Nate Silver Predicts: Democrats Take the House, Newsom Is Fading, President AOC?!

Summary

Statistician and Silver Bulletin author Nate Silver joins the Besties for a wide-ranging interview that opens on the Knicks’ championship run — Silver’s bets, why Mike Brown and Karl-Anthony Towns were the “deltas” that changed the team — before turning to the machinery of American elections. On California’s controversial late-surging mail-in ballots, Silver is blunt: there is no evidence of fraud, and the “blue shifts” people find suspicious are the predictable consequence of Democrats systematically voting later and by mail. But he pairs that with a harsh verdict on the state’s process, calling it “completely unacceptable” and a sign of institutional atrophy that the technological leader of the world counts votes slower than India, France, or the UK.

Silver then maps the internal civil war of the Democratic Party into three factions: the activist Left (Zohran Mamdani, AOC, Bernie Sanders), the market-oriented “abundance libs” (named for Ezra Klein) who obsess over governance efficiency, and the “resistance libs” who prioritize partisan fighting and establishment loyalty — Gavin Newsom’s base. He argues partisanship is the “gravity” of US politics, so entrenched that the outcome of 43 of 50 states can be predicted years out with 97% confidence. He flags a warning sign for Democrats: entrepreneurial immigrant groups, especially Hispanic and Asian American voters, are drifting away, while the “socialist” brand grows more popular with voters under 40 who carry heavy debt and lack an economic foothold.

On the elections themselves, Silver puts Democrats at 85-90% to take the House in 2026 — driven by an unpopular president at 38% approval, economic anxiety, and the long history of midterm backlash — while calling the Senate a genuine toss-up that could hinge on gas prices and the Iran conflict. Looking to 2028, he sees an electorate exhausted by geriatric leadership and hungry for generational change. Newsom, he reports, is actually fading in the polls (25% to 15% in primary surveys) as he tethers himself to Biden’s legacy, opening the door to fresher faces like Jon Ossoff — or, as David Sacks bets, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Highlights

”Partisanship is the gravity that dictates every election”

“Partisanship is the gravity that dictates every election in the US… 43 of the 50 states stayed, we could probably predict right now with 97% confidence who they’ll vote for in 2028. And it’s not because of rigging, it’s because polarization and partisanship are very powerful forces that we can’t seem to escape from.” — Nate Silver, 21:45

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”No evidence of fraud” — but a “very failed state” on counting

“I think there’s no evidence of fraud is the short summary version… So look, I think California’s system is completely unacceptable… I think it’s ridiculous and a very failed state that California takes longer than that.” — Nate Silver, 10:46

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The Democrats’ three-way civil war

“I think Democrats really have three factions as I’ve described them. Um, one is the left. The avatars might be Zohran, might be AOC, might be Bernie Sanders. All of whom, by the way, are quite effective politicians in their own way.” — Nate Silver, 26:13

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”To run the biggest country in the world as an 82-year-old seems kind of insane”

“I think it’s insane that we had a candidate who was trying to be president until he was 86, and the alternative is someone who’s trying to be president until he’s 82… to run the biggest country in the world as an 82-year-old, to me, seems kind of insane.” — Nate Silver, 39:00

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Newsom is fading in the polls

“He’s not. So we have an article up on Silver Bulletin which will publish shortly after we finish this podcast. Newsom has fallen in Democratic primary polls from around 25% to 15%. He’s fallen on Polymarket from like 33% to 22% or something.” — Nate Silver, 55:34

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”She’s my bet” — Sacks calls AOC for 2028

“She’s my bet. Yeah.” — David Sacks, 57:25

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Key Points

Prediction markets over sportsbooks (3:55) - Silver, a Polymarket consultant, says DraftKings and MGM limit sharp bettors while prediction markets don’t, so he’s gravitated there.
KAT and Mike Brown were the “deltas” (5:19) - Silver credits the Knicks’ turnaround to a defensive system that improved to the best in the NBA in the playoffs, plus KAT’s offensive revelation.
No evidence of fraud in California (10:46) - The mistake is assuming each ballot arrives independently; Democrats systematically vote later and by mail, producing predictable “blue shifts.”
California is a “failed state” on counting speed (21:00) - That the technological leader of the world can’t count votes fast is “a sign of atrophy of the efficacy of the system.”
The US counts slower than everyone (19:23) - France, the UK, Japan, and India know results within hours; recount thresholds almost never overturn margins above 0.05%.
Voter ID is reasonable (15:41) - Silver isn’t against voter ID, but says it doesn’t explain California; higher turnout no longer clearly benefits Democrats, who now overperform in low-turnout specials.
Partisanship is “gravity” (21:45) - 43 of 50 states are predictable years out with 97% confidence; polarization, not rigging, drives it.
The three Democratic factions (26:13) - The activist Left (Zohran, AOC, Bernie), the “abundance libs” (Ezra Klein), and the “resistance libs” who fight for the establishment.
Newsom is the “resistance lib” avatar (27:00) - His embrace of the Bidens signals to a base that believes Biden was railroaded and the media, not the candidate, lost 2024.
Change elections and incumbent fatigue (30:00) - Almost every election is now a change election; Silver compares the US to the UK cycling through prime ministers.
Trump approval at 38% (30:00) - Anger over Iran, gas prices, and fatigue with a “singular center star” make it an uphill battle for the GOP.
The socialism brand skews young (33:00) - Older voters associate socialism with communism’s failures; younger cohorts view the brand far more favorably.
Immigrant groups drifting from Democrats (33:00) - The biggest shifts are among Hispanic and Asian American voters — the most entrepreneurial, small-business-owning groups.
The winning 2028 playbook (36:30) - Anti-oligarch rhetoric plus moderation on culture-war issues, supporting small business, and appealing to young men who want control of their destiny.
The age-40 cut point on capitalism (42:09) - Roughly those who were in college around 9/11 and after came of age without feeling the American system worked for them.
Social media squishes politics into one dimension (46:29) - Twitter is an effective mechanism for forcing a correlated stance on taxes, abortion, and Gaza; any heterodoxy gets punished.
The death of the chronological feed (46:29) - Silver objects that following an account no longer guarantees you see its posts without feeding the algorithm another signal.
Midterm prediction: House 85-90% (49:57) - Prediction markets say ~80-85%; Silver thinks it’s higher given the headwinds facing the president’s party.
The Senate is a numbers game (51:32) - Democrats must win red-state seats; a risky Maine bet on Graham Platner (only two points ahead of Collins) could squander the map.
Gas prices and Iran are the wildcard (52:31) - A visible drop at the Chevron station could shift the House; the Iran quagmire’s length is the big uncertainty.
House and Senate are near-perfectly correlated (54:09) - The odds of Democrats winning the Senate but not the House are ~1%; a blue Senate implies the House and governorships fall too.
Newsom is collapsing (55:34) - Down from 25% to 15% in primary polls and 33% to 22% on Polymarket as Ossoff-type younger candidates rise.
AOC as the outsider (57:32) - Silver won’t discount her; young voters increasingly ask why they’d care about a “lame” party brand at all.

Mentions

Companies

Silver Bulletin / Substack (1:10) - Silver’s newsletter, plugged repeatedly; a “quick hundy” (actually $95) subscription.
Polymarket (3:55) - The prediction market Silver consults for and the show’s partner.
DraftKings & MGM (3:55) - Traditional sportsbooks that limit sharp bettors like Silver.
Kalshi (54:09) - Cited alongside Polymarket for pricing House/Senate correlation.
New York Times (44:22) - Silver’s old employer; the “page one meeting” as an emblem of centralized editorial control.
CBS / Paramount / CNN (44:08) - Legacy networks losing their grip on the message.
Twitter / X (46:29) - Discussed at length as a polarization engine and a degraded-but-unique news platform.
Northwest Registered Agent (0:32) - Sponsor read (business identity services).
Plaud (24:43) - Sponsor read (AI note-taking device).

