Welcome to Politically Speaking.

I'm Elizabeth Bennion, chancellor's professor of political science and director of Community Engagement in the American Democracy Project at Indiana University, South Bend.

This week, we're focusing on the results of Indiana's 2024 elections.

Joining us today are Brandon Smith, Statehouse bureau chief for Indiana Public Broadcasting.

Nikki Kelley, editor in chief of the Indiana Capital Chronicle.

And Kayla Dwyer, Indy star, statehouse reporter.

Thank you all for being here.

And Brandon, let me start with you.

Was there anything about Trump's margin of victory in Indiana that surprised you?

I think that it went up a little bit is not a huge I mean, if you look at the way the country went is not a surprise at all.

He clearly improved basically across the board, everywhere.

So in that sense, it's not a surprise.

I think going into the race, we thought he would at most kind of hold where he had been in 2020, if not maybe lose a little ground, but far from it.

He strengthened his performance.

Back to we'll see what the final numbers are.

But it looks like he might have an even slightly greater margin of victory this year than he had in either of these previous two runs.

So that that, I suppose, is a small surprise.

But, you know, there's going to be a lot of dissecting at the national level about what caused these sort of sweeping results across the country.

But clearly, Indiana was not immune to the effects of that.

And Nick, it was noticeable that Donald Trump seemed to pick up support not only geographically across the country, but also among all different kinds of demographic groups.

Yeah, obviously, he grew his vote among Latino voters, among black voters.

And I think what it comes down to is, you know, regardless of their ethnicity or their communal background, they were voting on what Mike Brown would call as kitchen table issues.

You know, they were voting on the economy, on their wages, on inflation.

And and, you know, that's where they focused their support.

When we think about state races, statewide races in Indiana, do we have any sense of whether people were also voting on those kitchen table issues?

There or is it hard to tell from the election returns alone?

I think in a presidential year, all the politics are national and the same kitchen table issues that are affecting us here are the same everywhere else.

Just as Indiana Democrats and Indiana Republicans are effectively national Democrats and national Republicans.

So I think it's it should all be thought of as one trend.

Maybe that's oversimplifying it, but that's just what I'm thinking right now, because especially where we are right now in our politics, Partizan ID is already the strongest indicator of who you're going to vote for.

But now, in today's world, with hyper partizanship and again the nationalization of politics, it's become the strongest and by far the strongest indicator, I think, to ask voters to vote for anyone not in their party is a bigger ask this year than it's ever been.

And ultimately, when the Democrats are in charge at the presidential level over a period of record of deflation, that's what sticks in people's minds.

I think Democrats in Indiana had their chance to test out whether people cared about abortion in 2022, and they picked up, I think, two seats in the state House.

But otherwise, you know, Republicans retain their supermajority.

And to think that abortion or other social issues like that would somehow help them more this time around, even though we're further removed from the 2022 special session where Republicans passed our ban here seems maybe a little shortsighted.

And Brandon, Republicans did decisively defeat their Democratic and libertarian challengers in all of the statewide races and Indiana.

Was there anything about those results that surprised you?

The only thing that I think that surprised me was how quickly those races were called.

I think some of us were expecting some of those race calls to to last a little while into the evening.

But when you look at the size of the Trump victory and, you know, Kaitlyn just talked about it, everything cascades down.

We saw that in 2016.

We saw that a little bit in 2020.

But really, we saw it again here in a strong way where when the person at the top of the ticket wins by so much, it's hard for members of the other party anywhere down the ballot to make gains where otherwise things would have been close.

You know, Governor elect Mike Braun, the day after the election was was asked about the results and if he was surprised that he kept saying that, you know, the narrative was wrong or that we spun things in a different way.

He said that he believed it would be closer to the decisive victory he ended up winning than the margin of 5 to 7 points that some people were predicting in the couple of weeks heading into Election Day.

So, you know, I think even he perhaps evidenced by those comments, wasn't expecting quite the margin of victory he ended up getting, but one he obviously welcomes.

And Nikki, I think the Democratic Governors Association seemed to buy into their own narrative, perhaps in the state Democrats narrative, that the race would be much closer than anybody expected and much closer than we've seen in recent years.

They did make a big cash infusion into Jennifer McCormack's campaign to match the Republican Governors Association contribution to Mike Braun.

Was that wishful thinking?

Too little, too late.

What's your read on that?

Yeah, I mean, they clearly did have a poll earlier that showed it a little closer than expected.

