Today on the Playbook podcast, it is eight days to go now until election day.

We will get into all of that this morning.

Plus Donald Trump continues his tour of Asia.

He's landing in Japan in the last couple of hours.

And it's day 27 of the government shutdown. Has anything changed? Not really.

Hello, I'm Jack Blanchard. And I'm Megan Messerly. It's Monday, October 27th. Megan, thanks so much for

join us. Did you have a lovely weekend? Oh, I did. I had a beautiful fall weekend, went on a hike in Rock Creek Park.

This is amazing time of year. I love to hear it. Okay. Well, this time of year also means voting time of year, of course. And suddenly, after all the waiting, they are upon us. There are eight days to go, as I say, until this year's elections on November the 4th. It's an off year, but there's some pretty interesting races. And I thought this will be a good day just to run through some of the implications of a couple of the big ones, Megan. There's obviously

two big governor's races happening in Virginia and in New Jersey, which I think people are hoping

are going to give us a clue really about how the two parties are faring. What do you reckon?

Yeah, I think there is a lot of hopes being pinned on

these races as far as being hugely revelatory and for Democrats, for instance, charting some sort

of path forward for how they ought to approach the midterm elections, but it just doesn't seem

like we're going to get that satisfying conclusion that Democrats would like out of either of these two

governors' races. We've seen some really interesting polling on the economy and prices and the role

that's playing in voters' decision-making in these two races. And I think that really foreshadows

what we're going to see in the midterm elections, right, where we're expecting prices and the

economy to remain central issues. So not

hugely revelatory, but at least tells us sort of where voters' heads might be out a little bit.

Most people are expecting the Dems to win in Virginia and probably in New Jersey, although it seems

to be tightening there. Although you can see them desperately trying to manage expectations on

that now, but I think they really have to win both of those two if they're going to feel like the wrong course to at least taking back the house next year.

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