From Sky news.

This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made ten days ago, when the people of Greenland voted on their next government, in a rather surprising result from observers perspectives at least the current ruling party in Greenland did not carry a plurality.

Instead, Greenland's center right party took 29%, enough to edge out the second place party at 24% and the current ruling party at 21%.

The winners are explicitly pro-business and favor a slow but steady path to independence.

The winners are not, from what I have read, pro-Trump.

They do not favor becoming part of the United States.

Greenland's likely next prime minister is young Fredrik Nielsen.

He told Britain's Sky news, quote, we don't want to be Americans.

No, we don't want to be Danes.

We want to be Greenlanders, and we want our own independence in the future, and we want to build our own country by ourselves, end quote.

The only pro-Trump party in the Greenland election got roughly 1% of the vote.

Here's how the Associated Press describes Greenland, which is a self-governing region of Denmark.

Quote Greenland has been on a path toward independence since at least 2009, when the government in Copenhagen recognized its right to self-determination under international law.

Four of the five main parties in the election supported independence, though they disagreed on when and how to achieve it.

The island of 56,000 people, most from indigenous Inuit backgrounds, has attracted international attention since Donald Trump announced his designs on it soon after returning to the white House in January.

Greenland also has large deposits of rare earth minerals needed to make everything from mobile phones to renewable energy technology.

Trump said during the meeting with Denmark's prime minister that Denmark's very far away from Greenland, and questioned whether that country still had a right to claim the world's largest island as part of its territory.

Trump added a boat landed there 200 years ago or something, and they say they've got the rights to it.

I don't know if that's true.

I don't think it is, actually.

If this all seems like a joke, well consider that.

Even Republicans in Congress were laughing about it when Donald Trump brought up Greenland during his recent address in Washington.

And I also have a message tonight for the incredible people of Greenland.

We strongly support your right to determine your own future.

And if you choose, we welcome you into the United States of America.

We need Greenland for national security and even international security.

And where working with everybody involved to try and get it.

But we need it really for international world security.

And I think we're going to get it one way or the other.

We're going to get it.

We will keep you safe.

We will make you rich.

And together we will take Greenland to heights like you have never thought possible before.

It's a very small population, but very, very large piece of land and very, very important for military security and one way or another we're going to get it, he says.

Well, one of our semi-regular guests works for the University of Copenhagen, and he has insight into how Denmark views the situation and what this might mean for people in different places.

And we're going to spend some time later this hour with our attention on United States politics.

There are some upcoming special elections that could be telling along with some news on where Republicans have gained in recent elections and where Democrats have struggled.

My guest this hour is Joseph Burgess, senior data manager and advisor for Dei services at the University of Copenhagen.

Joseph, welcome back to the program.

Evan, thanks so much for having me on.

So I can't ask you to speak for all of the people of Copenhagen or all the people of Denmark, but I will ask you for that insight as best you can offer it, because the reason this program came about today was I. I was musing recently about the way that some conservative commentary commentators are now seemingly kind of obsessed with Greenland, that Donald Trump wants Greenland.

So conservatives are sort of bending over backwards to say, well, you know, they didn't reelect their government and, you know, they're in favor of independence.

So, you know, what they leave out of that equation is what the new leadership says, or what the people are saying in polls about whether they want to be part of the United States or what they think of Donald Trump.

But conservatives are saying, well, they want independence.

So doesn't it make sense that, you know, they should be under our umbrella?

So can you kind of take us through your perspective on all of this?

And and then we'll kind of get a little bit more in the weeds as we go.

Absolutely.

And I think I'll start from my perspective.

The one thing I need is for the United States to stop embarrassing me in front of the country of Denmark, because especially because this most recent round of, and we'll talk about how the Trump has a history with this, and the United States has a history of, of attempting to buy Greenland.

But, this happened like a day before I had a very important dinner with a bunch of new colleagues, and I was like, oh, no, they're all going to ask me about this.

Yeah, that is the last thing that I want.

but yeah, let's put this into some context.

and I'm happy to do so.

so I think, one thing I really want to stress is exactly how tiny, the population of Greenland is.

And, so, especially in relation to upstate New York, it has slightly more people than the town of a.

And, so.

Well, it's a very large landmass.

We're talking about a pretty small group of people overall, around 50,000, 51,000 total.

and, it is quite fascinating.

It's an interesting time to be in Denmark and to be sort of, to be briefly kind of the, the focus of international politics.

And, as Trump pursues this, to some degree and we'll talk maybe about how serious or not serious he is.

And, I think something that came out of his first term as people talking about taking him seriously, but not literally.

And and I think that's an interesting message to talk about here.

Right.

is that how serious is he about this?

Right.

One interesting thing to me is that he's actually talked about this before.

I think it was about 2019.

In this first term, he did a, at least some sort of conversation.

or maybe it was a tweet.

