S6 Ep51: Amy Walter: Pennsylvania's Trump-Shapiro Voters
The Focus Group Podcast
The Bulwark
4.8 • 2.6K Ratings
🗓️ 25 July 2026
⏱️ 57 minutes
🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS
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Summary
In Pennsylvania, Gov. Josh Shapiro is on track for a pretty big win in November. And he can't do that without winning over a lot of former Trump voters, including the ones in our focus group. Cook Political Report editor in chief Amy Walter returns to the show to discuss how our Pennsylvania focus group felt about Shapiro, AND Sen. John Fetterman, and about the Trump administration. They also break down whether Democrats should be concerned about the generic ballot polling we're seeing right now.
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show links
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- CPR’s PollTracker (Trump Approval Rating Aggregator)
- CPR’s “Find a Race” sorter
- CPR’s Battleground District Project
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I say this all the time. I'm sure you have to do this as well. All your well-meaning friends, |
| 0:05.5 | I don't understand why more people don't like fill in the blank person. He seems really |
| 0:12.8 | reasonable, right? And I say to them, the reason that those people can't win primaries is because |
| 0:18.5 | you like them. |
| 0:27.7 | Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Focus Group podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of the bulwark. And this week, we're going to do a couple of things. First, we're reassessing |
| 0:32.6 | the state of the political landscape in light of some recent polling that has me mildly nervous, I guess, because while the political landscape in light of some recent polling that has me mildly nervous, I guess, |
| 0:40.4 | because while the political environment is very good for Democrats right now, their lead in the |
| 0:44.8 | generic ballot does not quite match the environment. So they haven't closed the deal yet, and there's |
| 0:49.8 | been some recent history where the out-of-power party has fumbled some winnable races. Then I want to zero in |
| 0:56.3 | on my home state of Pennsylvania and do a bit of a case study on a Democrat who is very much |
| 1:01.1 | closing the deal with his constituents in a big swing state. And I'm talking about Josh Shapiro. |
| 1:07.5 | My guest today is Amy Walter, publisher of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter. |
| 1:12.9 | Amy. Hey, what is up? My most popular guest. This is my favorite, favorite way to work through |
| 1:21.1 | my feelings. In fact, it's like you were in my brain, Sarah, because I am literally writing about |
| 1:26.7 | just what you |
| 1:28.9 | raised at the very beginning of this introduction of what is going on. How can the generic |
| 1:34.9 | ballot be narrowing at a time when the president's approval rating is not improving? |
| 1:41.4 | Do you have a theory? Why do you think it is? My theory is, well, one, to your point, |
| 1:47.8 | voters haven't really focused in on this election yet. And if you think about what a congressional |
| 1:55.5 | ballot test is asking voters is like, okay, in November, are you going to vote for a Democrat or a Republican? |
| 2:01.4 | What they do know is they don't like Donald Trump in the way he's handling the economy or the war, |
| 2:07.9 | other big issues. |
... |
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