More Notes On The Importance Of Character In The 2026 Elections

Stuart Stevens joins us live tomorrow at 1pm ET/Team USA plays tmr night at 8pm ET!!!!!

Morning all. Hope you had a wonderful 4th, and have fun plans for today too. Let’s start with this breathtaking video of the fireworks in New York City last night taken from a subway train crossing the Manhattan Bridge from Brooklyn into Manhattan:

We have an exciting day at the World Cup today - Norway takes on Brazil, and England heads to Mexico City to play Mexico. I also want to note that the performance of Cabo Verde, an island nation of just 530,000 people, has been one of the most inspirational sporting performances I’ve ever seen. While they lost to Argentina on Friday I still can’t stop thinking about what they accomplished. This goal by Sidny Lopes Cabral Friday night was one of the most remarkable goals I’ve ever witnessed with my own eyes…..

Today, I want to return to a related theme we’ve been exploring here of late - the emergence of virtue and character as a powerful Democratic counter to the GOP’s Olympian levels of corruption and betrayal this year.

In their recent series of battleground polls the New York Times probed these matters in depth. Here’s a summary of their two primary “character” questions. Look at the advantage Democrats have in an electorate that across these six states is currently voting 47% Dem and 47% GOP. It’s a bit stunning:

I should note that the last column on the right is how well the Dem candidate is performing against the Republican compared to Harris’ margin in 2024. We are witnessing dramatic overpeformances of our candidates throughout the 2026 battleground (yes Platner is as of today an outlier to this trend).

OK, Simon, we have strong advantages on character throughout most of the battleground. But how important is it to voters? Here is the average of the responses to a question about why people were voting for each Democratic candidate, open ended, meaning folks volunteered their answers and did not pick from a pre-written battery of options. This average is across all six battleground states:

Summarizing the responses across the six states:

• 39% character/competence

• 30% policy/issues

• 70% something other than “issues”

So not only do we have important advantages on character, but character, in this age of GOP corruption and betrayal, has come to really matter to voters.

Now let’s compare these results from a poll CNN did earlier this year where they asked those who disapproved of Trump’s job performance why (61% disapprove, 39% approve). Here too they asked the question open-ended, not from a preset battery (and yes it is more than 100% for some people gave more than one answer). This 61% are the voters most available to us this year:

Let’s summarize the findings:

• 35% - Temperament/Personal Behavior

• 25% - Democracy/rule of law/dictator/misusing power

• 23% - Other policy, including immigration and health care

• 15% - Foreign policy

• 12% - Economic/Cost of Living

These findings, again open-ended, are similar to what we see above - character matters to voters in this election, and traditional “policy/issue” areas are perhaps not as central to how people form their opinions about politics as much of our polling and discourse suggests. This notion that our very heavy issue oriented polling/research may be preventing us from listening to the electorate properly is something I explored in depth with New Yorker writer Nathan Heller when he came to visit last year.

The questions in both the NYT and CNN polls ask a voter why they are supporting a candidate or why they disapprove of Trump. Here are the results of different question the NYT asked across the six battleground states, a traditional “most important issue” question, also opened ended. Note again the strong performance of things we don’t consider to be “issues,” and the once again the strong performance of “threats to democracy.”

A few other takeaways from this data:

• This data provides additional evidence that “threats to democracy” (No Kings) is far more important than our current convention wisdom inside the pro-democracy family. For more on this check out my conversation with Marc Elias from earlier this week.

• Democrats need to come to understand why health care keeps performing so poorly in open ended, not pre-set battery polling. In the CNN poll health care came in at 2%. In NYT’s six battleground states it was just 3%.

A final point. What all this data tells us is there is no single dominant issue in the election, and that we must speak broadly to a variety of concerns of voters - economy/prices, threats to democracy/corruption, character/virtue, and health care. G. Elliott Morris has been arguing that one of the reasons Democrats are performing so well right now across the country is that we are doing far better in speaking to people’s “most important issue,” whatever that issue may be. Which suggests, strongly, that we cannot pivot from perceived second tier issues but speak to them forcefully. In our retail communications it’s not an “or” or a “pivot” but an “and.” We must also be agile and savvy enough in parsing through this data to eliminate the views of the 35% of the country or so that are just not available to us. Their extreme, MAGA/Fox bubble views should not dictate our understanding of how we talk to the voters who are available to us. Look at the difference between all voters and Democrats in this recent AARP poll in Ohio we discussed the other day:

OK, I nerded out a bit on a steamy Sunday morning. Come talk about America at 250, all this new polling analysis, my new essay It’s Time To Move On From The “Democrats Suck” Narrative - It’s Wrong, And We Have An Election To Win, and more with Stuart Stevens tomorrow at 1pm ET.

Enjoy your Sunday, enjoy the World Cup today, and yes, now, my friends….

It’s Time To Get To Work Everyone!!!!!!

