Commander removed from White House after biting incidents

25:08 — Pamela Anderson earns praise for going make-up free

Follow or die!

Doomscroll

https://www.instagram.com/doomscrollshow/

https://www.youtube.com/@doomscrollshow

https://twitter.com/doomscrollshow

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/doomscroll-podcast/id1703361874

Matt

https://twitter.com/mattsheffield

https://mastodon.social/@mattsheffield

https://www.threads.net/@realmattsheffield

Lisa

https://www.instagram.com/olympianlisacurry

https://twitter.com/lisa_curry

Timecodes

00:11 — Trump rages at getting kicked off Forbes 400 richest list

04:35 — RFK Jr. launches "independent" candidacy, gets bashed by Republicans who fear he'll take their voters

08:59 — Florida Republican activist indicted for voter fraud

16:23 — Mike Lindell's lawyers are refusing to work for him anymore

21:05 — Biden's dog Commander removed from White House after biting incidents

25:08 — Pamela Anderson earns praise for going make-up free

Follow or die!

Doomscroll

https://www.instagram.com/doomscrollshow/

https://www.youtube.com/@doomscrollshow

https://twitter.com/doomscrollshow

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/doomscroll-podcast/id1703361874

Matt

https://twitter.com/mattsheffield

https://mastodon.social/@mattsheffield

https://www.threads.net/@realmattsheffield

Lisa

https://www.instagram.com/olympianlisacurry

https://twitter.com/lisa_curry