Is the "blue tsunami" talk legit?
Hey — I'm Isaac Saul, the founder and executive editor of Tangle. This is my new semi-regular newsletter A Grain of Saul, where I dive into some topics we don't get to in our main newsletter.
One of two things is currently happening:
YouGov recently ran a poll on the Senate race in Texas. Among the respondents, 52% said they had voted for Donald Trump in 2024. 40% said they had voted for Kamala Harris. 41% self-identified as Republicans, while just 26% self-identified as Democrats.
And yet, in that poll, 50% of the respondents said they were planning to vote for the Democratic Senate candidate, James Talarico, and 44% said they were planning to vote for the Republican, Trump-endorsed candidate Ken Paxton. Of the people who responded that they were voting for Talarico, 97% said their mind was made up, while just 3% said there was still a chance they’d switch to Paxton.
Again: James Talarico, the man President Trump has dubbed “James TalaFREAKO,” is polling six points ahead of the president’s preferred candidate, in Texas, among a group of respondents who broke 52–40 in the president’s favor less than two years ago.
It’s not just in Texas, either. In Kansas, a state Trump won by 16 points in 2024, the Senate race is now a toss-up. A New York Times/Siena College poll published earlier this month shows the race tied. Kansas hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932.
In recent Tangle editions, we’ve covered artificial intelligence, AI hacks, data centers, data center moratoriums — if it’s related to the AI boom (or bubble), we’ve been on it. In our new YouTube video, Associate Producer Aidan Gorman follows another lead: Are utility bills going up to pay for data centers in other states? To find the answer, Aidan takes to the road and follows a new electric line from an existing coal plant in West Virginia through a planned substation in Maryland to data centers in Virginia. You can check it out here.
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Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.
This podcast written by: Isaac Saul and audio engineered and edited by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Jon Lall.
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