And they were responding to that in terms of the narrative that Mike Braun mentioned.

I mean, I think we were doing the best with what we had.

Right.

Which was looking at the actions and the actions were going negative against McCormick, going negative against rainwater.

Seen $2 million from the Republican governors Association, seen $2 million from the Democratic Governors Association.

All of those things sort of indicated a closer race than we thought.

So, I mean, those things were real.

We didn't make them up, but they clearly didn't matter in the end.

And that's a great point, because normally that those are the kinds of indicators you would look for.

They're not going to throw money at a race where there's absolutely no reason to do so.

That needs a reach for that button.

Yeah, no, I think listen, like politics.

I think in campaigning, there's a lot of obviously they do.

They had data to go off of and it wasn't nothing.

But polling is so hard, I think not that I do with them, but how do you really capture polls, capture the present mood?

Not.

It's not necessarily that they're supposed to very accurately predict what's going to happen several weeks after they're taken.

You know, on Election Day, I think polls should be looked at as trend like trend for what trends they might inform.

Not so much as a very reliable predictor, but it it helps them to decide, you know, this is where we could put some dollars.

There weren't many very exciting governor races across the country, too.

It's not like Indiana was competing for that much attention, especially after North Carolina completely blew up with their Republican candidate being linked to some pornographic website.

So I think, you know, of course, they're going to try to move the needle after seeing some polling that suggests it's it's there's kind of a path.

I also think we wouldn't have seen maybe this kind of investment if not for the participation of a proven vote getter libertarian candidate.

His participation in the race is really what provided some kind of glimmer of hope for the Democrats.

But he would have needed to perform similarly the way he did in 2020, you know, upwards of 10%.

And he only ended up getting about four and a half percent.

So, yeah, I, I definitely was picking up the frustration from the Republicans about the narrative.

But I agree with Nikki.

Listen, these things were happening and you don't know what voters are going to do on Election Day.

But what happened happened and, you know, we were just picking up on what ended up being a lot of smoke.

And I think we can recognize that now.

Brandon, I do wonder about that major drop off in support for Donald Rainwater.

And I say, Major, relatively speaking, you know, only about half of what he got last time.

What's your read on that?

I mean, is this part of this national support for Donald Trump?

Was he less active, less novel?

What's your thought?

What are your thoughts there?

There's probably a little bit of the Trump effect.

I don't I haven't looked at any like straight ticket voting numbers.

But if we saw an uptick in that, that's going to pull people away from who might have split their ticket between Republicans and and Donald Rainwater four years ago.

But really what I think is it's a return to normal, Right?

2020 was increasingly, it looks like an aberration for libertarians in Indiana.

And some of that was driven by anger at Eric Holcomb, specifically over the decisions he made to help mitigate the spread of COVID 19 in the earliest days of the pandemic, particularly the stay at home order that angered a lot of conservatives to this day.

Members of of Eric Holcomb's own party, many of whom just don't like him despite his record of success in so many areas.

So that was the way to weaponize that anger was, well, I'm not voting for Eric Holcomb.

I'm voting for you.

You're not going to vote for the Democrat if you're a conservative, particularly that level on the on the spectrum of conservatism.

So who are you going to vote for?

It's someone like Donald Rainwater and certainly the name I.D.

he had after running four years ago, you would think would help him.

But I think what ended up happening was Eric Holcomb wasn't on the ballot anymore.

And so those conservatives were angry at Holcomb for his decisions were fine voting for Mike Braun.

Good point.

Now, Nikki, Republicans have retained their supermajority in the Indiana legislature.

What does this mean for the legislative agenda over the next term?

What will you be looking for as you think about upcoming stories?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's status quo, right?

Democrats had hoped to at least break the supermajority at this point, with a few races still kind of waffling like we have.

We didn't see a single, single race move.

So, you know, I think Republicans will continue focusing on belt.

They'll balance the budget.

They've got a budget to do.

We might see some property tax cuts.

They're going to have to rein in Medicaid and we'll obviously focus a lot on education funding.

And there are a myriad other issues that they've got lined up as well.

But those are sort of the big ones.

Anything else that you're looking toward, Brandon?

Yeah, I mean, Mike Braun talked about we've talked about the kitchen table issues.

It's been and in his post-election press conference, which by the way, was like nearly 45 minutes long, which is a really long time for us to be able to talk to a politician like that, which we appreciate it.

