In this episode, Grace and Richard Hrisick delve into the voter turnout and dynamics of recent South Carolina elections, examining the significant turnout rates and the impact of demographic changes. They discuss the ramifications of gerrymandering on voter enthusiasm and representation in the state and national legislature. The conversation also covers the controversial strategies employed by both parties and features an in-depth look at Kamala Harris's election performance, including her messaging and campaign strategy. Additionally, they highlight standout politicians like Heather Bauer and analyze voter participation across different election cycles.

00:00 Introduction to Frogmore Stew

00:19 South Carolina Voter Turnout Analysis

01:32 Impact of Gerrymandering on Voter Enthusiasm

03:59 State House and Senate Dynamics

06:30 Election Results and Voter Behavior

13:25 Kamala Harris's Campaign Analysis

22:23 Concluding Thoughts and Future Discussions

Copyright 2024 Grace Cowan

• The Alliance Coalition - South Carolina
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Hi, it's Grace and this is Frogmore Stew. Today, South Carolina's version of James Carville, Richard Hrisick I love that so much. We love having him, because Richard knows math Richard, let's talk math.

Okay.

How many people voted?

Okay. We're going to stay in South Carolina. Turnout percentage was very strong. 76 percent turnout percentage.

Which was up from 2020 presidential cycle. However, there were 169, 802 less registered voters. Haven't we had all kinds of new people move here?

The short answer is yes. If you say what is the trajectory of the population. But. We also lost a lot of people during, post COVID from registered votes from 2020. The population that is moving to South Carolina is skewing much older, especially here in the low country. So I haven't looked at but if I had to hazard a guess, that would be it.

Okay. And then I pulled some numbers. In 2024, this presidential election, Trump actually gained, A lot more votes.

He gained roughly a hundred thousand. He lost roughly fifty. And you can't necessarily assume the fifty that were Biden went over a, we could play games as to why or why not. But there's no question that he got a hundred thousand more votes in 2024 than he did in 2020. What I would say is this, this is the negative impact of gerrymandering because it infects overall voter enthusiasm. So if I say to you, you're a Democrat what are you going to vote for? Okay. Well, I know the presidency is kind of a foregone conclusion. Isn't a U. S. Senate seat up that I'm going to change either? The congressional race where I live might not be very competitive. So what am I coming out to vote for? This is the corrosive effect of gerrymandering in that.

It kills enthusiasm as much as it ensures enthusiasm on the other side because the person looks at the number and says, we're going to win. They go to their fundraising people. We're going to win. They talk their statistics; they can do the math too. And they can look at it and say, look, we're going to win. And then Democrats have to say, look, I really need you to come out and vote for this state Senate seat. And they're like, what difference is that going to make? Most. Ordinary people not following politics on a daily basis are not going to get excited about who's running for state senator, state house, unless you really know them personally and great job of retail politics.

I would also say, this is true from the many, interviews we did with voters most people don't know who their state house and state senators are. My point exactly. Most of the time they would say, either Lindsey Graham or Tim Scott. And sometimes they would say Nancy Mace. They know the national names, the bigger names, people that are on TV. But when it comes to the people that are deciding what your roads look like, most people don't know who they are. We have gerrymandered every single district to know the outcome in advance. And the other thing that we've done is ensure that those districts are so winnable that there isn't even an opponent. And so there were something like 70 out of 124 house races that didn't have, an opponent in them, just one person. It's back to you saying voter apathy, like why even vote? If you know the only person you can vote for is a Republican, and you know that statewide Trump is going to win because there are more Republican voters that vote in the state, why go to the polls?

I would also the other part of that too, is then being the party in majority, it is easier for them to raise money and martial resources. So what they do have contested races, they are able to spend in those races disproportionately so that even if there is an opposition readily defeated.

So the state house. is super majority. Some people do argue that there are three parties in the state house right now which are the Democrats. the Republicans and the Freedom Caucus and the Freedom Caucus and the Republicans typically don't agree on everything. So let's go to the state Senate. They elected 13 new senators, nine of those are Republicans and four of those were Democrats. So now instead of it being 30 to 16, it's now 34 to 12.

Correct.

I think a lot of people would say, listen, it's a Republican state, the presidential statewide election. He won by 460, 000 votes. So shouldn't the state look more Republican, from the state house and state Senate?

