The Odd Years

This is special edition of the Odd Years! Actually, it’s more like a collab with the Cook Political Report’s other podcast, Editors Roundtable. If you don’t know Editors Roundtable, it is a weekly conversation between Cook Political Report analysts where we discuss the issues, trends, and individual races that we think are the most important and impactful. Think of it as an opportunity to be a fly...

It’s rare for voters from different political leanings to share feelings on the major issues of the day. But when it comes to AI, it’s pretty clear that no matter the party, Americans have a lot of apprehension around this new technology. The worries range from job security to kids’ online safety to the environmental impact of massive data centers. This also presents a rare opportunity for policy...

When the Supreme Court released their decision to limit the scope and scale of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in late April, Amy knew she wanted to dig into the political and legal repercussions with someone who is well-versed in both of those areas. She immediately turned to Sean Trende, a senior analyst at RealClearPolitics and a lawyer who has deep expertise in redistricting law. In fact, b...

Americans have a pretty dismal view of Congress. Lawmakers in the U.S. House and Senate are seen as ineffective and a much diminished power under President Trump. Last year, for example, Congress passed a record low number of laws while President Trump issued the most executive orders in modern history. Paul Kane, a veteran Capitol Hill reporter and one of its smartest chroniclers recently wrote a...

Amy has long been an admirer of this week’s guest, The Wall Street Journal's chief economics commentator Greg Ip. She finds his insights into how our economy functions to be thoughtful as well as approachable. It’s also why she thought he'd be the perfect person to talk with about the central disconnect we've seen in perceptions of our economy over the last few years - namely that the markets and...

The Odd Years is back with our first episode of this midterm year! Political news and events seem to be breaking faster than the human brain can process, so we wanted to take a step back and talk to people with experience, insight, and perspective who can help us make sense of it all. That is why we kicked off the inaugural 2026 episode with two political reporters who embody those traits: The Wal...

It's a consequential week in the Supreme Court as justices hear a case that could reorient the bounds of executive authority and overturn a ninety year precedent that insulates independent government agencies from political interference from the president. President Trump has tested those bounds of his executive power on everything from tariffs and trade to immigration to government spending. It's...

In Amy’s opinion, Astead Herndon is one of the sharpest and most thoughtful political journalists out there. His New York Times podcast, The Run-Up , did an amazing job pulling back the cover on how national politics is done and showing the gulf that exists between the parties, the insiders and actual voters. It’s this kind of journalism that has set Astead apart from the pack. He picks apart conv...

Californians often like to think of themselves as the center of the universe. But when it comes to politics, this deep blue state is rarely in the spotlight - until now. The passage of Prop 50 in last Tuesday's election was the most consequential development to date in the redistricting wars. The new Democratic drawn map will cost Republicans three to five seats in 2026 and also shores up five vul...

One week from today, voters in New Jersey and Virginia will go to the polls. These are state and not federal elections. But they can serve as bellwethers for the upcoming midterm election next year. Topics that resonate in a purple state like Virginia this year, for example, are likely to be issues that are significant in swing states and districts in 2026. Next Tuesday, we’ll also look closely at...

It's safe to say Democrats are going through something of an identity crisis at the moment. They have no clear leaders, no driving issues, and no real power in Washington. And that makes the current government shutdown an interesting test case for Democratic leaders like Chuck Schumer over what they think their voters want and how best to fight Donald Trump. Our guest today, Democratic strategist...

We're about eight months into Donald Trump's second term, a victory driven in large part due to voter frustration with the economy and their belief that he would help get inflation down. So what does the economic picture look like today? That's not as easy a question to answer as you would think. Stock market set record highs, but consumers remain pessimistic about inflation. The tariffs implement...

We took a late summer break, but we're back with a new slate of really great interviews! When we started this year, redistricting was not something we thought would be driving our politics this cycle. But, of course, that's no longer the case with Texas unleashing a domino effect of redistricting efforts across the country. Thankfully, we know someone really well who can help us understand what's...

Back in 2023, Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini wrote a book that laid out a path for how the party could win future elections with a working class multiracial coalition. Later that year, Amy talked with Patrick on this very podcast where they discussed whether Trump could expand his base to include those voters of color. Well, as we saw, he did. In fact, in 2016, the coalition that elected Trum...

This week we are diverging from our normal Odd Years format to introduce you to another Cook Political Report product, Editors Roundtable . This podcast features a rotating cast of our Cook Political Report team breaking down the latest news, analysis and insights about the most important House, Senate and Gubernatorial contests in the country. We like to think of this podcast as an opportunity fo...

Most of the political attention these days is centered in D.C, but there's a pretty fascinating primary contest happening just a train ride north in New York City. The Democratic primary for mayor of the Big Apple features a crowded field of Democrats, including some well known names like former Governor Andrew Cuomo, who was forced to resign after multiple sexual harassment allegations against hi...

President Trump's signature legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, is crawling its way through Congress. Having passed the House by a single vote, the so-called BBB is in the Senate where various Republican factions - the fiscal hawks, the centrists, the populists - are divided over how to resolve their many competing priorities over the national debt, Medicaid, and tax cuts to name a few. W...

When we booked this episode with Pod Save America co-host Dan Pfeiffer several weeks back, our plan was to talk about the Democrats and their strategy and messaging around Trump - something Dan's been writing about for his Substack, Message Box . Should Democrats just focus on the economy? Should they raise alarm bells over deportations? How loudly and strongly should they push back against Trump?...

Rahm Emanuel has held many titles: Congressman from Illinois, DCCC Chairman, Chief of Staff to Barack Obama, Mayor of Chicago, and Ambassador to Japan under President Biden. These days, he doesn't have an official position at the moment. But that's not stopping him from giving some very pointed advice to Democrats on every possible platform: cable TV, political shows, podcasts, late night TV, and...

You may know our guest today, Josh Holmes, as one of the hosts of the popular political podcast, Ruthless . For those of you who don't know, Ruthless is to the conservative media sphere as Pod Save America is to the liberal media ecosystem. But long before he started his podcasting gig, Amy knew Josh as a Republican political operative. He was chief of staff to Mitch McConnell and ran his 2014 re-...

We are 100 days into the second Trump administration and there's no better person to help us understand what voters are making of these first months of Trump 2.0 than Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson. Kristen is a founding partner of Echelon Insights, an opinion research and analytics firm. She's a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and an on air political contributor at...

Way back in the late 1990s, Cook Political Report founder Charlie Cook had an idea to rank all 435 congressional districts by their partisanship - in other words, whether a district is more Republican or more Democratic. That way, we'd be able to see, at a quick glance, which members of Congress represented districts that were either slightly or strongly partisan. For example, is a certain Republi...

On the last podcast, Amy talked with Chauncey McLean, head of the Democratic super PAC Future Forward, about their media strategy for Kamala Harris and why things didn't work out as they had hoped. For this podcast, we turn to the ad strategy of the Trump campaign with John Brabender, the chief creative officer for the media company BrabenderCox. John was hired as Trump's ad consultant in early 20...

Back in the 2012 cycle, Chauncey McLean was a young staffer on the Obama campaign working in the newly developing field of data analytics. Six years later, McLean put those data science skills - and the ones he developed while working in the private sector testing ads for commercial products - to work as head of the Democratic super PAC, Future Forward. Most outside super PACs like these do an ext...

We've been wanting to have Terrence Woodbury on the podcast for a long time. The reason is that he's a pollster who has done some amazing work with demographic groups that made a big difference in the presidential race last year, but also in previous cycles: Black voters, voters of color, and younger voters. And if many Democrats were surprised by the erosion in support among what they thought was...