Come Ride the Pollercoaster with Me

My new podcast for Crooked Media subscribers debuts today

I have some exciting news: Pollercoaster, my new podcast for Crooked Media’s subscription community, debuts today. Here’s a description of the podcast:

Pollercoaster is Crooked’s new home for exclusive in-depth analysis across the biggest national polls, latest voter trends, and close races up and down the ballot.

Join former White House Communications Director and Pod Save America host Dan Pfeiffer and a series of expert guests as they break down the polls, unpack what they actually mean, and decide whether or not it’s time to hit the panic button. New episodes of Pollercoaster will drop twice monthly for Friends of the Pod subscribers.

In the first episode, I chat with Cornell Belcher, who polled for both of Obama’s campaigns. We discuss how to think about polls this far out from the election and what, if anything, they can tell us about the outcome next year.

I hope you will consider joining the Friends of the Pod community to listen to Pollercoaster and access ad-free episodes of Pod Save America and Pod Save the World, as well as other exclusive content. You can read more about the benefits of joining this very cool community (and sign up) HERE.

In addition to all of the very cool content, becoming a subscriber also supports Crooked’s efforts to build a progressive counter-balance to the Right Wing media machine that continues to dominate American politics.

What the Heck is a Pollercoaster?

If you are a long-time Pod Save America listener, you may have heard us use the term before. Before we were podcast hosts, we were campaign staffers living and dying by every single poll. We knew the exact time that the Gallup daily tracking poll would drop. We anxiously awaited every Des Moines Register and NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. David Plouffe, our campaign manager, referred to our addiction to the polls as “riding the pollercoaster.”

Fifteen years later, “pollercoaster” is still the best way to describe the exhilarating and nauseating sensation of being a poll-addict in a high-stakes election.

What Can You Expect on Pollercoaster?

We will, of course, continue to talk about polls on Pod Save America. This newsletter will continue to analyze the polls to provide you with actionable advice about how to win elections and arguments.

Pollercoaster is for those of you whose emotional well-being depends on what some nerd named “Nate” says about who is up and who is down in the election that could decide the fate of American democracy.

Some of you care enough about your emotional well-being to ignore the polls. I am not one of those people. I have been riding the pollercoaster way too long to get off now.

If you are like me, I encourage you to consider joining the Friends of the Pod community to listen to Pollercoaster. My goal in every episode is to examine the polls in their proper context and give you my honest assessment about how worried (or not worried!) you should be. The next time a New York Times/Siena poll ruins your weekend, Pollercoaster will help you understand it.

We are all going to be in a state of high anxiety for the next 11 months, so we might as well do it together — and even have some laughs along the way.