If all things are relative, if we're saying, both parties should be proportionally representative, we'll say for the sake of argument trump defeated Harris 55 45. So it's not like there were like three people that voted Democratic. There were over a million people who live in this state who voted Democratic. I'll even throw you 60 40, right? I'll say there's, we're 60 percent Republican and 40 percent Democrat. And we do some simple math. There's seven congressional seats and stay with me. You can do that math and run that 60, 40 math over. And go down and just show how the gerrymandering starting federal goes all the way down. So at 60, 40, there should be four people federal to Congress who are Republican, three. Democratic that would barely represent. What is the makeup of the electorate? Instead? It's six to one.

What I can't wrap my head around is what is the point of that? We shouldn't have one particular party just completely in control because now the state house and the state Senate are both super majorities and they're both veto proof, they are now don't forget filibuster and filibuster proof. So they are now the most powerful legislative body in the state. They can. Basically do whatever they want, maybe being checked by the state Supreme Court, but certainly not the governor. And by the way, most of the people that are in those seats were elected in the primary. So our state is now being run by people who were elected by less than 10 percent of the state, which seems very undemocratic.

Power seeks power.

Yeah.

Right? Power continues unchecked.

You know, I've heard a lot of people saying, this election was about policy. People felt like Republicans handle, finances better. People feel like there are certain things that Republicans do better than Democrats. If your policy is better on the GOP side, why would you not let the voters vote for it? Why do you have to manipulate the districts to ensure that they win rather than letting the policy speak for itself?

One of my good friends Gedney Howes had a quote one time He's a trial lawyer of many years. I love Gedney said there's no interest like self-interest okay. Are you gonna be the state senator or the state rep? You know what? Yeah I know I win easy, but I want to be fair go ahead and give away half my district to that other side Make me have to run in a race Really? Yeah. Oh, I'm a state senator and I win easy and I'm going to win easy. Oh, you know what? Let's be fair. I'm going to go ahead and go, Hey, take this. You know what? Let's redraw the district. So they're fair.

But we don't get good policy out of that,

they would argue that they do because they get the exact policy that they want. I agree with you. I think competition of ideas is, the fundamental of democracy is that. If all ideas are presented equivalently in the marketplace of ideas, the best idea wins,

and that's the argument for ranked choice voting too, the more options you have, the better end result product you get.

And the more responsive people are to the electorate. If you only win in a primary, that means you can ignore anybody who doesn't think the way you do and you be outrighted or out-lefted. So that means your votes and actions can only be extreme because that's the only way you can lose.

And what we learned from interviewing voters from around the state is that voters are nuanced. It's not just one type of belief that every voter has, whether they be Democrats or Republicans. When you're limiting the politicians to one specific type of thinking, it really eliminates a level of freedom, for our state.

I don't disagree. And I think it's bad. Not only are you safe for our state, for our country. Why has Congress been so dysfunctional? Because the people we're sending to Congress, God help you. If you compromise or you act reasonably, you're going to get voted out because somebody is going to primary.

I think this is something that we should talk about over and over again in this state, we live in a state where there are lots of different opinions and I think the more that we can talk and get, voices out and know what all of the options are is the only way you can make the best decision. And I think that's part of why there are. Big problems with the roads and with how things get done because we get stuck in this one way of doing things because we have one voice at our state house it doesn't work.

Look at the states with the worst poverty, with the worst education. They're all Republican dominated states.

So you told me that you had three reasons of why kamala You Lost.

Before we go to, I want to say there was a star in this election . I'm going to give out the Richard Hrisick gold star candidate in this election. Heather Bauer

She is a superstar.

First of all, she's a superstar person she is a superstar retail politician and galvanizing both attention as well as Galvanizing voters to her and giving people who live in her district a reason to come out and vote for her

Yeah,

and that's the difference is she made that connection and made it personal and says come out and vote for me Because I’m going to speak up for you and she won and she basically said she ran on women's issues and speaking up for women and being a woman and just unapologetically being a Democrat and I'm going to deliver and I'm going to deliver service and I'm going to be responsive. And so I give her my gold star.

She is in a competitive district. And she is a moderate Democrat.

Correct.

She had to really work for it. But you're right. What she's done for the last two years being in the house is she actually does respond to emails when people email her and take phone calls from her constituents versus. In so many of the other districts, I have spent years emailing my state house and state Senate members and they very rarely respond.