Products & Technologies

Prediction markets (3:55) - Where hedge funds and sharp bettors increasingly concentrate.
Mail-in voting & ballot harvesting (13:35) - The core of the California verification debate.
Rank-choice voting (18:00) - Silver supports it but says the algorithm could resolve in seven minutes, not two weeks.
AI / AGI (33:00) - Credited with keeping the stock market healthy; a source of white-collar job anxiety and a midterm wildcard.
Claude / ChatGPT (45:00) - Models gravitate to consensus and are “less polarizing than BlueSky or Twitter.”
Algorithmic feed / For You Page (45:33) - TikTok, YouTube, and X going full-algorithm and its effect on filter bubbles.
Operation Warp Speed (21:45) - Cited in the context of the 2020 pandemic election.

People

Nithya Raman (10:17) - The LA candidate whose late mail-in surge sparked the fraud discussion.
Karen Bass (13:35) - The incumbent Raman overtook in late counting.
Gavin Newsom (21:45) - The “resistance lib” avatar whose national standing is fading.
AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) (26:13) - Left avatar and, at 36, a viable 2028 outsider; Sacks’ pick.
Zohran Mamdani (26:13) - The socialist NYC mayor Silver has “defended” as delivering functional governance.
Bernie Sanders (26:13) - Cited for building a movement from Vermont’s socialist wing.
Ezra Klein (27:00) - Namesake of the “abundance libs.”
Joe Biden (27:00) - “Obviously too old”; his 20% independent approval contrasted with Obama’s 57%.
Kamala Harris (30:00) - The “least unacceptable” triangulation candidate who couldn’t distance herself from Biden.
Jon Ossoff (39:00) - A young, purple-state-tested Democrat Silver flags as maybe the most electable.
Barack Obama (24:00) - The exception; a post-partisan communicator who bridged divides.
Eric Adams (39:41) - Praised for blocking-and-tackling competence and positivity in New York.
Graham Platner (15:41) - The Maine candidate Silver calls an unnecessary Senate risk against Susan Collins.
Rick Caruso (12:00) - A “very talented Republican” who still couldn’t win in machine-state California.
Elon Musk (46:29) - Credited/blamed for X’s algorithmic feed, though Silver notes it predates him.
Warren Buffett (39:00) - The rare older figure Silver says he might vote for despite the age critique.
Jalen Brunson & KAT (5:19) - Knicks stars in the opening basketball breakdown.

Surprising Quotes

“If you are—I don’t bet through Big Tony… I consult for Polymarket, I should say. So if you’re a sharp bettor… it becomes easier to just concentrate your activity on the prediction markets.” — Nate Silver, 3:55

“In a lot of these World Cup games sometimes, you know, sometimes you win on penalties, you know? I don’t think that any of the GOP nominees look to be particularly strong.” — Nate Silver, 30:00

“Sometimes I kind of joke, it seems to me like people like in their 40s through early 50s are like the only like sane people in the US, right?” — Nate Silver, 43:21

“Claude or ChatGPT is probably less polarizing than BlueSky or Twitter.” — Nate Silver, 45:00

“Young people in general like don’t understand like why the fuck would I care about like a party brand anyway? Like the Democratic Party brand is like a lame brand, as certainly the GOP is.” — Nate Silver, 57:32

Transcript

Nate Silver: 0:00 Partisanship is the gravity that dictates every election in the US, right? Like my job, don’t worry, I will get criticized if if we say oh whatever Gavin Newsom or AOC is a 55% favorite and they lose, but like but 43 of the 50 states stayed we could probably predict right now with 97% confidence who they’ll vote for in 2028 and it’s not because of rigging it’s because polarization and partisanship are very powerful forces that we can’t seem to to escape from.

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Jason Calacanis: 1:10 All right everyone, welcome back to the All-In interview program. We are delighted today to have the one, the only Nate Silver on the program. Gambler, statistician, podcaster, substacker. Go subscribe right now for a hundy, quick hundy at Silver Bulletin over at Substack. It’s a great substack. How you doing, brother? Nice to see you with your Knicks hat on.

Nate Silver: 1:34 I’m good. You know, I think I have like one more week to wear the Knicks hat. It’s a little bulky, not super podcast-video friendly, but you know, once in 53 years, once in my lifetime at least. You got to go for it.

Jason Calacanis: 1:58 Did you go to any of the playoff games?

Nate Silver: 1:59 I went to a bunch of the Philly series. I went to, I think as Jason did, I was in Philly for like the New York City takeover of Wells Fargo Arena or whatever the hell it’s called now, Infinity or something. I went to the Trump game, which was not the right game to go to, but I wanted to be there, I wanted to kind of cover it for my readers. I felt like it was a moment where New York might triumph out of this shit show that it was to get into the arena. It was—

Jason Calacanis: 2:18 You actually show up what, two hours early to get in? Three hours?

Nate Silver: 2:22 I am, I am not a particularly prompt person. No, I got— I’m not gonna miss it, so I got there at like 6:00, 6:05 for an 8:30 game. Lined up, you’re supposed to get in on Sixth Avenue and 33rd, and I was like on Sixth and 30th or 29th. It wasn’t the worst, it wasn’t the least efficient process I’ve ever seen. New York has a way of getting things done and you just kind of like follow people. And once you get in, I mean it was like literally TSA security, they like literally look at your wallet by hand and they take your lighters and and and your pens and your vapes and everything like that. And once you get in it was pretty normal. I did feel like the crowd was a little bit fatigued by the second half, which was a choppy second half where there were some questionable officiating— I actually—did you bet any of the games and, like, did you find the odds were off anywhere? I had the Knicks to win the Eastern Conference finals and then after they wrapped up their series, I bet them to win the finals against either OKC or San Antonio. So I actually—I—the ticket was not cheap. I paid—it would not cover Jason’s tickets, but I was able to cover my 200-level Bulls seat with the profits from those non-homer bets. I thought the Knicks were legitimately overlooked in the East and when you see a team that wins like that game against Atlanta where we’re up like literally like 77 to 22 at some point or something, as somebody who studies this stuff and builds models, to see that kind of signature significance for that level of dominance over whatever it was, four rounds of the playoffs, like, that’s—that’s real. That’s like not noise.

Jason Calacanis: 3:52 Yeah. Do you bet prediction markets or how do you bet?

Chamath Palihapitiya: 3:53 Big Tony.

Nate Silver: 3:55 If you are—I don’t bet through Big Tony. If you are someone who pursues—so I’ve been limited by DraftKings and MGM, a lot of the traditional retail sportsbooks limit you. The prediction markets do not. I consult for Polymarket, I should say. So if you’re a sharp bettor, I have other issues to believe with the prediction markets, but if you’re a sharp bettor, then it becomes easier to just concentrate your activity on the prediction markets where, you know, you have very smart people, you have hedge funds who are probably making bets in these markets more and more. But yeah, more and more, I don’t want to go through the rigamarole of like ‘can I even get my money down?’ So I’ve—I will admit I’ve gravitated toward—toward those, yes.

Jason Calacanis: 4:32 And when you look at this team, what do you attribute—because obviously during the season it was up and down. We were 15 games from the end of the season, people were like, ‘hey, we got to trade for Giannis, we got to get KAT out of here.’ But in January, February we had this incredible run where we had used KAT as the point center. And then we backed off of it and I was on Knicks Fan TV talking with like the real deep folks and there was speculation like ‘they figured it out and they’re like let’s hold this play,’ Mike Brown said ‘let’s hold KAT at the point from, you know, until the playoffs because we know it works so good.’ But what makes this team so special? Is it the wings, is it just Brunson’s grit, is it the three-point shooting across the team, selflessness, ball movement? There’s so many things people talk about here with this team.

