The politics of healthcare are again front and center in Washington. Last week, Senate Democrats’ proposal to extend the enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies for three years failed to get 60 votes, as did a Republican proposal that would end the subsidies but provide direct payments to some Americans to cover healthcare costs.

Monday, December 15th is also the last day for enrollment in insurance that begins January 1st on the ACA marketplace. All that is a long way of saying that the cake appears mostly baked. Healthcare coverage costs will rise dramatically for millions of Americans next year and many will opt out of coverage altogether.

A bipartisan group is still holding out hope of coming to some compromise, but if that does happen it will likely be after Americans have already started to feel those costs. So what exactly will the impact be and what do Americans think about it? On today’s podcast we dig into the data.

We also take a broader look at President Trump’s approval rating and the recent claim from a friend of the pod that, “Trump’s Approval Ratings Are Low Again. This Time It Might Matter.” Plus we discuss Indiana Republicans’ rejection of an effort to gerrymander their state. Is it a story about redistricting or is it really a story about the power limitations of a lame duck president? And is that a leading question?

Joining me on the podcast to keep me honest are Mary Radcliffe, head of research at FiftyPlusOne, and Nathaniel Rakich, managing editor at VoteBeat.

The full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player by following the directions here.

Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett has jumped into the Texas Senate primary with just three months to go until Election Day. She’s controversial, at times outright offensive, and gets the cable news part of her party very excited. She also appears to be leading in early primary polling. (Sound familiar?) So, is the candidate The Atlantic is calling “a Democrat for the Trump era” up to the task of flipping Texas? Frankly, is any Democrat up to the task?

On today’s podcast we take a look at how 2026 primaries are shaping up around the country in both the House and Senate. Beyond Texas, we check in on the latest in Maine, Michigan, and Georgia and debate whether the dividing lines are mainly generational, ideological, or just a fighter mentality. We also look at the results of recent elections in Miami and Tennessee where Democrats over-performed.

Lastly, a case at the Supreme Court this week considers how much money the political parties should be able to spend in coordination with candidates. Should the relatively low caps be kept in place or should the flood gates be opened? With me to talk about it all is Deputy Editor of Inside Elections Jacob Rubashkin.

If you are tired of hearing about how messy American politics are, today I’m offering you a reprieve. You’re going to hear about how messy British politics are.

Last week I was in London, exploring the city and speaking with journalists, friends and strangers alike about life in Britain. I visited a couple newsrooms and toured parliament during Prime Minister’s Questions. The big news of the day was the Labour government’s budget proposal and, despite their largest majority in nearly 30 years, Labour seems to be facing challenges on all sides.

If American politics can feel disappointing or frustrating, wait till you hear Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s approval rating: net -52 percentage points. By comparison President Trump, facing his own second term low of net -14 points, looks utterly popular.

Today we get into the challenges facing the Labour party and much more – the rise of the populist Right in the UK and Europe, relations with the US, and yes, people are still talking about Brexit.

To do this I reassembled the team from the dearly departed Talking Politics podcast. The former hosts, Helen Thompson and David Runciman, used to join me on the also departed FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast during the height of the Brexit drama. Think of this as the ghosts of two podcasts past.

Helen Thompson is a professor of political economy at Cambridge and author of the book “Disorder: Hard times in the 21st Century.” David Runciman is an honorary professor of politics at Cambridge and the host of the “Past Present Future” podcast.

The full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player by following the directions here.

Oftentimes when we talk about what divides the United States we talk about things like education, race, gender, or class. My guest today makes the argument that there’s something else fundamental at play, stretching back hundreds of years, to well before the founding of the country: the regional cultures that were developed by the people who settled America.

It may seem like a stretch to say that after waves of immigration and internal migration, technological and social change, that the pilgrims, quakers, aristocrats, and pioneers are still culturally with us. But Colin Woodard argues that you can’t actually understand our contemporary politics and the fights we’re having without that context.

In his previous book “American Nations” he laid out what he described as the 11 different “nations” – or culturally distinct regions – within America. In his new book “Nations Apart” he looks at the political and social differences across them on everything from voting, to health outcomes, to gun violence.

He also discusses what kinds of common narratives have united us in the past and what might work again today based on public opinion research. Colin is the director of Nationhood Lab at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy at Salve Regina University.

If everything is going to plan, I am on vacation this week. Fear not! I have recorded podcasts ahead of time so you’ll still have two episodes this week. However, don’t be surprised if something crazy has happened in the world and you don’t hear it mentioned in conversation. I haven’t forgotten, it’s just that whatever crazy thing we are now dealing with had not yet happened when the podcasts were recorded. If past is prologue, hold onto your seats, the news cycle rarely behaves while I’m away.

Today we are opening up the mailbag to sort through our backlog of listener mail. Listeners have been sending in great questions lately! As a reminder, you can always share your questions in the paid subscriber chat at gdpolitics.com. You can also send questions to galen@gdpolitics.com and reach me via the usual social media channels.