To be honest, I can't remember where he, expressed his interest in the United States.

purchasing Greenland.

so there is this history of this, both within Trump and again, within the United States of potentially purchasing Greenland.

And, and both the people of Greenland and the population of Denmark, I would say are totally against it, in a very large majority.

And, basically every poll we have, every election result, we have, including the most recent election, which I think you did a very good summary of them, shows that Greenlanders are interested in independence from Denmark in some fashion.

And maybe we'll talk a bit about the colonial tensions between Denmark and Greenland, but also that they are pretty clearly uninterested in becoming part of the United States.

And even the.

I think you mentioned that the one party that was sort of pro-Trump, a little bit, got 1% of the vote.

I also want to put in context the actual number of votes they got.

It's about 300, maybe 301.

We're talking about, just because it's a very small group of people.

But, you know, that's that's the population of people who are Trump curious.

And, in this most recent election at least.

So, before we kind of get more into that history, and I do want to understand, I think it will be useful for all of us to better understand some of the disposition that Greenlanders might have toward Denmark and, some of the tensions perhaps there.

but but just looking at what is literally happening in the last few days here, reading from the Guardian, the United States turned to turns to Denmark as it hunts for eggs, despite Trump's threats over Greenland.

And so the Guardian has this story about how in Denmark, there are there's growing sentiment to boycott American goods.

There is a cheeky Danish petition online for Denmark to buy California and rename Disneyland.

but but more seriously, the Prime Minister has been sort of frustrated with with Donald Trump's, kind of threats over trade.

Apparently, a phone call a couple of months ago that President Trump had with Danish leadership, he was saying, you know, you know, not trying to hold them over a barrel, but basically saying, you know, Greenland's going to be ours and we've got big trading power.

Well, now, the Guardian says the United States has asked Denmark and other European nations if they can export eggs as Americans face surging egg prices, and the Nordic Countries Association said on Friday that the request from the U.S. Department of Agriculture is coinciding with the raft of new U.S. tariffs on other countries and must be considered in that context.

So there's all these weird kind of confluences happening here, Joseph.

Of course, President Trump campaign talking about the price of eggs is going to go down the day he's inaugurated and food prices are going to go down.

And, the economy is going to boom.

And it's all sort of going the other way.

So now he's asking Denmark for some eggs, although he's threatening them with more trade escalations.

And, you've got this tension.

So what is it like over, you know, sort of in, you know, where, where your work gets done.

Is this something that people are talking about often?

Is this something that people are taking maybe seriously, but not literally or literally, but not seriously or both?

I mean, take us through some of that.

Absolutely.

So I can maybe talk about just, some of the people I know and their reactions.

And then the little bit about sort of the, the political reactions among elected officials.

so I think, and for both of them, I think it's actually been a kind of similar process of sort of like, oh, that's kind of funny or weird that he would want to do that.

And so, one of big denial or humor or like, oh, that's kind of funny.

And then maybe, sort of sinking realization over time that, perhaps he is more serious about this.

And I think, one of both Trump's strengths and weaknesses is that he doesn't necessarily have a fixed set of ideological commitments.

Right?

at some times.

And so it's hard to tell exactly how serious he is, about various things that he might champion.

This one, as said, is something he has talked about before, which does maybe suggest that he is more interested in it than other things that he has suggested and then, you know, not gone on to actually do.

But I think there was a kind of, a sort of creeping sense that he might be, you know, genuinely interested in doing this.

And, and then potentially leveraging tariffs or other sort of tools to make it potentially happen.

so I guess that's the kind of process of stage one being denial or humor.

And now we're on this sort of sense of, oh, is this real?

Is this potentially happening?

and I'm not sure anyone, including Trump even knows how, serious or committed he really is here.

Is there some schadenfreude going on over the fact that egg prices remain, you know, kind of out of control and there is this sort of hat in hand.

Can you help us with eggs while we threaten you with more tariffs?

Situation.

You know, maybe among the most elite elected officials, I don't think, where I have not had any conversations about egg prices.

although I, I was thinking going to the American diner, that's near me and doing some man on the street style of journalism, asking some random Danes how they feel about America now.

No.

It's fascinating.

We're talking to Joseph Burgess, who works, as a senior data manager and advisor for Dei services at the University of Copenhagen.

We're talking Greenland.

Some of the the dynamics in play there, better understanding some of that history.

And then we are going to talk about, American politics more broadly in our second half hour.

here's an email from Chaz, he said.

And by the way, listeners, if you want to join the conversation, lots of ways to do that, you can email us.

Is Chaz did connections at KCI dawg connections a cyborg?

If you're watching on the Sky news YouTube channel, you can join the chat there.

You can call the program toll free.

844295 talk (844) 295-8255.

It's 2636.

If you call from Rochester 2639994 Chaz emails to say this.

Can we stop pretending that it's somehow crazy for Trump to recognize the strategic value of Greenland?