Nate Silver: 5:19 I think it’s Mike Brown and KAT. I’m not saying they’re the most important components of the Knicks, I’m saying they’re the—those are the deltas where things changed the most. Um, on defense, a couple of things. Number one, you have—I love Jalen Brunson, might be my favorite player. Um, he’s not a terrific one-on-one defender. He gets a few steals, but like he’s undersized, the low center of gravity somehow doesn’t work on defense as well. But like every other defender on the Knicks, including Towns, which is a dissent—dissenting point of view, are—are at least average if not better. And so like kind of figuring out that system. By the way, when you rely on a defense that requires high effort and transition play, not playing your guys 37 minutes per game against— wins like the Charlotte Hornets in the regular season, probably a smart move. Uh,

Jason Calacanis: 6:05 and then yeah, this is why Tibbs had to go. When you look back on it, Tibbs going, who ground these guys into submission for three seasons and they were, yeah, it was like we were down one, two, or three starters for every round of the previous playoff season.

Nate Silver: 6:17 Yeah, I remember going, uh, to the Indiana, I guess game seven of the semifinals against Indiana in 2024, and you kind of see like OG was hobbling around out there. I guess Josh Hart kind of valiantly played and you’re like, these guys are like an infirmary ward. Um, and especially because you’re relying on smart, high-effort defense. So that part on defense and lowkey, they became like a much better defensive team in the second half, right? Um, I remember also going this year to the Knicks Nets game in December, January, not the most fun part of the year in New York, where, um, where they had lost like seven out of nine games and there was all the talk about like Cat being traded and I just wanted to go and check out the vibe. I actually bet on the Knicks to win by like 15 points or more because I thought this is either going to be like the beginning of the end for this regime, or it’s going to be a turnaround game against, you know, a team that’s trying to lose, frankly, across town, rivals was trying to lose. And the fans were like pretty tolerant of Cat. They wound up winning by like 60 points or something totally absurd, or held the Nets to one of the lowest scores in the modern NBA era. And like that team from there, by the way, they won the NBA Cup.

Jason Calacanis: 7:36 Yep.

Nate Silver: 7:37 But like in the second half they had something like the fifth best defense in the NBA, they had the best defense in the NBA in the playoffs, maybe not sustainable, but like, but that on defense. And then Cat presenting, look, again, like I love Jalen Brunson. The offense can be a little bit predictable, maybe in clutch possessions.

Jason Calacanis: 8:08 Yeah, right.

Nate Silver: 8:09 And it’s amazing that Jalen Brunson, I mean he shot like 53 percent between 16 and 22 feet, which is kind of insane given that you know it’s coming. It’s like Mariano Rivera’s like cut fastball, you know it’s coming. Um, just to have more optionality and variety in the offense and to have more ball movement. So to have those two spontaneous things happen, the coaching system that improved on defense plus like Cat having a revelation, like I think he’s like one of the

Jason Calacanis: 8:18 15 best players in the league.

Nate Silver: 8:20 For sure. Yeah. He’s a really good player. And so those two things combined it, you know, a little bit unusual for a veteran team granted, but spontaneous improvement on both sides of the ball. Um, coupled with the Knicks by the way, have the most playoff games out of any team in the past four years. More than Boston, more than OKC, a lot more than San Antonio. There is empirical evidence that playoff experience does matter.

Jason Calacanis: 8:44 Yep.

Nate Silver: 8:45 Uh, this comes up in, in poker too. If you are in your first big tournament and maybe you’re rated the GPI number one player and you’re playing in the main event of the World Series of Poker, nerves are a thing. Even in golf, nerves are a huge thing. It’s a physical ordeal almost, and like

Chamath Palihapitiya: 9:00 You’re operating on a different operating system and to have had experience in a lot of high-stakes games, not all of which were wins, but like that really does—it really does help and and Wemby…

Jason Calacanis: 9:11 Those two comebacks from the Pacers game… from the Boston games where we just broke their backs last year. That, I think, made it obvious to anybody. When we’re down 10-15 points, that’s not a lead against the Knicks. The Knicks are going to come back. We’re just that good. Um, and it’s just fantastic now that the entire league has to plan, how do they beat the Knicks? We spent the last like five or six years, how do we get through Boston? How do we get through this team? Now the entire league has to do that. All right. We should get started here. We got so much to talk about and obviously you specialize in elections. We have the midterms coming up. We’re going to talk about 2028 post-Trump world, all of that. But we just concluded an election, an election which, I don’t want to speak for Dave, but you may have seen or heard the podcast where he was like, hey, this is not illegal, but it doesn’t feel like a real election. Take us through what happened in your estimation in California with Spencer Pratt, fraud, just mail-in ballots.

Chamath Palihapitiya: 10:10 That was just the LA election. Just the LA election, Jason, just to be clear.

Jason Calacanis: 10:15 Yeah, just the LA election.

David Sacks: 10:16 Yeah, just the LA election, but go ahead and build on it, yeah. The question that I wanted to talk to you about, Nate, is when you look at the in-person return data and then you look at the early mail-in data and then the late mail-in data, where suddenly Nithya Raman has this massive surge and there’s this huge statistical difference as the ballots start to get counted in the days and weeks that follow she wins, it seems very improbable that there’s a true statistical difference in the population that might be, you know, in-person, mail-in early and mail-in late. And I just wanted to get your read on that.

Nate Silver: 10:46 So I’d say I think there’s no evidence of fraud is the short summary version. The mistake that can be made is to assume that each ballot like comes in independently when there are systematic differences between groups and when they tend to cast their ballots. So Democrats have long been encouraged to vote by mail. Actually, it used to be more of a Republican thing, but like under Trump who discouraged mail voting in 2016 and 2020 and 2024 to some extent, like that shifted. So look, I think California’s system is completely unacceptable. I’ve done some consulting work on like the Indian election where you like literally have polling stations in the Himalayas and they actually stagger their elections, but once election day happens, they count their vote within 24 hours. I think it’s ridiculous and a very failed state that California takes longer than that. But if you have one party who systematically tends to vote later, also Democrats in both the LA race and the governorship had more of a choice to make. You know, it wasn’t clear, you know, for a while it looked like Eric Swalwell was gonna win and then Katie Porter and then and then and then, you know, Becerra finally emerges, Beccera. Like look, my…

David Friedberg: 12:00 And, um, I’m from LA. I spent a lot of time in California, and I am all on board with the criticisms of how the state is being governed, at least in parts of the state. I was in San Diego for New Year’s, and beautiful time of year to be in San Diego, and like you can like literally run on the sand on the beach and everyone’s kind of like hot and you have good fish tacos and everything else. Like that I kind of understood the California of like my youth or my dad’s youth or whatever else and understand the appeal of the state, and I understand why LA and SF, I think LA in particular kind of never really recovered from the pandemic. We can talk about that. At the same time, it’s a very partisan state. We have very partisan Democrats like Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom who emerged from the state. We saw in the redistricting referendum, I guess it was in 2025, how like you can debate whether it’s a good idea or not, but like that traced with the Democratic margin in presidential years very strongly, even though for many years Democrats had been the party against gerrymandering. It’s a capital D Democratic state. It’s not an idiosyncratic blue state like Maine or something. And like so like to expect even a very talented Republican like Rick Caruso to win the mayorship… I mean, even in New York we have a bit more heterogeneity historically. We’ve had a, you know, socialist mayor. We’ve had Michael Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani in recent years too. California is not that way. It’s much more of a machine state.

Jason Calacanis: 13:35 But when you look at that statistical difference, I get the idea that Democrats mail in ballots and they show up late. But when you look at the overwhelming votes for Nithya Raman over Karen Bass that happened late in the counting cycle versus early in the counting cycle and the statistical kind of shift over that happened, and you look at the difference between in-person and mail-in being so statistically different, and I get your point about Republicans are more likely to go in person and maybe you can make that leap there, but the difference in the counting that happened over time, the ratio just seemed so different between Raman and Bass. And then people bring up this idea of ballot harvesting where there were homeless people from Skid Row and the number of ballots that came from that particular region in the late mail-in was kind of concentrated for Nithya Raman. Do you get a sense that that actually is a true representation of individual voters and how they individually voted in that election?

