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Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics and life.

My name is Freddie Gray. I'm the deputy editor of the spectator.

I am very pleased to be joined again by Luke Thompson, who is a political strategist,

and we are going to be asking what's going to happen in the midterms. This is about part

four of Americano's what's going to happen in the midterms.

And Luke, we've spoken to you before.

But since the last time we spoke about the midterms, quite a lot happened, obviously.

And there was this story over the summer.

We kept being told, we kept reading and hearing that Joe Biden was on a hot streak.

The Republicans were suddenly in trouble because

the American public were horrified by the overturning of Roe v. Wade and their pro-life extremism.

And the polls certainly did suggest that that was not entirely untrue. They did enjoy a swing

in the polls. They seemed to have a little bit of momentum. But as far as I can see,

the latest polls suggest, do they not, that it's swinging back towards the Republicans now. Is that right?

Well, I think it's certainly true that recent polling would give any partisan Democrat heartburn.

There's a temptation to believe that polling reflects entirely a change

in public sentiment, but oftentimes underlying shifts on the margins of public sentiment are changing

who is responding to polls. And so that can have an exaggerated effect in terms of where different political leaders stand at any given

time. In the United States, as one gets closer to election day, the polls come in greater and greater

...