Winning The Midterms, Competing In Red States and Red Places, Expanding The Map

(Please be patient as we overhaul and update this section. Note that we have now changed our ActBlue default settings so that your contact information is only shared with a campaign if you give your affirmative permission. Many of you have asked for this and it is now our standard operating procedure. )

Winning The House

Hopium’s Winning The House Campaign - $944,100 raised, $1,000,000 goal - Donate to all twelve of our endorsed House challengers with a single contribution split twelve ways | Get to know Jamie Ager (NC-11), Christina Bohannan (IA-01), Paige Cognetti (PA-08), Rebecca Cooke (WI-03), Elaine Luria (VA-02), Sean McCann (MI-04), Jo Mendoza (AZ-06), Chaz Molder (TN-05), Jonathan Nez (AZ-02), Janelle Stelson (PA-10), Shannon Taylor (VA-01), and Sarah Trone Garriott (IA-03) by watching our recently recorded Hopium interviews.

Friends if these twelve win, the House will flip, no matter redistricting madness the Rs execute in the coming days. So eyes on the prize here everyone!

Winning The House - The Second Wave Fund - $166,100 raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | We’ve launched a second House fund, one targeting candidates who’ve recently emerged from primaries or running in new districts. Our initial crew is Rebecca Bennett (NJ-07), Bob Brooks (PA-07), Cait Conley (NY-17), Johnny Garcia (TX-35), Bob Harvie (PA-01), Denise Powell (NE-02), and Bobby Pulido (TX-15).

A donation to the Second Wave Fund is split evenly among these seven, and more as other worthy candidates emerge from their primaries. Our total above includes money we’ve raised for directly for each candidate. You can watch interviews with all of seven of these intrepid leaders here. We are off to a great start here everyone!

Winning The Senate

Our New Winning The Senate Fund - $457,100 raised, $1,000,000 goal - Donate | This new fund splits a single donation to our six candidates must likely to flip a Senate seat this November - Sherrod Brown (OH), Roy Cooper (NC), Mary Peltola (AK), Graham Platner (ME), James Talarico (TX), and Josh Turek (IA). The $465,000 figure is what we’ve raised for these six so far, as you see will below.

You can also continue to contributions to their individual campaigns here:

Roy Cooper For NC Senate - $129,100 raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Learn more through my new discussion with Gov. Cooper

Mary Peltola For Alaska Senate - $114,100 raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Learn more through my uplifting conversation with Mary Peltola as she fights to turn Alaska blue

Graham Platner For Maine Senate - $8,300 raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Learn more and volunteer

James Talarico For Texas - $101,100 raised, $250,000 - Donate | Learn more from my inspiring interview with Rep. Talarico as he fights to turn Texas blue

Josh Turek For Iowa Senate - $28,400 raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Learn more and volunteer | Watch my wonderful new interview with Josh Turek

Jon Ossoff For GA Senate - $201,100 raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Learn more through my uplifting conversation with Senator Ossoff

Expanding The Map - Investing And Winning In Key Expansion States

Winning Iowa - $14,900 raised, $100,000 goal - We’ve also set up a new Winning Iowa campaign that splits a contribution three ways - to Turek, to gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand, and to the Iowa Democratic Party and its great chair, Rita Hart

Winning Ohio - $171,100 raised, $250,000 goal - Our new campaign splits contributions evenly among Sherrod Brown, the Acton/Pepper ticket, and the Ohio Democratic Party | Donate today and help turn this critical 2026 battleground blue

Hopium’s Audacious Expansion Fund - $619,100 raised, $1,000,000 goal (new stretch goal) - Join our campaign that has helped expand our map by investing in the Democratic Parties of Alaska, Florida, Iowa, Maine, and Texas, all now central battlegrounds in the 2026 election | Catch interviews with the five intrepid state chairs leading their troops into battle this year - will get you fired up! and use the link to make contributions to any of the state parties directly | Contribute to all five state parties with one contribution split evenly among these five critical battlegrounds.

Some Things To Call Congress About This Week

• Yes to making American oligarchs pay for Trump’s failed Iran war - not every day Americans

• Yes to the Ukraine Support Act, get it passed through the Senate and to the President’s desk

• No to the ballroom, the Arch, the gilded statues, the slush fund, the corruption, self-enrichment……

• Hell no to Todd Blanche as Attorney General, and yes to very tough questioning of the new DNI nominee, Jay Clayton

• Hell hell no to the new OMB regs that will destroy government-funded science in America. Join the new Stand Up For Science campaign to Stop Vought. Save Science today.

See the Hopium Agenda Project for what we can and should be fighting for now and our Resolutions Project for ways you can bring our condemnation of our modern day Mad King more forcefully in our own communities.

Please use the paid subscriber chat to self-report the good trouble you make each day.

Keep working hard everyone. We have a country to save, and elections all across this great country to win, together! - Simon