Nate Silver: 14:27 I think the California vote count is an accurate tally of the votes that were cast. I mean, yeah, look, and were those cast—

Jason Calacanis: 14:34 Or were they cast by the individuals that were supposed to cast them? Right? This is one of the theories is that there’s ballots that are getting filled out en masse in these ballot harvesting efforts, or people walk around and they say, hey, fill out this ballot for this person and here’s a free lunch, or I don’t know what’s going on, but like there’s all these videos, I don’t know if they’re true or not.

Nate Silver: 14:53 I think there is propaganda around this. I also think that, like, mail-in voting provides some verification challenges in— different ways, uh, you know, I don’t inherently see anything that wrong with a system where you go to a physical place to vote, and you sign, um, you sign your voter log and, and, whether you show ID or not. And then if you have like a disability or you’re really in bad straits or you’re traveling in Albania or something, then you can mail it in.

Jason Calacanis: 15:19 That makes sense. But I want to ask, I just want to ask you the empirical question. What is the difference in states or districts or cities that don’t have voter ID and those that do? Politically, like, is that basically create a huge over-weighting for Democrats? Can you just help us understand the politics behind this from an empirical perspective, not putting on a spin hat or anything?

Nate Silver: 15:41 So the theory used to be that Democrats benefit from higher turnout by kind of any means at all. And that was an era when Democrats tended to dominate among non-college-educated voters, whereas Republicans were like the, the, you know, Country Club, Kiwanis Club people who like show up on the first day of voting. That has really shifted. Look where Democrats have really, really overperformed. It’s in special elections, it’s in midterms as opposed to high-turnout races like, like when Trump’s been on the ballot. Um, and so like, I think if Trump, like look, I think voter ID would be pretty reasonable. I’m not against voter ID. You show your ID to do, you know, if you show ID even at mid-40s to get into a bar, you can probably show it to vote. Um, but like at the same time, um, I don’t think that explains what we saw in California. I think it’s a system that is much too slow. We have different tranches of ballots that are counted differently and where younger people that might be more progressive tend to vote later and or by mail. And again, it’s not like this happened in Alabama or something. The prior on Pratt advancing probably would be pretty low potentially. And I wish that people were, were less partisan. I, you know, I have been, um, critical on, on the newsletter, Silver Bulletin, about Graham Platner, for example, um, because I think he’s somebody who has not proven a reliable figure, so to speak. And I was critical of, of Joe Biden and I’m not even registered as a Democrat by the way, despite what people assume. Um, but if you’re going to have five different ways to vote, and I say this someone with experience like actually trying to build election night models and being on national TV on election nights, these blue shifts or red shifts are somewhat predictable and are going to be an inevitable consequence of, of having different mechanisms to vote where you have like different queues in a line, right? If you’re at at MSG and you have like a VIP line, the cohort that arrives to the VIP line’s going to be different than the one that arrives through like the main gates on, on 7th Avenue, oh, whatever. And I think the system should be simplified. By the way, also things like rank choice voting, which I again, as an election wonk, I support giving voters more choice. You shouldn’t need like— Maine or New York City take an extra two weeks to count rank-choice voting where I could kludge code a rank-choice voting algorithm that would resolve itself in seven minutes, even with 100 million votes in Maine or half a million or whatever it was in the current case.

Jason Calacanis: 18:18 Is the core issue, Nate, that we have the appearance of impropriety and we have a highly politicized system? I don’t want to lead the witness here too much, but we do find isolating cases like this woman, Annika Brindley-Brown Armstrong. She was paying people three bucks or giving them cigarettes to register them. You have these on-the-margin fraudulent-looking behaviors. And then if it takes this long, that gives another appearance of impropriety. But I keep bringing up the Heritage Foundation and I’m sure you’ve looked at their data. They have a lot of people trying to figure out where fraud exists, investigating it, and it’s de minimis. It’s a couple of thousands of cases they can find. So even if you extrapolated them 10x or 20x, pick your multiple, it would never swing a major election. In fact, the number of elections that have been swung based on what they told me is like the most local, smallest election where there’s tens of thousands of votes or a thousand votes. So is that the issue that we’re seeing here, this collection of appearances of impropriety?

Nate Silver: 19:23 Yeah, look, the American election system is very decentralized, which now as kind of like a old-school liberal in some ways who I’m kind of against centralized power, I think is quite brilliant in some respects. But yeah, the scale, there is certainly, there are certainly cases of fraud. When Al Franken won, what was it, 2006, that came down to like a recount of like 200 votes. We’re never going to know that with any degree of certainty. There is like a margin of error. But in practice, and we know this too when you do have recounts and I’ve studied this a lot, you have an 0.5% recount threshold in most states. Almost never have you had a margin larger than 0.05% or so overturned. The errors can also cancel out. Again, you know, the notion that someone can vote without physically being like the ward of their ballot, I understand why that bothers people and I think California has been complacent about this and I think perception does matter. And I think you can, there’s a kind of certain arrogance, I guess is the term that comes to mind, about saying, well, we want everyone to vote and so we’re just going to do things our way and it takes a long time because we’re like taking time to verify things. Again, you know, having studied elections all around the world, it’s very unusual. Most countries would count much, much faster than the US, partly because we have an Electoral College system, it’s decentralized, but like in most elections in France or the UK, where they keep having elections or wherever else, or Japan or India even, you know the result of the vote within a few hours. and the fact that the United States, the technological leader of the world, and the supposed like beacon of democracy can’t do that, I think is is a sign of atrophy of of the efficacy of the system.

Jason Calacanis: 21:11 Or is it by design Nate? Let me ask you a question, if voter ID laws don’t change and mail-in ballot laws don’t change and the system doesn’t change, is there a chance, do you think from the data you’ve seen, for a Republican governor to be elected again in California or for Republicans to win more seats in the House or have a shot at winning a Senate seat in California? I mean, fundamentally does this system not get set up in such a way that it creates an irreversible model for Democrat establishment to maintain its control over elected seats in the state?

Nate Silver: 21:45 I mean, Democrats have lost plenty of elections recently, but not in California. Partisanship is the gravity that dictates every election in the US, right? Like my job, don’t worry, I will get criticized if if we say oh whatever, Gavin Newsom or AOC is a 55% favorite and they lose, but like but 43 of the 50 states stayed, we could probably predict right now with 97% confidence who they’ll vote for in 2028. And it’s not because of rigging, it’s because polarization and partisanship are very powerful forces that we can’t seem to to escape from. You know, again, I would love, um, you see a little bit of this in New England actually, right? You see like a Charlie Baker or is it Phil Scott in Vermont, right? You see a little bit of like cross-partisanship in New England, you see even in the South like Beshear in Kentucky is a moderate but Democrat governor. Um, for some reason you don’t see it as much in California. I don’t know why, California’s like always been like the laboratory of weird and eccentric political ideas but it’s come it’s become a machine state. Maybe because it’s so large that voters can’t kind of touch the candidates up close and don’t have a lot of like directly relatable experience. Um, maybe California’s just kind of too large in general, but I look I am very concerned about polarization and partisanship. I think it leads to lower quality of governance. I think it’s exacerbated by gerrymandering, this gerrymandering kind of war to the bottom. Um, and Democrats have paid the price where like the triangulation you pick the least worst nominee works perfectly fine in blue states, they’re going to win the general election. Um, it hasn’t given Democrats very effective general election nominees, right? Between um, you know, I consider like you know they’re one out of the last four, I consider Biden to have lost in 2024 before Harris lost instead. Um, you know, the one election they did win was during a once-in-a-century pandemic that, although I had my critiques of liberal handling of COVID, was kind of objectively handled well, I don’t know, you can talk about Operation Warp Speed, I understand why voters were very unhappy with 2020 the 2020 version of Trump and the greatest economic disruptions since the 1930s. Um, so they kind of won the gimme. They hadn’t won the close elections recently except for Obama, who conspicuously at least kind of made rhetoric to try to bridge a divide between the parties. Um, you know, Obama still has a—I looked at this today—a 57% approval rating post-facto with—with independents. Biden is at 20%. Um, and like, look, I think a lot of Democrats and Republicans, certainly were—maybe even more so Republicans, frankly, under Trump—feel as though you don’t even have to try to turn out the other side or persuade people. It’s just a numbers game, and in California, if you’re a Democrat, you win the numbers game.