On today’s episode we discuss the power of celebrity in politics, the possibility of the Democratic presidential primary moving to a ranked choice voting system in 2028, the state of the Republican Texas Senate primary, and much more. With me to do it all is friend of the podcast and data scientist at the Washington Post, Lenny Bronner.

P.S. — I am currently in London for a combination of work and fun. Feel free to use the channels above to share any recs!

Even in our topsy turvy political world, last Friday stood out as one for the books. President Trump seemed to embrace New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, complimenting his underdog victory, saying he thinks “he’s going to do some things that are going to be really great,” and even smilingly saying that it’s ok if Mamdani calls him a fascist.

Just hours later, one of Trump’s formerly fiercest defenders, Marjorie Taylor Greene, announced that she will resign from Congress in the new year, after disagreements with Trump led him to brand her “Marjorie Traitor Greene” and threaten support for a primary opponent against her. This all would have been hard to dream up just a couple months ago, but does it say anything meaningful about our politics?

On today’s episode we also check in on the state of gerrymandering around the country after a federal panel of judges struck down Texas’s new map designed to add five seats to Republicans’ ranks in the House. If it stands, in a turn of fate, Democrats could end up being the net winners of the ongoing mid-decade redistricting spat. That decision now heads to the Supreme Court

And finally, Happy Thanksgiving week! Have you heard of the pre-Thanksgiving dinner “cousin walk?” It’s apparently when the younger members of the family get stoned before sitting down for turkey. The idea has become popularized online and the Wall Street Journal even called it a “full-blown commercial holiday,” with dispensaries reporting the second biggest sales of the year for “Green Wednesday.” (Second to 420). But is this all coming at a time when Americans are turning against marijuana?

With me to discuss it all are two dear friends of the pod: head of research at FiftyPlusOne, Mary Radcliffe, and managing editor of Votebeat, Nathaniel Rakich.

The full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player by following the directions here.

I was at a conference earlier this week giving a talk about politics. These things can be kind of fun. I get up on a stage, do my song and dance, and show folks a bunch of charts.

As I was getting into the elevator, one of the attendees stepped in beside me and I asked him how he was enjoying the conference. He sighed and said, “Well, everything is about AI. Even the sessions that are supposed to be about other things end up being about AI.”

His comment struck me because that’s what so many topics can feel like these days, whether it’s the workplace and economy, social media and entertainment, our own homes and vehicles, or even matchmaking and intimacy — and of course politics and geopolitics.

Some of the political debates over AI have faded into the background as the Trump administration’s laissez-faire approach to regulation has set the tone in Washington and Democrats have had little to no power to challenge it, if they wanted to. But it’s probably a good bet that political debates over the role of Artificial Intelligence in society won’t remain in the background for long.

Recently AI stocks have been in pullback mode and chatter about a bubble has reemerged. “Is it a blip, a dip, a pullback or the beginning of the end?” reads one headline. And lately, hardly a day goes by without another company announcing a reduction in its white collar job force.

Polling also suggests Americans are somewhere between skeptical and pessimistic about the future of AI. They see it as doing more harm than good when it comes to people’s ability to think creatively, have meaningful relationships with each other, and make difficult decisions. And importantly, this is not an area where Americans are highly polarized along party lines either.

The combination of those two things: the possibility of a crisis or displacement in which AI is seen as central and the lack of clear party divisions means that the new technology may be in a unique position to reshape politics.

That is the topic of today’s episode with David Byler, public opinion researcher and VP at National Research Group. We also get into questions about the use of AI in polling and a “Good Data, Bad Data, or Not Data?” question from a listener.

When President Trump became the first Republican in 20 years to win the national popular vote in 2024, one Republican pollster was in a position to say: “I told you so.”

Patrick Ruffini, the co-founder of Echelon Insights, had written a book the year prior titled, “Party of the People: Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP.”

He wrote, “The Republicans used to be seen as the party of wealthy elites and the Democrats the party of blue collar workers—and now that’s being turned upside down. Because of this, the ‘demography is destiny’ ideas of eternal Democratic majorities never materialized. And now it’s Republicans who are on offense with voting blocs who represent a decisive majority of the country.”

He went on to say, “Contrary to the media myths, the old divisions that separated Americans politically and in other ways by race and ethnicity are gradually fading. This is what’s making Republicans competitive in areas they never dreamed of winning before.”

This was hard to deny in 2024. Republicans made decisive gains with voters of color and young voters, with eye-popping rightward shifts in places like Florida, Texas and the urban Northeast.

But if Trump’s already souring polling this year hadn’t been reason for pause, this fall’s elections certainly were. As we discussed on last week’s podcast, in New Jersey, there appeared to be something of a snap back amongst Hispanic and young voters to coalitions resembling the 2020 election.

In light of that, I invited Patrick Ruffini on the podcast to talk about the ever-shifting American political coalitions. He joined me to discuss his book on the forbearer to this podcast, but this was his first time on GD POLITICS. We also discussed his work at Echelon Insights highlighting the diversity of opinion that sits below the polarized red/blue surface of American politics.