You get the stock email So one other race. I want you to pay attention. Just as this is another enthusiasm indicator That is what is really it's a unique thing to south Carolina that a lot of people don't see

Okay.

Do you have any idea what the turnout drop is from 2022? Let me give you the number because it blows me away. Okay, 2020 72%. That's a presidential year. Yeah. 2022 51 percent turnout. Wow. So in 2024, Nancy Mace defeated Michael Moore. Nancy Mace got 227, 000. Michael Moore got 162, 000. Okay. Yeah. In 2020, another presidential year, Nancy Mace squeaked by Joe Cunningham by roughly 6, 000 votes. Two 16 to two 10. Okay. Mm-Hmm. . Now 2022. Annie Andrews lost to Nancy Mace.

Mace won with 153,000 votes. So that means. If the people, the Democrats who live in CD1 the same people who voted for Michael Moore and Joe Cunningham in the presidential year all came out to vote in the off year, we would have a Democratic candidate in CD1. But this translates back into that lack of voter enthusiasm. And it's really hard to get people excited in a non-presidential year.

Okay, we're going to be doing what we can here at Frogmore Stew to make sure everybody votes.

Yes, that's our job, is to make everybody vote. And you know what, you can still affect change in your own community, and you can still affect change in whatever county you are in, because that is what matters.

I mean, yes, there are some small Dem wins, but overall the country and the state, it was. a complete shellacking. And I think there are lots of reasons for that. I think part of it is, Democrats always think they know better and we have, not been listening. What is so fascinating to me in listening to the voters that we talk to across the spectrum, and also a lot of the politicians that we talk to often, not everybody's that far apart. The things that people want in the state are very similar on both sides. And so I think there's lots of room, to work together moving forward.

I wouldn't disagree with the general premise, but that's very different than how people govern. And I think you were about to see some pretty extreme governance. If Trump follows through on what he says, he's going to follow through with despite the fact that he lies perpetually. I have no reason to doubt that's exactly what he's going to do.

So what are your top three reasons that Kamala lost?

So let's talk message. And I'm going to give you the one where she missed. She had the opportunity because she was coming out of the box to be the outsider candidate and make him the insider. She could have come out and said, I am not Joe Biden. I was only the vice president these are all of the things that Joe Biden did wrong in the economy And these are all of the things that I’m going to fix and this is not my economy This is going to be a new economy that's focused on you the worker what was her economic message?

have no idea.

There you go. What was his economic message? We never had a better economy than when I was president.

Yeah,

that's great. Everything was great because people have no memory. And so he would lie and say, everything I did was great. And the economy was great. That's all he had to say. And that's all he kept saying. She did not articulate a clear message. And when you say people were hurting, People saw the inflation. They have experienced the inflation. They've experienced all of the things, it's kitchen table, eggs and gas and rent and house prices. And I can keep going on and on down the list.

And I think people were pissed that the Democrats kept saying, no, look at the stock market, look at the job numbers. They kept telling them that they were wrong. And that's where the Democrats screwed up.

They had to, because they were running Biden until we're going to call it 120 days out. Okay, so when she came out again, we're just asking about her and that Democrats before, her only miss. I felt on her messaging was she missed on the opportunity to reframe herself as an outsider who was for the workers. And for the ordinary people and she had strong credibility with unions and workers always had been. She just needed to tear down and throw stones at Biden and distance herself from him. But she never developed a coherent economic message where he did. So that's number one. And I think that this election was not about the, when I say the culture war, this wasn't the culture war.

Yeah,

this was the economy war and people said they don't like the economy. Democrats were largely saying it's okay. And they were saying it sucks. And we want to go back to the grandest prosperity of all, which didn't exist.

I think he won on that in 2016 or 2017 and all the way into 2020 prices were what they were after 2020 prices went up and they're still up so

because we printed. 10 trillion dollars to get through COVID.

That's right. And so the feeling of those prices being up, there's nothing that the economy could have done other than drop those prices back down. But I even think if all those prices dropped back down, the feeling was already there. And so your belief is what you feel. And that was the feeling already.

And again, I come back to, why did she lose? All of her messaging. She would say well, things are good, but I hear you and I hear, you know, instead of saying.

And that's condescending, right?