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Jason Calacanis: 25:09 I think we want to really get to 2026 and 2028 and talk about what you were alluding to, which is the polarization and how these parties have changed. The Republicans used to be, you know, this country club group, elites, rich people, business owners. Now they’re the populist party. Then the other side, which used to be the working man and the working woman’s party, they’ve become this liberal, weird socialist party. And that seems to be playing—they’re both populist. What’s going on with the vibes, I guess, between these two parties? And how do you look at them? Because it does feel like inside of each of those parties you have two sub-parties. So you really have some sort of 4x4 matrix here, or 2x2 matrix with four different groups. How is that going to play out in 2026, which still feels like the anti-Trump vote, like ‘Okay, I’m not happy about Trump’? But 2028, there’s—Trump’s not going to run a third time in all likelihood. So let’s take those two buckets, as well as the vibes and these parties fracturing a bit.

Nate Silver: 26:13 Yeah, I think Democrats really have three factions as I’ve described them. Um, one is the left. The avatars might be Zohran, might be AOC, might be Bernie Sanders. All of whom, by the way, are quite effective politicians in their own way. I mean, Zohran understood how to, like, be a Knicks cheerleader, for example.

David Friedberg: 26:35 Oh my god, yeah. That speech was, like, almost perfect.

Jason Calacanis: 26:39 Whoever wrote it for him is a Knicks fan.

Nate Silver: 26:43 But look, I’ll be honest, I—I didn’t vote for him. But like, I think finding anyone who’s, like, trying to, like, bridge gaps and expand a tent, even if it’s from a direction that I might not agree with, I find that, like, somewhat appealing, I suppose. You know, AOC, you can take her or leave. She has become a more effective tactical politician. You know, Bernie, what he’s built with, um, with being a freaking old guy from Vermont, the socialist mayor of Burlington, Vermont, coming within, not a hair’s breadth, but coming, you know, quite close and beating Clinton in 20 states in 2016 or whatever was quite impressive. But like that’s one constituency and historically the left has not had a lot of big wins outside of the bluest states. On the other side there are the abundance libs kind of named after Ezra Klein, right? They are more pro-free market, they sometimes deny that they’re centrist, I think they’re pretty centrist. They are the ones who are very concerned with California as a case study of poor governance. And whenever you think about politics at the national level, um, generally speaking, it’s the purple states, sometimes the red states where things are more- are more functional. Where there’s more housing, where when you get out of the airport to catch an Uber, there’s not some convoluted system where you have to wait 20 minutes in line to go to some shuttle like in LAX or whatever else, right? Um, where there’s population growth. I mean, you want to talk about like hard data, population data in the US and jobs data is pretty good and those are places where people have moved to. And the abundance libs are critical of Democratic governance and critical of- of culture war issues on policing and trans rights. And then you have what I call the resistance lib faction. They’re the ones who say they’re really fed up with the Democratic establishment but are still often very partisan and often very like cheerleading for the blue team. They’re the ones who thought that Joe Biden was railroaded out of the 2024 race, for example. They’re really Gavin Newsom’s constituency. Um, why is Gavin Newsom going out of his way to support and endorse kind of the Bidens when Biden, even among Democrats, is not all that popular anymore? Everyone else wants to move on. Well, it’s because it signals to like the resistance libs that like I have your back, I’m a fighter. The reason why we didn’t win in 2024 is because the media was unfair to Biden and/or because Kamala Harris was a black woman. So pick a white guy who will fight for you and tweet in all caps and you’ll win.

Jason Calacanis: 29:11 So it’s kind of like ride or die, we’re going to just our team, our team, our team’s going to win, it doesn’t matter, we never apologize, kind of the Trump playbook, never apologize, go on the attack. Seems to be what Gavin’s doing, right?

Nate Silver: 29:23 Absolutely, and he had some- some proof of concept. I mean, the redistricting thing was a genuinely smart tactical move. Democrats are going to wind up losing seats, but like without California they probably lose even more and so he did skate where the puck was going there, instead of the party’s like usual risk aversion that I’ve critiqued before. Um, but at the same time, the- the triangulating spirit of like let’s pick Kamala Harris because she’s- she’s like the least unacceptable candidate or Hillary or- or John Kerry if you want to go back to 2004, um, the establishment doesn’t seem to have an under… Setting the fact that like almost every election now, Obama in 2012 was I guess the exception, almost every election now is a change election. We might ping-pong back and forth for many cycles. Like I think Democrats are slight favorites to win in 2028. It wouldn’t shock me if AOC or Newsom or Shapiro or Ossoff or whomever wins. If they’re underdogs again in 2032. Look what’s happening in the UK where I mean it’s kind of become like a running joke but we’re going to be through like what like six prime ministers in nine years or something and they’re probably the US’s like closest comp. Um, it’s not a good time to be a defender of the status quo and I do think candidates like Kamala Harris who is unable to distance herself kind of literally unable or unwilling to distance herself from from Biden or Newsom who’s kind of defending that legacy in the same way, like to me that seems like a a failed strategy but like in a lot of these World Cup games sometimes, you know, sometimes you win on penalties, you know? I I don’t think that any of the GOP nominees look to be particularly strong. Donald Trump in our approval ratings now is down to 38%. People are upset about Iran, they’re upset about gas prices, they’re upset about just fatigue of having a a singular center star of politics over the past, you know, Trump kind of is like it’s fatiguing a little bit and so like it’s an uphill battle for the GOP. Democrats might do their best to to give Republicans a fighting chance despite that.

Jason Calacanis: 31:29 So just to extrapolate from that like the point about needing change, driving change on the progressive side, we are seeing socialists getting elected as mayor, socialists starting to rise at the state level and many of these candidates that you’ve mentioned are self-declared socialists at the national level. We may potentially have a democratic socialist as president 2028 based on what you’re saying. Is that ultimately where this goes, where the populist movements drive the left further left and everyone in that party now seems to be jumping on this bandwagon proclaiming socialist principles as the only way to solve inequity and unfairness in this country and, you know, kind of jumping on what we were from empirical kind of history shown doesn’t work as a governing system, as an economic system, but suddenly everyone’s kind of been swept away by it and seems to think it’s it’s the only way forward? Does that kind of the output of the conditions that you’re describing that the left, the Democrats basically become a socialist party and they embrace socialism fully and full-throated?

Nate Silver: 32:35 I think there are huge generational divides where, you know, so I grew up, I’m 44. Um, so I still remember the kind of not last vestiges but like I still remember the Cold War, I still remember the Berlin Wall falling right. So for me the connotations are of socialism are close adjacent to communism are a long history of failure… of economic development in countries that adopted that system. I think people who are a little bit older don’t realize that like the socialism brand is much more popular among younger demographics. By the same token, America is still a supremely capitalist country, you know, if not for, and again, I in my book I have lots of critiques of the tech sector, we still are attracting the best and brightest young talent from all over the world. You know, I personally think the AI capital boom, whatever becomes of it, is responsible for keeping our economy, at least the stock market, in relatively good shape. Um, and you know, also things like where have Democrats lost support? Well, actually the biggest differences are concentrated among Hispanic and to some extent Asian American voters. You know, who do you think are the most likely people to own small businesses in the US? It’s a cliche, but 100% true that like recent immigrant groups are very entrepreneurial. It’s one thing that I believe makes the United States great and one thing that makes me very pro-immigration. Um, but you have seen shifts in those groups, in the most entrepreneurial groups, away from Democrats.