Seward did as well.

He attempted to purchase it.

Purchase it at the same time that he purchased Alaska.

There were additional attempts until World War Two, at which point Greenland became a de facto protectorate of the United States, an arrangement Truman attempted to make permanent in 1946.

Ten years later, the Joint Chiefs would recommend that Eisenhower make another attempt.

End quote.

That's email from Chaz Joseph.

What would you say to that?

I absolutely agree with the overall point.

I think I would quibble a little bit on the specifics of Greenland being a de facto protectorate.

so I wouldn't necessarily agree with the specifics, but the the overall point is actually something I wanted to discuss.

So I'm glad this, this listener brought it up.

that a, we've actually, again, attempted or considered to purchase Greenland, a pre-trump even multiple times, as well as that, multiple people have considered Greenland both in the past and now as having, a real sense of strategic value.

And, so do I think it's crazy to consider it?

No, I think, the sense of craziness is not, recognizing its value.

But I think what people are maybe reacting to negatively is the fact that Greenland and Denmark don't want it.

That's the part that is considered crazy or negative.

but definitely we do want to talk about the, the past sort of, ways that, America has considered this.

Right?

And even actually purchased colonial possessions from Denmark in the past.

So the US Virgin Islands, for example, formerly, known as the Danish West Indies, were a a purchase from Denmark.

so in that way, it's really not that crazy in terms of international affairs or purchases.

And it has some clear historical, precedents.

But, it is crazy in that, you know, this, Denmark and its allies do not want it.

So I think that's the sort of reaction that is very negative and, so-called crazy to people.

Yeah, I think that's a very astute way of describing it.

And I would just say to Chaz, I don't think anybody thinks Greenland itself doesn't have value.

That would be helpful to just about anybody who was in control of that land.

I, I think it's more if anyone's ever asked you on a date and you were like, no, if they were to come back to you and say, well, you're going to go out with me one way or another, I'm going to have you.

you would probably file a restraining order.

At the very least, you would probably, put new locks on, maybe block their number.

And when Trump jokes kind of, I guess jokes, not really jokes to Congress, even though they're laughing, we're going to get it one way or another.

And polling shows 86% of Greenlanders don't want that.

And only 1% of Greenlanders voted for the party that wanted that.

Then it looks like a different thing then it especially at a time when Russia and other aggressive autocracies are.

I'm not saying United States is autocracy, but I'm pointing out that Russia and others have said we're going to take what we want by force, and we're going to dare people to stop us.

That's not probably a great time to be joking about that, or even moving more seriously in that direction.

But that's I think that's the distinction that I would make to chess.

But maybe I've missed something in his point.

and I would invite him to follow up now.

Got a question here, Joseph, about, why Greenlanders, why Greenlanders aren't having a good relationship with Denmark.

So why don't you talk a little bit about that?

I mean, I think American conservatives would are laughing a little bit about this because they say, hey, Bernie Sanders has been saying for years that Denmark is this model of governance and that that's a good kind of mix of approaches to, you know, a free market with a big social safety net with high levels of happiness, satisfaction and innovation.

But if Greenland doesn't like and what's wrong with Denmark?

Well, what's that relationship like?

Joseph, take us through that.

Sure.

And, I did want to just briefly again, say that because this point to me was so great for historically grounding.

yeah.

The Trump, the potential purchase in this talk, I was going to bring up the exact same thing.

So, I appreciate Cass saving me the time.

and then moving on to kind of the relationship between Greenland and Denmark and why there have been some historical tensions.

I would say it's very similar.

And we'll talk a little bit about the specifics just a second to the kind of, the overall history of colonization and, and atrocities that have been done.

throughout history.

so kind of some recent incidents that people are discussing and by recent even really mean within the last 80, 100 years ago.

And, but that we've seen very similar cases in other colonized territories and areas, or things like the abduction of, Greenland Inuit children to be raised in Denmark.

the.

Yeah, I'm looking over a little list I prepared and some really bleak stuff.

I have to be honest with you as well as, in the 1960s and 70s, Danish physicians for saying birth control, specifically IUDs on to green list and Greenlandic Inuit women, sort of different laws around, the ability of, Greenland people to know or inherit from Danish fathers.

That's between 1914 and 1960 or so.

all these things are horrible.

And but in some ways, they're they're typical.

Right.

And the kind of history of colonization.

I don't mean to downplay them by saying that, but to know that they're very similar to things that have been done, in both Canada, in America to indigenous, indigenous people.

Right?

So to kind of compare them and to understand them as being kind of a similar history of colonized people with, with similar tensions, some of that, I would say most of that history is certainly new to me, probably new to a lot of listeners.

and I can understand why that continues to bring tension.

Is there a sense that you have noticed, either in sort of the political elite or among, you know, European people, Danish people, that that relationship could be repaired?

I think it's certainly possible that the relationship could be, repaired and in to become a more positive one over time.

