The Telos News Podcast with Ryan Lizza

In our conversation today, G. Elliott Morris takes us through his comprehensive analysis of Tuesday’s election results.

Some key highlights:

* So much for the Trump realignment. The 2025 results reflect a typical anti‑incumbent reaction to the party in power after it failed to deliver on promises to address inflation and affordability. As Morris puts it, “The 2024 Trump ‘realignment’ is already over.”

* The economy dominated (as it almost always does). Exit polling revealed that the economy and cost of living were the top issues. Voters who prioritized these issues flipped hard to Democrats compared to 2024.

* The swing came from 2024’s Trump‑leaning groups. The biggest shifts in 2025 back to Democrats were among young voters, lower-income voters, Hispanic, Black, and Asian voters.

* The polling “miss” had a cause. Off‑year polls that re‑weighted to 2024’s presidential electorate overestimated GOP strength.

* Candidate quality mattered, but modestly. Weak GOP nominees were plausibly worth perhaps 1–2 points, but the dominant force was the anti-incumbent mood tied to affordability concerns.

* Looking to 2026: Expect a normal (and possibly amplified) backlash against the presidential party if economic perceptions don’t improve.

* Ideological lessons? The results don’t validate sweeping ideological narratives pushed by Democratic groups. Voters rewarded anyone who credibly addressed affordability—from a left-wing NYC mayoral candidate to the pragmatic governors in Virginia and New Jersey.

* What about democracy? The swing against Trump has some important lessons for the anti-Trump coalition. For me, at least, it is sobering, if not totally surprising, that it was mostly the economy—and not Trump’s attacks on the rule of law and democracy—that fueled Tuesday’s blue wave.

Some data points that Elliott and I dig into:

* What voting groups moved?

* Young voters: 22‑point swing back to Democrats.

* Voters with income of less than $50,000 per year: 18‑point Democratic swing.

* Black voters: 11‑point move back to Dems.

* Asian voters (VA): 42‑point swing back to Dems.

* Issue salience:

* Economy cited by 48% of Virginia voters and some 4 in 10 voters in New Jersey. These voters shifted from supporting Trump by 65 points in 2024 to supporting the Democrats by 30–40 points in 2025.

* A key local example: Union City, New Jersey (82% Hispanic) shifted from a 17‑point Democratic margin in 2024 to a 69‑point Democratic margin in 2025 (with higher turnout).

* Don’t overinterpret the results. These big shifts are caused by unattached, relatively non-ideological swing voters who quickly desert the party in power if it fails to deliver on its promises. That really has been the core story of the last 10 or so national elections in the U.S., and it vastly complicates both the right’s Trump realignment narrative and the left’s narrative about a natural anti-Trump majority.

Thank you Lev Parnas, Mark McInerney, Dianne Mize, Susan DRENNAN GABRIEL, Sandra Tuttle, and many others for tuning into my live video with Steve Schmidt!

Thank you Mark McInerney, Kelli Pryor, Leah Anderson, carolyn strawn, Stuart Cohen, and many others for tuning into my live video with Steve Schmidt!

You can join me and Steve on Substack Live every Monday at noon.

Telos subscribers: Please use this link to get 20% off a paid subscription to The Warning with Steve Schmidt.

In our weekly chat, Steve Schmidt and I discuss:

* The growing pains in the coalition that has formed against Trump, including why clear-eyed Trump critics such as Andrew Sullivan refused to join the protests on Saturday

* Gavin Newsom’s wise decision to close a stretch of I-5 before the Marines, at the insistence of the Trump administration, fired live artillery over the highway, including one shell that detonated prematurely in mid-air and scattered shrapnel onto two California Highway Patrol vehicles that were part of JD Vance’s security detail

* Kristi Noem’s Gulfstreams

* Why I was driving around downtown Washington during the No Kings protests in a red pickup truck with a “Fire Pelosi” bumper sticker on the back (it’s not what it sounds like!)

* And, of course, the Toronto Blue Jays

Thank you Nadine Smith, Dianne Mize, Angie T, joe alter, Jacqueline Dorinda Maddox, and many others for tuning into our chat.

You can join me and Steve on Substack Live every Monday at noon.

Telos subscribers: Please use this link to get 20% off a paid subscription to The Warning with Steve Schmidt.

This was a delightful conversation that went in many unexpected directions—everything from the wisdom to be gained from reading Moby Dick in 2025 to the pleasures of raising a puppy to wellness advice to the lessons learned from Ian Kershaw’s biography of Hitler.

Miles and I are going to discuss the possibility of a regular Substack-based book club so please let us know if that might appeal to you. At the very least, Miles and I will be doing more of these conversations, which have turned out to be pretty popular with readers of both Telos and Treason.

Please consider a paid subscription to both!

Thank you Cat, Richard Hogan, MD, PhD(2), DBA, joe alter, Janet Carter, Maureen Drews, and many others for tuning in!

Thank you Mark McInerney, Dianne Mize, An Mcgreevy, Sandra Tuttle, joe alter, Marina, and many others for tuning into my live video with Steve Schmidt!

You can join me and Steve on Substack Live every Monday at noon.

Telos subscribers: Please use this link to get 20% off a paid subscription to The Warning with Steve Schmidt!

Thank you Dianne Mize, Cat, Iulia Huiu, Leah Anderson, John H, and many others for tuning into my live video with Steve Schmidt!

You can join me and Steve on Substack Live every Monday at noon.

Telos subscribers: Please use this link to get 20% off a paid subscription to The Warning with Steve Schmidt!

Steve and I discuss the fascist—sorry, no other word—rhetoric from Trump at today’s address to military leaders in Quantico.

I have more to say about the speech in my latest column here.

Thank you Cat, Steve Lubetkin, Leah Anderson, Nancy McAllister, Pamela, and many others for tuning into my live video with Steve Schmidt.

You can join me and Steve live every Monday at noon.

Telos subscribers: Please use this link to get 20% off a paid subscription to The Warning with Steve Schmidt!

I really enjoyed this conversation with Ben, one of the breakout stars of independent media. I appreciate his optimism about the future that he expressed at the end—and I hope he’s right!

Thanks to everyone who tuned in!

Former Rep. Joe Walsh was a victorious Tea Party candidate in the Republican wave year of 2010 who later broke with the GOP over Trump. He has deep insights into something I wrote about recently: the tranformation of the libertarian Tea Party into the authoritarian MAGA movement. Joe was also a mentor to Charlie Kirk back in the slain activist’s formative years. We discussed all of this and much more earlier this evening. (We didn’t get to it, but Joe is also reportedly considering running for Congress again—as a Democrat.)

Thanks to everyone who tuned in and make sure you subscribe to Joe’s Substack.

Telos News is marking Constitution Day by offering a 20% discount on all tiers of paid subscriptions, including Founding Memberships, which allow you access to monthly virtual town halls, including one this Friday at 4 PM with Judge J. Michael Luttig.