David Sacks: 34:08 Yeah, because I mean, they they all escaped socialist countries and socialist backgrounds and the economic mobility that’s afforded by free markets and capitalism and the degree of true liberalism we provide in this country is what’s given folks opportunities that don’t exist elsewhere. But the second and third generation of the American middle class are probably, you know, more likely, as you point out, to kind of be convinced of the benefits of socialism.

Jason Calacanis: 34:36 This isn’t your wheelhouse Nate, but if you were hired to give a playbook to either party for 2028, what would be in that playbook? What would you tell them is the right platform for this moment in time, a post-Trump era and with socialism, wealth disparity, healthcare, there’s a group of issues here that keep coming up, the support of Israel, foreign wars. What’s the perfect platform for either party, an independent or left-leaning or right-leaning, what are on going to be on the top of Americans’ minds if you can look that far out?

Nate Silver: 35:12 Yeah, look, I by most definitions am an elite as are you guys if you can afford tickets to game three of the first NBA Finals game in New York in whatever 25 years then you’re probably an elite. And most elites like me say they’re, you know, socially liberal, economically moderate, I use the term liberal meaning the way liberal is used in Europe meaning some role for the state but pro-market in general and that’s probably my view. Um, I’m not sure that view is actually an electoral winner as much, right? Um, the most neglected voters in the US are actually people who are culturally a little bit more conservative but like economically more progressive potentially but not quite in the same way that you Yeah from like a- an AOC, they support small business, they are wary of conglomerations of power. Maybe I’m painting that with with too generous a brush, but like I do think that like when you have the world’s first trillionaire, when people have a lot of anxiety, maybe the anxiety’s not the right shape of anxiety, but understandable anxiety about AI, when you have AI leaders saying things like it’s going to displace all these white collar jobs. I look I think electorally, I’m not saying morally or righteously whatever else, right? I think combining a little bit of the right kind of anti-oligarch rhetoric um with moderation on some of the issues um you know on the woke stuff, I get that that term already feels like it’s becoming outdated. Um but like still supporting small business, especially for men, right? Young men still want to feel as though they control their own destiny. A lot of them feel like they don’t do that anymore. But I don’t think they necessarily want like all that much hand holding. But no, it’s a difficult thing to to triangulate and the US is not alone in having a lot of resistance and dissatisfaction with with the status quo. You know, I mean, look this is part of why and I’m sure about 2% of your audience will be sympathetic to this, why I have like been more defending of Zohran Mamdani living in New York is because like— He’s at least getting the ins and outs, we’ll see what happens in after four years, of like New York being like a a basically functional city, right? We have really nice new airports, it’s not Zohran’s doing, that’s Cuomo and a hell of a lot of money spent. But like our crime is like relatively low compared to to California. I used to live right near Penn Station, Madison Square Garden, not the nicest neighborhood, not the nicest block, but like I never walked around feeling unsafe there, when I visit SF um then you have to be more careful, right? And so I think like combining functional performance in government with whatever message you want is part of it. I think maybe even like having like a little bit more like optimism too. I’m I’m kind of always a fan of like zigging where other people zag. Obama presented a more optimistic take about like kind of like the American spirit, right? You know, look, I see um all the enthusiasm around the World Cup and the Knicks, I don’t want to sound like clichéd, but you know tonight after we tape, this is taping on a Monday night New York time, right? I can like wander around the streets of New York and there’ll be some like Norwegian bar that has the Norway game on and like that does make America great and like rediscovering those values. I don’t know, I mean maybe somebody like a you know I think maybe the most electable Democrat might be somebody like a a John Ossoff who is who is younger, who is pretty progressive if you look at his voting record but like— But isn’t like a brawler in quite the same way that Newsom is trying to be? I mean, the generational part is a lot of this. You know, I think it’s insane that we had a candidate who was trying to be president until he was 86, and the alternative is someone who’s trying to be president until he’s 82. Like, I don’t—you don’t see very many—Warren Buffett, fine, if Warren Buffett ran for president, maybe I’d vote for him, right? But like, you don’t see very many leaders of the largest countries in the world, you don’t see very many CEOs or leaders otherwise. Like, you know, I very much value the contribution of my older friends, right? But like, to run the biggest country in the world as an 82-year-old, to me, seems kind of insane.

Jason Calacanis: 39:41 And so there’s some basic level of competence that Adams is showing in New York. He’s positive, he’s fixing potholes, he’s making it, you know, a celebration of whatever the sports teams are, he’s fixing garbage. Like, there are some basic things that New Yorkers very much appreciate in quality of life, and that’s not something you expect from a Democrat or a socialist. Um, and those kind of like blocking and tackling and the high level of engagement, which Trump you mentioned kind of burns people out with that high level of engagement—seems like Adams comes just under that. He’s a little more positive, he doesn’t use like the toxicity that much, but he’s—he’s engaging, right? And that seems to be working in New York and with the voter base, no?

Nate Silver: 40:25 I—he’s pretty popular here so far. And again, New York is a—New York is a capitalist city, I think. I think it’s different than somewhere like California. It’s not kind of as West Coast freshwater progressive. New York is a pragmatic place that people from all over the world migrate to. It’s a place where there’s a lot of wealth all around you. It’s also a place that despite seeming like a chaotic shit show at times, I mean, it’s easy to be optimistic about New York in mid-June when we have like the most beautiful weather of the year and everyone’s coming to visit and everything else. But like, New York is a success story in a way that I think California has become less of one, maybe.

David Friedberg: 41:04 Sorry, let me just ask you a question on this capitalism. Have you seen data that underscores this mainline that everyone’s talking about, that the youth are kind of disillusioned by capitalism and don’t believe in capitalism? I mean, to see this happen in a city like New York, to your point, a city that is a bastion of capitalism and progress and opportunity for people—for people to put in place a candidate as mayor that denounces the capitalist as a system and talks about collectivism just seems to indicate that maybe there’s a real movement with the youth. I mean, one of the statistics I always quote to people is I think 45 million people graduated college in the last decade in the United States, that have—all of them, or a large percentage of them, I should say, have a pretty significant debt burden that they feel is going to be very hard to get out of. And I would argue that that’s a function of the federal student loan program and its underwriting processes and it really condemned people to a…

Jason Calacanis: 42:00 voice that that is going to be very hard to grow your way out of, but what does the data tell you about capitalism and what that says about the next cycle here?