I think it's quite likely that the Greenlandic people will pursue a route to a political independence, but still having some sort of, an especially special relationship with Denmark and the other Nordic countries.

I would say that's probably.

And of course, it's up to them.

But the the most positive outcome is they continue to have some sort of that relationship and ability to travel between, the Nordic countries and, and Greenland, but, but it's understandable, of course, that there are these kind of tensions and that many of these incidents, as I mentioned, are actually quite recent, right?

Within the sort of last 50 years, even so.

Yeah.

Tom, text to say that we should be tying Canada into this discussion and what I will tell you, Tom, and others, is that we are having a conversation next week.

I think Tuesday and Tuesday.

It sounds about right now.

Okay.

it's on Canada next week.

And so we are going to be having a conversation with a guest from Canada Tuesday at noon with a guest from Canada who works in the United States, who has worked on, you know, I would, economics and geopolitics and can really talk to some of the anger that Canadians are feeling.

You know, the whole thing about annexing Canada went from something that was mildly a joke to people, to not only an escalating trade war, but also a sense among Canadians that, that they better take this seriously.

The New York Times reported a couple of weeks ago that some of Donald Trump's surrogates had calls with Justin Trudeau's surrogates and basically said that Donald Trump doesn't view international borders the same way that the Canadians do, especially in regards to Great Lakes fresh water.

And, starting with Ontario, the province of Ontario, and Canadians are basically operating as if it would not be wild for Trump to try to assert some sort of control over the province of Ontario, for starters.

So they're taking it seriously.

We're going to talk about that on Tuesday.

and just because I have to just if I gotta ask you, when you when you look at the polling data in Canada, if I would have told you eight, 12 weeks ago that Pierre Poilievre might not be the next prime minister and the Conservatives in Canada might lose, what would you say?

What would you have said?

well, I hate to to leak our text messages, but you and I did talk about it a little bit, and.

Yeah.

And, and we were sort of talking about this again a while ago.

I don't even remember how long.

And it really seemed like the conservative might be, able to just easily win the Canadian federal elections at that time.

And it's really shocking how, how both Trump and as well as Trudeau resigning and being replaced with a new figure, somewhat maybe similar to, to what Democrats attempted to do with Biden quitting and subbing in Kamala, has really revitalized the, the Canadian liberals.

and, it's I thought it might be possible, but I was thinking it might be more like instead of losing dramatically, they just lose a little bit.

But, now it seems even possible that they, the sort of center left in Canada might be able to, run the country for another five years, which, again, was is shocking considering how poorly they were polling just, you know, three months, six months ago.

And it's, a large part of it really is due to negative reactions to Trump.

Amazing.

maybe one more question on that, if you'll indulge it, Joseph and I want to connect it to some of the observations about political trends around the world, because sometimes when we talk about conservative movements, conservative in the United States doesn't necessarily always mean the same as it means in the UK or Eastern Europe or South America.

I mean, these are terms that have some overlap, but not always the same.

And I, I make that distinction because I don't know how you would categorize certain movements.

Maybe more right, far right, left, far left, whatever.

But I look at what has happened in Canada.

With Mark Carney rising to the top of liberal politics.

There is the possible successor to Trudeau.

I don't know much about him.

I need to spend more time reading.

He certainly looks to me like sort of a safe kind of technocrat.

you know, not sort of a rabble rousing, populist and similar to me.

Again, I'm using my analogs here that are imperfect, but similar to the way Democrats turn to Joe Biden in 2020.

For what they thought was a safe choice, maybe not the most inspiring, but safe to try to win.

and I look at Carney, it feels the same.

Maybe you look at that similarly.

Maybe you think that that's not a perfect analogy.

I'd love to know.

I'm also curious to know what you think about the way these movements are similar or different.

I mean, is the right still as ascendant as it has seemed over the last 12 months, or is there, is there anything that indicates to you that some of the political momentum that right leaning movements have has been halted at all?

Absolutely.

It's a big question.

So I'll try and, tackle it in some parts.

Yeah.

I would definitely agree with Mark Carney, your description of him as kind of this technocratic leader with a lot of experience and kind of, serving as sort of a national, finance guy in terms of, being in charge in monetary policy or in England and in Canada.

I would say the difference is that I believe that I'm checking this right now, actually, that he's, significantly younger.

So he's about 60, right now.

so he doesn't have necessarily, Biden's baggage in terms of age.

but in some ways, I think you could kind of see him as a similar pick.

He might be a bit more.

If Trudeau is center left, he might be a bit more.

You could view him as centrist.

so maybe slightly to for example, he's, either did or is about to scrap their carbon tax, in his current role as prime minister.

So I think, your description of him or your assessment of him is accurate there.

Then could you repeat the the second part of that?

Yeah.