I think he talked he stayed focused on what he's calling the kitchen table issues, things like health care reform, property tax reform, things like that.

He's put out several policy plans in his run for governor.

He's really focused on that.

He was asked several questions about social issues like abortion and other things that people like his running mate might come back with have focused not exclusively, but largely on things that Attorney General Todd Rokita seems to focus largely on.

And he talked about those as divisive issues.

And he said you can't go anywhere with those.

People are divided.

They're remaining divided.

Those things might fluctuate over time, but there's nowhere to go after that.

And he wants to focus on issues where he can actually solve problems that people have talked to him about.

So I think that's going to be somewhat reflected in the General Assembly, too.

There's a lot for them to tackle in 2025, the budget and all of the stuff within it and all of the things that cascade down from it doesn't mean that social issues like those won't be authored.

There are certainly be plenty of bills put forward.

There will be plenty of bills on social issues that probably move forward in the General Assembly, but I don't think those are going to be the focus.

Now, what are turnout, of course, is always something that people look closely at when thinking about election results.

Voter turnout in Indiana appeared to be strong overall, but not as strong as 2020.

Was there any surprise there in terms of the gap between early voting, which seemed to really robust and overall voting on Election Day?

I'm going to say no because early voting, I think we saw a surge because Republicans have come around to it in the 2020 election.

Donald Trump openly tried to say people shouldn't mail or early vote.

You know, there were false claims about it being susceptible to fraud.

But then this election cycle, the top of the ticket sort of encouraged it.

And I think that suddenly you see all these Republicans down ballot being like, I voted early.

So I think that helped turn out a lot more numbers than we saw previously.

Also, most people did mail in ballots in 2020 if they were voting early because of the pandemic.

So I think all of that context makes the early voting numbers, not all that not all that shocking and then it turning out to not translate to high voter turnout this year overall.

Also not surprising because of just how far down in the rankings Indiana is with our voter turnout in our elections routinely in the bottom 510 of states.

There is a correlation between the kinds of policies that make voting more accessible at states that have those and their voter turnout numbers.

Of course, correlations are causation, but the correlation is there.

So I think the status quo was to be expected in some of those changes, such as same day, voter registration, automatic voter registration, universal mail in ballots.

We're really on likely to see out of the Indiana General Assembly.

Would you say that's true?

I would say that's true.

I mean, Republicans in the state, in the general Assembly have actually made moves in a different direction of trying to more scrutiny, especially weed out people on the voter rolls.

There was a bill in this past year, you know, under the name of election security to to do just that.

And that's a trend, of course, among Republican dominated states nationwide.

Focus more on security than access at this point.

Correct.

Yeah.

Now, Nikki, it also this lack of this ability to use early voter turnout to predict what turnout will be on Election Day seems consistent with a lot of past research.

So, like Kayla, were you fairly unsurprised or what?

I want to point out that we don't know turnout.

I literally just while talking to you, looked at the state website.

We're at 57% statewide right now, but there are like 20 counties that have been submitted any data yet.

So it's too early for us to know what what our turnout was.

I know that 65% is kind of our high watermark.

And that was in 20.

Yeah, that was 20.

In 16 it was 58.

So I think we'll probably be between there.

It's a you know, I don't think we have a registration problem.

Our problem is obviously turnout.

But, you know, I think I had hoped it might be a little higher, but we're still waiting to actually see what it was.

Yeah, it's certainly not as many contested races as some place like Michigan where everything seemed to be hanging in the balance.

And I think that's another thing that affects turnout when people people feel motivated by these races that are going to be blowouts on certain races or ballot initiatives, which we also don't have in Indiana.

All right.

So I'm wondering about Democratic Party strategy moving forward.

We talked about the dominance of Republicans in the state, both in terms of their super majority status and their capture of all the statewide races.

Is there something that went wrong for Democrats?

Is there a path forward?

Are there any prospects for moving back into the governor's mansion or breaking this supermajority in the future, or is it just too soon to tell?

Brandon, what are your thoughts on that?

I mean, I suppose too soon to tell, but Indiana underwent a massive demographic political shift in 2010, right.

Which was the Tea Party, the famed Tea Party wave election, and where south of I-70, the southern part of the state, used to be dominated by what was referred to sometimes as Blue Dog Democrats.

So more conservative Democrats, they simply switched parties.

I mean, Mike Braun is an example.