Nate Silver: 42:09 Yeah, where the cut point is is probably around age 40, I’d say. Obviously it kind of ages by a year every year and like, you know, we saw, I saw before the New York mayoral race last year, people who were able to make incredibly accurate, almost block-by-block, neighborhood-by-neighborhood projections based on where Zorn would be good versus Cuomo, just based on knowing the city and where younger people, younger, more progressive people live, I would say. You know, I think part of it might have to do with economic anxiety for sure. I think it’s also your experience like growing up and exactly when you kind of came of age, right? Again, I grew up in like, um, I guess the first election I was old enough to vote in was Clinton in ‘96, this is like the triumph of the West and capitalism. You had a very robust economy in the 1990s. You had a lot of growth. Um, and by the time you get to your, you know, when the Great Recession hit, you know, I already had by a year, right, I already had a job, I already had a foothold. I think the people kind of like born, if you were in college when September 11th happened, like that might be kind of the cut point roughly speaking. It doesn’t cut quite cleanly from Gen X through Millennials, it goes a few years into the Millennials. Um, but like sometimes I kind of joke, it seems to me like people like in their 40s through early 50s are like the only like sane people in the US, right? That kind of like second half of, of Gen X in particular, although we’ve never had a Gen X president, Kamala Harris would have been a Boomer too technically speaking. Um, but they’re the people who are like, okay, we grew up and we worked hard and we still felt like more or less the American system worked for us. I think people wrongly or rightly that are half a generation younger don’t have that experience. Also we should talk about, like as much as I think that in certain ways the media is an overrated storyline, how people consume their news. Um, you know, you look now at what’s happening at CBS and Paramount or CNN or whatever else, right? We had an era where you had very centralized news delivery systems under TV and radio. I know I sound like I’m dating myself, the internet’s been around for, for a long time, but when you have three or four major networks that have a huge amount of editorial control over the message, and when I used to work at the New York Times, right? You know, when I first got there, you would still have like the page one meeting every day where it’s like, ‘we are the people, the editors of the New York Times, like deciding like what is news and what’s not’. And now it’s become very decentralized. Obviously social media plays a role in that too. I think the evidence is pretty decent that like phones and social media affect youth satisfaction a lot. You know, you also have a culture I think …think, among liberals where, where it’s like no longer a stoic culture, it’s a culture where maybe you might express your grievance. Ironically, maybe AI will change this a little bit. There’s some initial evidence that like the models actually gravitate toward consensus views, expert opinion, sometimes a jaded or hallucinated version of what the consensus really is. But you know, Claude or ChatGPT is probably less polarizing than BlueSky or Twitter.

Jason Calacanis: 45:33 Let’s talk about social media for a second. It used to be a paradigm of you follow people, you build your filter, you have your list, you spend a lot of time curating that. And then TikTok comes out with their For You Page, FYP, YouTube goes full algorithm, and now X has gone basically full algorithm. You can follow whoever you like, but your follower count is not your viewer count and engagement count. And obviously, after Elon took over Twitter, libs, a lot of celebrities decided to leave, business people stayed, lots of anonymous accounts. It’s the free speech platform of all free speech platforms, it’s chaotic. But what impact, just in that very tiny nuance of followers to algorithm, has changed and impacted politics? Because it feels like the filter bubble is becoming incredibly pronounced. I mean, you give two or three things a like, and now that’s the rest of your entire day.

Nate Silver: 46:29 Yeah, look, for me, I don’t think a person should have a correlated stance on taxes and abortion and Gaza and, you know, the free market and whatever else. Partisanship is a very powerful force to squish this very complicated array of political issues we have in the United States into just one dimension: blue versus red, or left versus right. And social media, Twitter in particular, I think is a very effective mechanism for that. And I get totally yelled at for any bit of heterodoxy, like in particular like saying, ‘Biden is obviously too old. Democrats, you’re going to lose unless you replace him.’ Like that, even though it’s a stance that like literally 80% of voters agree with, will make you seem like a heretic on Twitter. I’ve been critical, by the way, of parts of what Elon has done, although some of the things pre-date him, like the algorithmic feed wasn’t purely invented by Elon, it was improved or perfected or worsened depending on your point of view by the current regime. You know, I do think it’s a problem that like, like if I choose to follow an account, you know, Jason of the New York Times or whatever else or Nick’s account, I want to see their tweets without having to give the algorithm an additional signal. Like that part bothers me. I don’t like the depreciation Twitter debases its external links.

Jason Calacanis: 47:44 That’s incredibly frustrating. Like you literally have to favorite or like things in order to keep them in your feed. And I told the Twitter team, you should have a little button on the follow: show me every post from this person. Like if I want to get my ski mountains reports or I want my…

David Sacks: 48:00 Fan TV, I want every single post and there’s no way to do that except like every post and then your feed just goes off the rails.

Nate Silver: 48:08 Yeah, I mean it’s very… look, I actually think the for you algorithm is pretty decent for what it is. You do have to train it. Like, you know, for a while I got a bunch of, like, fight videos because they’re compelling. You see it, you’re like, ‘a fight of teenagers’ and like, ‘oh, I spent eight minutes, seconds watching this’ or whatever else.

David Sacks: 48:24 Totally.

Nate Silver: 48:26 If you click ‘don’t show me this anymore,’ it is pretty responsive and it is pretty good. Like the algorithm knows right now I just want to read tweets about the World Cup and is Giannis getting traded, right? And maybe a little bit about the New York and California elections. Um, but I wish there were like, you know, I don’t like any algorithm that like presumes it’s like smarter than the user and if I, if I log in or if I subscribe to somebody and I want to see their tweets and I haven’t muted them, then show me their tweets. You can mix in things that you think I’ll like. Frequently algorithmic or the time, the chronological feed is also annoying to me, right? Like I, um, if I’m watching the World Cup and there’s a tweet about a match from six hours ago for some like, ‘oh my God, amazing,’ right? I’m like, ‘what just happened?’ and like, it’s not surfacing things in quite the right order. Um, look, I think a lot of companies kind of make the mistake of… Twitter was, I’m not sure if Twitter was ever going to be like a hugely profitable company. It was a very unique resource for following the news if, like I am and like you guys are,

Jason Calacanis: 49:15 Me?

Nate Silver: 49:16 At least you Jason are a like total news addict.

Jason Calacanis: 49:21 Yeah.

Nate Silver: 49:22 Like it was a very unique platform and I wish that functionality had been preserved. Again to be fair, this started before Elon although has been continued since.

Jason Calacanis: 49:45 Yep. Let’s wrap on 2028 and in particular Gavin Newsom and…

David Friedberg: 49:51 Oh no, predictions for the midterms! Predictions for the midterms!

Jason Calacanis: 49:53 Okay, lightning round. Prediction for the midterms. House and Senate predictions, what does the data tell us right now?

Nate Silver: 49:57 So we’ll have a model out within a few weeks, but it’ll be a little bit delayed by the World Cup and other redistricting stuff. Prediction markets say Democrats are around I think 80 or 85 percent to take the House and 40 or 45 percent to take the Senate. Those both seem pretty reasonable to me. I think if anything it’s a little bit low on the House. I think it might be more like 85 or 90. My models surprise me sometimes, but like, look, we’ve been through a lot of elections that are inherently hard to forecast. The House is the one where everything kind of points in the same direction. Democrats, um, are facing a very unpopular president and an economy that voters have a lot of anxiety about. Trump, no new Middle Eastern wars. On top of that, the very, very long history of the president’s party drawing a backlash and performing poorly at the midterms. The more recent history of incumbent backlash in the US and all around the world. The good results for Democrats in, like, New Jersey and Virginia last year and special elections. You know, look, the redistricting thing helps the GOP a little bit in the end, but you’re fighting against a lot of headwinds. out of gravity, whereas Senate is more of a more of a numbers game. Even in a pretty blue environment, Democrats have to win some seats in red states. It seems to me that taking a big risk in Maine, which is a state that by all rights they ought to win in a D+8 year in a D+10 state, but Grant Plattner is only two points ahead of Susan Collins, I think. I take that polling at face value, I think he is, I take him at 50/50, but like that’s a unnecessary risk potentially. But look, um, the GOP will be able to in these red states, at like Talarico, who is also probably in roughly a toss-up race and Paxton is a far less than ideal Republican nominee. Like partisanship is still a powerful force. People are saying why are they kind of attacking Talarico on I think things that are are not above board, you know, critiquing his sexuality or whatever else. Well, because Texas is like a really red state and like Trump’s not popular, so you’re like you’re kind of going for like the lowest common denominator, but in our system that works a fair amount of the time. So it’s just a polling and math and numbers game in the Senate. We’re going to see more money spent than ever. Whereas the House, 435 seats, I think the partisan gravity is more likely than not just too much for Trump to overcome.

David Friedberg: 52:19 Is there anything that Trump can do or that could change in a macro out of our control perspective that could shift things more significantly for the House back to the Republicans?