And so if they can halt what looked like an ascendant more conservative movement, although I don't know that Pierre Poilievre lines up with much of what I've seen in this country or in Europe.

but that would be obviously a big political story.

We're looking across South America, we're looking at Europe, where these right ascendant movements parties are doing better.

You know, maybe they're maybe they're doubling their vote.

Yeah.

And so in Germany, AfD did certainly better than they have.

would have been expected better than I think they've ever done.

Although the not as well as they would have liked.

They didn't they didn't win that election.

So I don't know how to contextualize some of these, these movements and how you see the right leaning movements in the momentum.

And if you think this moment has sort of slowed some of that momentum, or if there's still a sense that right leaning movements, are on the rise.

okay.

Absolutely.

So I think there there definitely is kind of two things going on that, one, there is a bit of a and ascended moment for right wing politics and especially the sort of far right nationalist politics and, that Trump represents, but also there's been a real, particularly nasty anti-incumbent mood, which I think is probably a better way of understanding the kind of, the actually Covid pandemic to now moment.

So I would say for the last four years or so, where it seems like voters everywhere really just want to kick the bums out, if you will.

And, and I think we're seeing that energy pretty much everywhere.

And even when a new government is elected, voters seem just as unhappy as they were, you know, two weeks earlier.

so there's no real grace period either.

and even, for example, you know, in England, they replace the, center, right, conservatives, the Tories, with labor, their center left party.

And then labor is now struggling in the polls.

just, you know, a few months later, so I think the the real way to kind of describe the moment we're in is that voters are generally and worldwide are very unhappy.

They're taking out taking it out on whoever's in power at the moment even.

Yeah.

So if the right wins elections, pretty soon, the voters are unhappy with the right instead of sort of entrenching them.

That's interesting.

Lastly, on Greenland, before we turn to American politics in our second half hour, you know, and when I look at the polls that I can find not just the recent election results, but surveys of Greenlanders, of which I like the Joseph said earlier, it's roughly the size of Iran to coin.

I mean, it's a small population with a huge amount of territory.

Greenlanders tend to say, we want independence.

We don't want to be part of Denmark.

We don't want to be part of the United States.

We we're not fans of Trump.

I mean, it's in the 80 to 90% range when they're saying those things.

What we have seen in this country is that Trump and his acolytes have been phenomenal at using social media and modern media and fragmented media to start to kind of tap into coalitions that used to be strictly or pretty predominantly left young voters, voters of color.

A lot has changed.

I could see them, Joseph, working hard to with a kind of a blitz of media in Greenland, probably thinking or maybe assuming that the only way the United States does gain any sort of official status with Greenland in the future is with some buy in from, from Greenlanders.

And should we expect that kind of media blitz to happen?

Maybe it's already happening.

I don't know.

Yeah, that's an interesting question.

I would say it's certainly possible.

But again, it kind of depends a on the sort of level of commitment or interest Trump truly has to this, which I think no one really knows, maybe not even Trump himself.

And then also, of course, the idea that a lot of this discourse is in Greenland is not even necessarily accessible to me because it's, it's not necessarily in England or Danish, but in a kind of, a variety sometimes of, of indigenous languages of the Greenland Inuit people.

So I think that's maybe a little bit harder for them.

for a kind of, a foreign, national to attempt to, to meddle with or to interfere with, right.

Well, said Joseph Burgess, senior data manager and advisor for my services, I see I've got to be careful because, everybody's got associations with Dei means, so I see services.

You want to explain it?

The University of Copenhagen.

Just explain a little bit about what you do before we go to break.

Joseph.

Absolutely.

And I was thinking, correcting you, that I'm not working on diversity.

I work with researchers to help them use and access, high performance computing.

So big supercomputers to do cool research.

That's what I do.

Joseph joining us this hour, and when we come back, we're going to talk Mexican politics, special elections coming up in Congress that he's got his eye on.

I'm also going to ask a little bit about some of what we've seen in the data about, the way voters have been migrating.

And that's something we talk about regularly with Joseph.

Joel writes to the program to say, the last thing we need is to have Trump and his drill baby drill attitude go after the resources of Greenland.

Man, we will definitely screw that up.

That's from Joel.

welcome with your feedback, listeners.

connections to talk you can join the conversation in our YouTube chat.

If you're watching on the Sky news YouTube page live there.

Or you can call the program toll free.

844295 talk 84429582 and 55 26369.

If you're calling from Rochester 2639994.

Coming up in our second hour, the Landmarks Society of Western New York has come out with their new list for 2025 of the five to revive five buildings, Historic sites, places that they want to focus on preserving and saving from demolition or loss.

We'll take you on a little tour around the region of their 2025 five to revive next hour.

Support for your public radio station comes from our members and from Excel.

Is Blue Cross Blue Shield believing that everyone deserves to be cared for and to live well through community investments, partnerships, and education, accelerate Blue Cross Blue Shield is working to address health inequities more at accelerate bcbs.com.