The governor of Indiana was one of those former Democrats from southern Indiana are the the next governor of Indiana.

You could even argue Eric Holcomb was a little like that, though.

I think he was always a Republican.

That shift isn't changing any time soon.

It could a fluke year where a Democratic presidential candidate does remarkably well, loses Indiana, but doesn't get blown out in Indiana.

And a weak Republican presidential candidate doesn't lift, you know, the rising tide lifts all boats down ballot the way we've seen these last few cycles in Indiana.

Could that produce an outcome with a really closer gubernatorial election where maybe somehow Democrats claw back that office?

I can't rule that out, but it would have to be like at this point, unless there's another major demographic shift that happens in Indiana.

Politically speaking, it seems like Democrats simply are going to get shut out of statewide offices for the foreseeable future.

It's very interesting what you say about southern Indiana.

It seems to mirror what happened nationally at the Southern Democrats, finding a new home in the Republican Party here in southern Indiana.

I see a similar trend.

I want to talk speaking of trends about Hamilton County, it continues to be a target for Democrats, perhaps due to demographic changes there.

But Republicans did hold their ground.

What does that tell us about future elections in Hamilton County?

And does it shed light on anything about the state as a whole?

Nikki Yeah, I think the last three cycles now we've been hearing about the Purple Lean and really we're going to see a shift in Hamilton County and it just it just isn't happening now.

Jennifer McCormick did really well in Carmel.

She, I think, was above Bryan in that area.

And so there are isolated races where they're going really well.

But overall, I mean, I think I've come to the conclusion that this alleged shift just isn't happening, at least not fast enough.

Like we like I said, three or four cycles.

We've been told this is going to be it, this is going to be and there are small changes here and there.

But, you know, we haven't seen any any real, I guess, byproduct of that.

And Nikki, you mentioned the lack of movement just in general in terms of seats won or lost.

Were there any state house or local races that really stood out for you as being closer than expected or having surprising results this particular election cycle?

Well, I think we knew going in the ones that were going to be tight and they were on election night represent Becky Cashes and race stands out.

And I think the last I checked today, it was still with them like 60 votes or something like that.

So that one was incredibly tight.

A couple of others were tight earlier in the evening, but widened out, for instance, Danny Lopez taking that seat over.

Matt McNally So and I think maybe represent Mosley almost getting beat was was a little bit of a surprise, but again, he pulled it out.

So those were the ones that caught my attention.

Any that caught your attention other than those Brandon or Kayla?

Again, to Nikki's point, I think most that we knew about there's a race down on the Ohio River in southern Indiana.

It was representative for for a few years by representative of Democrat Rita Fleming.

She left office earlier this year was they caucused in a replacement.

So this was technically an incumbent, but running for the first time, which is always an interesting dynamic that's just a tight seat.

It's going to remain a tight seat likely for the for the foreseeable future.

But the Democrat seemed to win again.

That race is largely been conceded that the disconnect here is that while some of these races haven't been called by the the the news organizations who call them, if you look at the county election results, they say, yeah, we're done counting here the results.

And even the state the state's election results website suggests that they're perhaps not finished.

So it looks like, yeah, it was completely there was a 4010 and 7030 split in the Senate, the House and it's 4010 and 7030.

The only one that maybe surprised me was Democratic Representative Pat Buoy, which is up in the region.

That was a lot closer than I think the Republicans didn't spend any money there, but it came down to the wire and took a couple of days to kind of shake out.

But so that will be something maybe to look for in the future if Republicans try to go after that seat and I just want to point out the race, State Representative Lucas defending his seat.

You know, he was put up against Tricia Whitcomb, who is the daughter of a former Republican governor, and he's had many controversies in the state house in terms of stuff he's written on social media.

And he's had a DUI in the last year, pled guilty to that, and it just he won by 40%.

It just goes to show just how ingrained partizan I.D., but also name ID and people maybe just don't care that much about those kinds of social issues.

The power of partizanship, the power of name recognition, and apparently the power of the status quo here in Indiana.

As we look at those 2024 election results.

I want to thank you all so much for being here.

Unfortunately, that is all the time we have for this week's Politically Speaking.

I want to thank our guests, Brandon Smith, Nikki Kelley and Kaitlyn Dwyer for joining us and sharing their insights.

I'm Elizabeth Penny and reminding you that it takes all of us to make democracy work.

We'll see you next time.

This WNIT Local production has been made possible in part by viewers like you.

Thank you.