MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Let's go to Margie Omero now. She's a longtime Democratic strategist who is a principal with the public opinion firm GBAO. She did work for two Democratic U.S. Senate candidates - Senator-elect Adam Hamilton in Kansas and Scott Colom in Mississippi, where the race remains too close to call. Good morning, Margie.
MARGIE OMERO: Good morning.
MARTIN: So you just heard some of the voters that we just heard. When you hear what motivated some of them, how did that affect the strategies for Hamilton and the other candidates that you work with?
OMERO: Well, it's not a surprise to hear people say a few things. One, to feel pained by how things are going in the country. We hear that all the time. We heard that throughout the election cycle, and also feeling like politicians weren't listening. It's not simply that things weren't going well, but this sense that leaders in Washington, led by Trump, were not paying attention, were focused on other things. I mean, you saw it in Trump's closing message where he was talking about the reflecting pool. So voters really wanted to, you know, send a real clear message, and they couldn't have been any clearer than what we heard last night.
MARTIN: You know, speaking of that, Democrats won by much wider margins than expected. In your experience as a pollster, why do you think that is?
OMERO: Well, I would say a couple of things. I would say, first, it's not necessarily that the margins were larger, as much as every state that was in play, or every district, every gubernatorial race, moved where there were toss-ups or things within the margin of error, broke toward Democrats. It was the consistency of that movement, and because they were all moving together, people were responding to the same things, even if they were in different states - this sense of feeling angry at how things were going. Democrats were clearly motivated. You saw a lot of that in the early vote analysis showing that groups that had been moving away from Democrats, like Latinos and younger voters more motivated with Republicans, less motivated to vote. And that moved - carried forward through Election Day.
And I think the other thing is, you know, there was a sense you saw a lot of it in the coverage of people feeling, well, you know, it can't possibly be as good of a night for Democrats as this - right? - this sense of, like, well, maybe that's too good of a night. Even though, if you looked at every individual state where we were working, where others were working, or you look at the different indicators, there weren't really any indicators that a particular state was moving toward Republicans. You could tell by the way the president and vice president and other surrogates would travel, the states where they spent their time, the states where Republicans would invest. You saw Republicans invest in Louisiana or - and Mississippi and South Carolina toward the end. You saw the president travel to Iowa and to Kansas. I mean, these were signs that they felt nervous, that they...
MARTIN: OK.
OMERO: ...Were seeing the same things we were. But the result, to be sure, feels for folks who really have wanted to - you know, wanted a rebuke of the president. People are feeling pretty excited.
MARTIN: OK. So New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani joined NPR's special election coverage last night. This is what he had to say.
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ABDUL EL-SAYED: What we see now is the fact that the politics of affordability is not confined to one city or one state. It's a national mandate.
MARTIN: OK. Two questions about that as briefly as you can. Why do you think that voters did not buy President Trump's argument that the economy is actually resurging, that things are great?
OMERO: They feel it. They go - you know, they go to fill up their gas tank. They go to the grocery store. You know, we would do focus groups with people who were Trump regretters. They voted for Trump in '24. They now say they regret their vote, like, use that word. And they say, I thought we - you know, why are we in a war? I thought we were going to stop having, you know, wars that we didn't need to be involved in, and that was what Trump promised us. And he's not doing anything. And it's a sense of what's the focus on people like me? And they weren't feeling it. And the costs - and the focus on costs, both of those things. And in addition to the corruption that they're seeing from their leaders, all of it led to this feeling like Trump - you know, Trump can't really be trusted.
MARTIN: And the second question I have, and this is going to be the last one, is, so that being said, what should Democrats do about it?
OMERO: Well, I think you're going to have - right now, Democrats are going to take stock and feel united. Democrats should feel united. You had just as many liberal - looking at exit polls - liberal Democrats vote as moderate Democrats vote as a percentage of the national electorate. And they broke toward Democrats in the same way. I think Democrats should really come together across all kinds of different audiences and say, OK, let's figure out how we can, you know, focus on making people feel like their lives are better and also speak in a language that they feel they can understand and connect and really talk to people.
MARTIN: That is Democratic pollster Margie Omero. Margie, thank you.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
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