One of the reasons I always feel like I learn so much from Joseph Burgess is that he is able to contextualize what we are seeing in the ongoing flow of American politics, and it feels sometimes like, well, we're always in election season.

Well, there is always an election.

And in fact, coming up on April 1st, Florida's got a couple of special elections and congressional districts, and in one of them, at least a Democrat, has raised $10 million and a Republican leaning congressional district try to flip it and, you know, make into trying to make a run there.

Arizona's got one coming up on, later this year in September.

we've we've got different ways of kind of looking at I don't know if bellwether is the right name, but some, some of the momentum and, and some of the activity.

So Joseph, what is on your radar right now when it comes to American elections.

Absolutely.

So, special elections and then the regularly scheduled ones in November.

There we go.

which November 2025.

And, as well as a bunch of local and county elections, including in, in your neck of the woods in upstate New York, the main ones that people kind of think of, this kind of, off year cycle is the Virginia governor, new Jersey governor, and New York City mayor.

and we can talk a bit about special elections, too, and, how they've been sort of historically predicted in the past, at least a few clear outcomes and why they may or may not be now.

Well, I can't wait to hear what you think about the New York City mayor.

I mean, everything old is new again.

Joseph and Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York State, recently touted the record of former Governor Andrew Cuomo as an effective administrator and governor.

Now he wants to be New York City's mayor.

he has really held his criticism of Donald Trump in this campaign to the point where some pretty popular online conservative influencers are touting Andrew Cuomo.

I would put this on things that I would not have predicted five years ago during the pandemic.

But, I've learned to make no predictions in politics.

What do you see here?

Sure.

So we can talk about the, New York City mayor's race.

first I would say, in this one, it seems like the Democratic primary will be the the main race here.

It's unlikely, but certainly it could be possible that the general election, could end up being competitive in some ways.

But I think, what what the New York City mayor's race is interesting is that it'll tell us more.

In some ways, I would say it's almost less nationalize.

It's really about New York City specifically the, and the ways that kind of big city politics are sort of different from the rest of, of what we're talking about right now.

So very kind of specific concerns in some ways about, the subway, about, about safety, about crime, about rent, a lot of talk, discussion about rent and rent control and building new houses.

so I think it's going to be an interesting race, but I don't think it necessarily tells us that much.

you know, but clearly the United States is not New York City.

So I don't know that it's generalizable or necessarily predictive of future things in the way that, for example, the Virginia governor or New Jersey governor.

But those might tell us a bit more about where, the various parties are headed in the future.

Let's get there in a second to just one more question that pops to mind for me.

And again, this is this is my lay observer.

You know what swirls through my head when I see Andrew Cuomo back in the mix here?

A couple of things come to mind.

First of all, is it always going to be the case that someone with a high Q rating or a high name recognition always has a chance, no matter their history?

Is that part of it?

Is it, separately?

Is it possible that some of the.

Oh, the the ruptures, the ripples of the MeToo kind of era, if you define it as like 2018, 2019, 20, 20, governors, politicians, people who had, all kinds of headlines because of, allegations or sometimes confirmation of sexual misconduct, is there kind of a push back in another direction here?

Does that help Andrew Cuomo?

In some ways, I don't know.

I it's this one's hard for me to kind of figure out.

And maybe we have to wait until voters tell us more.

maybe I'm jumping too far ahead here.

I don't know, Joseph.

What do you make of that?

I'd say again, it's it's probably what I referenced a little bit about, this not being a kind of generalizable race and that, Andrew Cuomo being maybe kind of a unique figure here.

And, so I don't think that necessarily tells us anything about, the other ways that voters react to, politicians who have allegations of sexual misconduct or sexual harassment.

And, I would say it's probably more about the kind of very specific and, somewhat insane New York City Democratic politics, which would take many episodes of connections to get to the bottom of.

And probably we would both might be a little, a little crazy by the time that.

Fair enough.

So what are you looking at in Virginia and New Jersey with gubernatorial races?

Sure.

So, I'm looking at both.

I, I'm actually almost more interested in new Jersey, where, Democrats still won the state in, in 2020 for the presidential election, but they did far worse than they did just four years ago.

And a lot of that is, as people may have heard of Democrats doing worse with some, with some groups that are traditionally associated with them.

So not doing as well with young voters, with various racial groups.

so doing, really quite poorly in new Jersey.

So we're going to see in this off year election, if these things, have any impact.

and the reason why it might not, why their recent weaknesses might not impact them as well.

And so some research suggests, this is what we're going to talk about with special elections to before me in the episode is that Democrats are improving with one type of voter and not doing this well with another type of order.

I guess you could say that about any election, but very specifically here.

What I mean is that they're doing well with this population of voters who are like the most heavily engaged voters, and they're not doing as well with, we can call them, I guess, low information voters.