It's wishy washy. It's things are good. They could be better. And she was trying to keep her foot in two worlds. And here's this guy saying it sucks. It was great there. It's shit, he sounds like he's got to handle it

all right. So what's number two? Number two.

and it ties into number one. Okay. We're insiders. We are people who are political people. We are inside the bubble. We are inside all campaign. We know our state house reps. We know our state senate reps. We know everybody. To a large group of people, the large universe of voters, it's shocking that people don't know who the vice president was. They really don't. Like it seems counterintuitive for us who are, political junkies and in this space, but there are a lot of people who don't even know who the vice president is. So up pops this woman 120 days out from the campaign. After everybody said, Joe Biden's too old and Joe Biden's too incompetent and blah, blah, blah, and everything else. She's new. And there are many people who felt I think that it was a last-minute introduction to somebody they didn't know about. And there's an old adage that says between the devil I know and the devil I don't, I'm going to choose the devil I know.

Yeah.

And I hate this phrase when they say low information voter, it's just, it's like just an awful, Characterization and what I prefer to say is they know the person in charge. They know Trump and Biden. That's who they know. Have to come to learn who this person is.

Oh, yeah. Okay.

And then the third thing is, I think, there are blocks of voters who are not voting for a woman, and they're not going to vote for a black woman . that reflected in the data, and that data set of women not wanting to vote for a woman. That data set exists. We can argue and say, gosh, we're a better person and we're a better country than that. That's what I was arguing last time I was like, maybe this is the trajectory where this is the year of the woman and every woman embraces the idea that there's a woman that could be elected.

That's the interesting thing too. Everyone was like, all the women are going to vote for Kamala. All the men are going to vote for Trump and I think in the end, you've found that's not the case. There were still, I think, 60 percent of white women voted for Trump. I think that one thing that Democrats, do a lot more than the Republicans is Democrats siphon off who their supporters are much more so than the Republicans. So Democrats are like, okay, we've got this group here. We've got this group here. And the Republicans are like, There are no groups. It's just all Republicans. It's just all of us. And as much as Democrats like to say, we are fighting for Latino voters. The Latino men voted for Trump, and so now they're Republican men because there isn't this condescension around who they are. They just want to be tough men. And that's what Trump makes guys feel like and women like that. Tough men. Who knew?

And that comes back to why do women like tough men? Is there women who are not going to vote for a woman if there's a man option?

Trump is not a tough man. No, I got it. He portrays one on TV.

Listen, democrats operate in the nurturing mother realm. They operate in the strong father parental room . those are my big top three takeaways I think in the timeframe she had, she ran an exceptional campaign.

I couldn't agree more.

She raised great. She did everything she could on enthusiasm and the rest. And so when we say, when I told you message, Messenger and campaign. This was an economy election and she had one Opportunity out of the box and she should have burned down the house behind her and said this economy is not working. This economy is a failure And instead of looking out for rich people, I'm going to look out for working people. I'm going to take it in a whole new direction. But instead she straddled both worlds. She didn't give people a clear enough choice that it was going to be different. He was promising different because he says, I'm going to take it back to how it was.

I think the point is no one will listen To anything that you're saying, if you are trying to talk them out of their lived experiences with math. That I think is one of the Democrats biggest problems is that the people keep telling them, I don't like this, or this isn't working, or this is what I'm feeling. And the party of empathy and feeling is saying, no. That's not really how you feel. Or that's not really what's happening in the real world. The majority of people, as we just saw in this election, are pissed and don't want to be talked to anymore. Like, they don't know what they're talking about.

The goal was we have to tout the accomplishments of the administration. And yes. convince people that Joe Biden accomplished a lot of great things because he was running for reelection. Yeah. You talk about people who don't want to spend time learning anything. Let me explain. We went through COVID. We pumped a lot of free money into the economy. That means we hyper stimulated the economy all around the world. Prices were going to rise and now they're going to come down and we have done a fantastic job of creating a soft landing for an economy. Yeah. It's economically true, but it's a lot of subtlety. Too much. I think you're 100 percent right on, that was the opportunity she missed when she stepped out as the new candidate to say. The Bill Clinton line. I feel your pain.

Somebody said to me today something like Democrats stay in the nuance and republicans put it on a hat,

which comes back to messaging 101, if she came out and says this economy sucks You And he's for rich people and I'm for working people. That's your choice. You think she would have done better?

Always awesome to talk to you. We have a lot more, for this next season on Frogmore stew. Oh my word. Post election season. It's going to be like an unpacking of so many things. I can't wait.