Nate Silver: 52:31 If he can get gas prices down, it’s such a visible indicator. You drive by the Chevron station, whatever else, right? You literally see it. You know, I think if you look at forecast, there is supposed to be some abatement, but very contention on how long the conflict war in Iran persists in this quagmire. Um, you know, look, maybe if we, uh, maybe if we have a AGI, right, by in October or something, who knows what happens then? But no, it’s his unfavorable ratings are very entrenched, and Democrats are very enthusiastic despite their misgivings about their own party and as much difficulty as I think they’ll have in 2028 nominating a candidate. To vote for your generic Democrat against a generic Republican is a pretty easy ask for Democrat who feel like democracy’s on the line, and like so I think that’s fairly baked in. As someone who builds models, I don’t bet on politics, I bet on sports, but I’m always aware that like yeah, there’s the 10% chance that the underdog you never see coming prevails, you know, Cape Verde ties with Spain or something, but like that’s pretty fundamentally driven whereas on the on the flip side, needing to pick up four Senate seats when you might blow the opportunity in Maine, it’s a toss up probably, probably slight edge the GOP with maybe gas prices and Iran determining whether it’s more truly 50/50 or maybe maybe 60% GOP.

Jason Calacanis: 53:58 The chances of winning both, is that 80 times 40 type situation and you’re maybe, or is it different because of politics and the way the statistics work? Is it not 30%?

David Sacks: 54:07 Yeah. Are they correlated? Yeah.

Nate Silver: 54:09 They’re almost perfectly correlated. So if the odds of Democrats winning the Senate but not the House are like… are like 1%. If you go to Kalshi or Polymarket, whatever else, they have to be like around 1%. So condition on Democrats winning the Senate, they’ll almost certainly have won the House, they’ll almost certainly have won governorships, which by the way, these things are important. You know, I think people probably focus too much on the national picture and not enough on what happens at the state level where people actually have executive power and you’re picking the candidates and the policies for the next generation. State legislatures are important. If I were talking to all your listeners, right? I’d say look for like a city council candidate for whom your contribution might make a lot of difference. But like no, if Democrats win the Senate, that means it’s a really blue year to overcome the fact that you’re winning in places like Ohio, Iowa, Alaska, and if that happens, therefore, probably the rest of it, all the dominoes fall that way.

Jason Calacanis: 55:06 All right. Gavin Newsom in 2028. He’s an enigma of a politician. Worst-run state in the union as far as I’m concerned, but he’s so polished and he speaks so well and people seem to like him with that great hair. What should we take from Gavin Newsom’s, you know, continued ascension? Am I correct that he’s still, you know, on the up?

Nate Silver: 55:34 He’s not. So we have an article up on Silver Bulletin which will publish shortly after we finish this podcast. Newsom has fallen in Democratic primary polls from around 25% to 15%. He’s fallen on Polymarket from like 33% to 22% or something. I think he was benefiting from some degree of name recognition, whereas now Democrats see a candidate like Jon Ossoff in Georgia, another good-looking young guy, but like actually has credentials, which Newsom will never have, of having won an election in a purple state. And being a younger, fresher face. Like whatever you say about Gretchen Whitmer and Janet Mills in Maine, I think Mills in the abstract might have been the safer choice. I think it’s good that Democrats are showing a bias toward younger candidates, right? Like that’s a lot of what happened with Zoran too. You know, I wouldn’t discount by the way, someone like an AOC. I’m not sure if she’ll run. Someone like Chuck Schumer might be very vulnerable in the 2028 primary, for example. She has a lot of time to wait, but I could see like, I could again, in New York, it’s New York. So therefore you can’t extrapolate too much from New York. However, people saying, we are sick and tired of the Democratic establishment. I’ll take a more centrist version or more left-wing version, but not the same… I think ultimately Newsom has like a hard argument to make. His argument for continuity with Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. He’s embracing Joe Biden when that strategy has failed electorally. I would argue in California, governance-wise as well.

David Sacks: 57:00 Well, to me it’s like a… I think Newsom is actually in a pretty defensive position and that’s why you see him having Hunter Biden or something on his podcast.

Jason Calacanis: 57:10 He’s pandering a little bit, yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya: 57:11 Yeah, yeah.

Jason Calacanis: 57:12 And AOC is now 36 years old, so she qualifies. You’re saying it’s not a zero chance that she could become the equivalent of Trump, the outsider, the burn-it-down, the ‘I’m sick and tired’ vote?

David Sacks: 57:25 She’s my bet. Yeah.

Jason Calacanis: 57:26 Yeah, she’s your bet. Okay. What do you think, Nate?

Nate Silver: 57:29 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jason Calacanis: 57:30 Let’s talk about AOC. She got that possibility with her charisma?

Nate Silver: 57:32 We’ve seen in states like Maine, we may see this in Michigan as well, where yeah, I mean, um, look, for many years in the Republican primary, the notion was that the establishment always won out, that you’d have like the Rick Santorums or Sarah Palins or Herman Cains or whatever else who would get 40% of the vote, but the sane country club establishment types talked about at the top of the show would prevail at the end of the day. And then it doesn’t take that much of perpetually growing dissatisfaction or generational turn, like young people in general like don’t understand like why the fuck would I care about like a party brand anyway? Like the Democratic Party brand is like a lame brand, as certainly the GOP is.

Jason Calacanis: 58:16 Interesting.

Nate Silver: 58:17 Um, and so if you’re an avatar for that brand, then like, you know, I think the best candidates, even Obama in 2008, obviously not even Obama, Obama was a highly effective, one of the, you know, generationally charismatic candidates. But even he combined, on the one hand, positioning to the left of Clinton on issues like Iraq, on the other hand, he had a whole, whatever, we have gay sisters in blue states or red states, and we play Little League in the blue states, and like that whole like post-partisan rhetoric.

David Friedberg: 58:51 I think the most effective candidates can exactly what he is. He has made some efforts, I mean he had Charlie Kirk on his podcast, I think it was last year, right? He has tried to moderate, I mean he’s against the billionaire tax, um, he’s tried to moderate on some of the culture war issues, like nominated an institutional candidate from California. She didn’t come that far from winning, but she lost all the swing states by, by, you know, two to five points. And like, I don’t believe at the end of the day Democrats will be persuaded that like, oh just cause you’re white and you have different anatomy, like that that’s a fail from the one that every Democrat was terrified by in 2024.

Jason Calacanis: 59:22 Alright, an hour with our guy, Nate Silver. Let us know what you think in the comments. We will have you back on when we do our live election coverage for sure if you’re available, and the audience always loves when you’re on.

Chamath Palihapitiya: 59:35 He gets paid a lot on that night, Jake. I don’t think he’s coming on.

Jason Calacanis: 59:39 Alright, whatever. I mean, he’s a fan of the pod, he’s a fan of All-In, he’s part of the family.

Nate Silver: 59:42 I’ll come in the next day. Whatever.

Jason Calacanis: 59:44 Whenever you’re not securing the bag to secure more Knicks tickets for our repeat next year. Everybody go right now, if you hear my voice too, the Silver Bulletin, pop out a hundy and subscribe. You’re going to love it.

Nate Silver: 59:56 95 bucks, Jason.

Jason Calacanis: 59:58 That’s why I rounded up to a hundy! But yes, listen, I know that you provide… We’ve done the metrics. 94.97 is the right number.

David Friedberg: 1:00:04 Five bucks for the guy at the door. Five bucks for the guy at the door.

Jason Calacanis: 1:00:06 Whatever, I was a little bit off the top. It’s all good. And yeah, everybody go to Polymarket, place some bets, our favorite partner, Nate’s favorite partner, and yeah, we’ll see you all next time on the All-In interview show. Thanks. Great job, Nate. You rock.

Nate Silver: 1:00:20 Thank you so much guys.

Chamath Palihapitiya: 1:00:21 That was awesome.