And, so people who aren't necessarily following traditional media, sorry, excuse me, they're, people who are maybe sort of less engaged, in traditional media in that way.

Maybe they're getting their news from alternative sources or it's not following the news much at all.

But those people don't vote is much speculation off year elections.

And so even their kind of recent weaknesses in 2020 4th May actually not really hurt them that much.

in 2025.

And that's what I'm going to be still on the lookout for.

How are they doing in some of these areas?

And deep blue cities where they struggled in 2024 relative to, to past performance?

Yeah.

This is where I think if you're a Democratic strategist, I think it's not an easy time to figure out a, a path to winning in 2028, in the presidential election.

Now, you can win.

Certainly you can win midterms.

We know history favors the party out of power.

and if there's a recession or related economic downturn, you can win in a lot of places.

You can win special elections.

Special elections.

Do get the very engaged people to turn out here.

And where Democrats seem to have an advantage is and forgive me, Joseph, I've spent a lot of time reading David Shaw lately.

I don't know if you think that's a good or a bad thing, but Shaw is trying to show a lot of data that just continues to confirm some of what you and I talked about, which is that despite all the talks about the way we are polarized, polarized by race, polarized by ethnicity, we are actually becoming less polarized by race and ethnicity and ethnicity as a voting electorate, especially in presidential elections, we became less polarized.

Where we are more polarized is especially in two ways.

The main way is educational attainment.

So we are very, very polarized.

If you have college degrees, higher ed degrees, you're more likely to vote on the political left in this country.

If you don't, you're much more likely to vote in the political right that those are just facts.

And the gender gap that you hear a lot about doesn't exist nearly as much in older voters in this country.

There's some, but not much of a gap.

It's a big gap in Gen Z.

It's a big gap in 18, 19 years old and people in their 20s, men like Trump and the Republicans.

Right now, that's a popular brand with young men.

And they turned out in 2024.

Now they don't come out in special elections as much or off years, but that is a big shift.

Women age 18, 19, in their 20s are very, very opposed to Donald Trump and Republicans.

It's a big, big gap.

So when we see where the electorate's moving apart, and then you see some of the surprising ways along racial lines, it's become less polarized.

Where does that leave a party that's trying to win?

And does the party risk over interpreting results from special elections, smaller turnout places when their base is more likely to be there?

Joseph.

I will say because of, Trump's, recent strength, especially with, with voters of different racial groups, I saw someone referred to him as the first post-racial president, which, which did get a laugh out of me.

Okay, I don't think we're there.

I mean, like, no, I don't think we're quite there, but, as an edgy take on Twitter, I at least got a chuckle that it made, but that's kind of the moment we're in.

And, I do, I don't necessarily agree with David Shaw, who is a data analyst and also worked, extensively on either the Kamala campaign or the super PAC.

Unfortunately, I don't remember.

But either way, was very involved in the recent presidential election.

but I do think that that reading of the, the election, or.

I'm sorry, the current, different voting groups in the United States is largely correct.

Right.

And it's kind of a weird place to be.

It's not necessarily where I would have guessed we would be.

but it's also somewhat similar in some ways and grew up, I would say where the far right is doing quite well among young voters.

So it's not, unprecedented or unique to the United States in any way.

But it's an interesting place to be, for sure.

And as we both have kind of mentioned it, with those sort of voting demographics, it's a weird situation where they'd be Democrats could do great this year, great in, in the midterms, in the off year elections in 2027.

But they may not solve their problems, before 2028.

And that's kind of a weird place to be where we're not sure if we can correctly.

Sure.

Those voters, because they probably won't be turning out for the next three years anyways.

Well, and you mentioned, Virginia, that the Democrats won in Virginia and New Jersey Democrats still carried in 2024.

Right?

I mean, I'm not crazy.

They still carried those, those you point out, correct?

Yes.

Vis-A-Vis 2020 much worse results.

And in those places, four years ago, Glenn Youngkin, the Republican, wins the Virginia gubernatorial campaign.

So I'm curious to know, Joseph, if you think we are approaching an end to an era or if we will see more of Virginia, Kentucky, where in Kentucky people think of Kentucky, very heavily red state.

Mitch McConnell's Kentucky Republicans always win in the presidential election.

Well, it's kind of Democratic Governor Andy Beshear, who is touted as possibly a national figure.

He's popular and he's a Democrat.

Virginia tends to vote on the political left in presidential campaigns, but they elected a Republican governor who's been popular.

So are we going to see more of that ticket split, or do you think that those are anachronisms that will go away and states will get more distinctly red or blue?

This is a great question.

So I think it's worth talking about, ticket splitting in general and kind of, so voters are much more likely to be willing to ticket split.

And by that, I mean be willing to support a sort of presidential candidate of one party and, a different candidate for other races, of different parties.

So voting for Trump and, a Democratic governor or voting for Harris and a Republican governor.

so it does seem like ticket splitting is declining in general.

but it I still need to read a bit and think about that a bit in the context of the 2024 elections, I would say Andy Beshear's specifically, and I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that correctly, but in many ways, he specifically is kind of the end of an era of sort of southern strength.

and, and the white Democrats and the Solid South.

so actually, I think Democrats controlled even the Kentucky State House until something like 2014, 2012, which is really shocking when you think about it.

And he's kind of the, he's part of that political tradition.

Right?

His dad, I think, was also a governor or a politician of some kind.

so he's a bit of a unique figure that way.

But, it's, you know, I think we'll always see some level of ticket splitting.

There will always be some popular candidates who outperform or, you know, candidates like the, in North Carolina, the, their Republican gubernatorial candidates who massively underperformed.

So that'll always happen as long as we have elections.

I'm not quite sure what to say about, the kind of trend of that going for it.

The, Patrick writes to say Evan Mayor Adams left the door wide open for Cuomo.

Personally, I thought Cuomo was an effective communicator.

perhaps he has learned some things from the Covid scenario.

He backed Anthony Fauci, he says, regarding sexual misconduct.

If the stuff happened in the governor's mansion, how was none of it caught on closer could television cameras?

Patrick, I do not want to adjudicate the allegations against Cuomo.

That's I don't not that we shouldn't talk about that in the future, but I don't have any sort of, that is not a set of documents or study that I've got ready to talk about.

It is interesting, though, that there are voters who say, yeah, I mean, they look at everything against Cuomo and they go, I think it was pretty good.

So, maybe Andrew Cuomo will have a future.

And Patrick is saying exactly that.

Greg emails to say, Evan, your guest should mention that Democrats are astroturfing all over the place.

They're packing Republican town halls, and they're sending money to congressional campaigns in other states.

None of it looks legitimate.

That's from Greg.

What do you think, Joseph?

Sure.

So I think those are kind of two separate statements or accusations, I guess.

Accusation sounds a little strong.

but two thoughts.

I'll take that.

are Democrats sending out of state money to these special elections?

Absolutely.

I think that's very clear.

And perfectly legal, of course.

And, but for example, I think, at the top of the hour or close to it, you mentioned that Democrat who had raised $10 million or something insane for a congressional special election.

and then I think it goes that although the Democratic base that may be demoralized in some way, they're still willing to donate tons of cash.

and we will still see some potentially competitive special elections, although I think that one, won't necessarily be competitive.

in terms of the astroturfing.

And I think, what this person is alleging is sending people from blue districts into red districts for these town halls.

I don't know if that's true.

I would say it's probably not, but I haven't actually followed that part super closely.

And, in some of these places, for example, like I've seen a couple of them, that took place in Nebraska, I was like, it's probably they're not doing it there because Nebraska is really big and you'd have to drive a lot.

And I'm a little skeptical.

So I would say overall, I think, I'll also just, just as a quick historical, clock in here.

I remember Democrats really accusing Republicans of doing that, in the Tea Party era.

Right.

and even if that was partially true, voters were still really mad at the Democrats.

So there was still like capturing of a real feeling at that time.

and I think if you get too caught up on, you know, like, oh, everything's a conspiracy or that, big money is out to get me, you kind of missed some real hits or anger among, among voters.

Joseph, I always learn from these conversations, and you are always generous with your time, and they go too fast.

But please keep us in the loop.

As you are thinking about politics and seeing the data.

And let's bring you back with routine here, and we'll talk again soon.

Evan, thanks so much for having me on again.

This is always fun.

Joseph Burgess joining us.

he's a senior data manager and advisor at the University of Copenhagen.

And I just want to briefly, as we close the hour, say, Harris sent me an email saying Evan makes some attempt to show that there are nuances how to talk about conservatism.

He says those attempts have been woefully inadequate.

And invariably you cast conservative positions in a negative light, he says.

Someone like me, who abhors Donald Trump and the cowards in the Republican Party, can still passionately advocate for a balanced budget higher taxes for most citizens, especially billionaires.

The defense of Ukraine, addressing climate change, opposing race based employment practices and more.

And he says, I know it takes effort and time that may not make for good radio, but that is what connections listeners expect from Harris.

I hear you.

I think that's a great email.

First of all, I encourage you to go back and listen.

Just last week and we had Professor Lauren Hall on the program talking about her views on what it means to be a principled, conservative's conservative and why that is so valuable.

I do not view conservatism in a negative light.

I grew up in a family of small conservatives, and I hear you and I appreciate the email.

We've got more connections coming up in just a moment.

This program is a production of Sky Public Radio.

The views expressed do not necessarily represent those of this station, its staff, management or underwriters.

The broadcast is meant for the private use of our audience, any rebroadcast or use in another medium, without express written consent of Sky is strictly prohibited.

Connections with Evan Dawson is available as a podcast.

Just click on the connections link at WXXI news.

Org