How Worried Should We Be About the Midterm Elections?
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Why are Americans feeling existential anxiety about the upcoming midterm elections?
I'm John Caramonica, a critic at The New York Times. And I'm Joe Cascarelli, a culture reporter at The Times. Together we host PopCast, a weekly pop culture chat show where we speak to the biggest musicians, actors, internet celebrities, and more. We've had Bad Bunny, Olivia Rodrigo, and Anne Hathaway. We've also hosted live performances with Andre 3000 and Erykah Badu. Plus, we end every conversation with a snack. Catch new episodes of PopCast every week on YouTube. And anywhere you get your podcasts.
From New York Times Opinion, I'm Sarah Isgur, one of a series of guest hosts for Interesting Times. I'm an attorney and the editor of the legal reporting site SCOTUSblog. When people find out
what
I do for a living, they're always asking me, how worried should I be about the midterm elections?
The Supreme Court says President Trump cannot restrict mail-in voting before the midterms.
There's a lot of back and forth between California and the federal government about possible new voting restrictions.
A federal court of appeals will now decide what should happen with Missouri's new congressional maps.
A lack of trust is understandable when both sides are telling their voters that the other side is trying to rig the election or outright steal it. But I want to separate fact from fiction and get into what we can do to restore faith in elections. My guest today has argued that we're living in an era of democratic dissatisfaction. And in 2026, it could be easy to blame the elections themselves. Rick Pildes is a law professor at New York University, and he is the election law guy. He's a liberal. I'm a conservative. We're not always going to see eye to eye, but I always want to know what Rick thinks. Rick Pildes, welcome to Interesting Times.
These are interesting times, and I'm glad to be sharing them with you.
So let's just start with this. Are you getting these questions, too? Like when people find out that you're Rick Pildes, are they like, what's going on with the election? Is this going to get stolen?
Yes, of course. I'm getting lots of those questions addressing the various anxieties people have about the election, things they read in the paper. You know, we can put this in the larger context of why there's so much anxiety. I think partly it's We are in a period where lots of people feel our elections have become what I call existential, meaning if the other side wins, many people on both sides believe the country will never be the same. That's not a sort of normal state of democratic politics. It puts tremendous pressure on elections. But on top of that, we've never been in a period in our history where – partisan balance has been as close as it is over as long a period of time. So here's an amazing statistic.
Since 2000, in every election but two, either the House, the Senate, or the White House has changed partisan hands. That's really incredible. And then on top of it, we have a lot of sort of last minute changes the federal government is attempting to make in the election process. Those have been largely blocked by courts. But all of that combines with the distrust in public institutions to lead to lots of anxiety that many people are expressing about the election.
You've used the phrase era of democratic dissatisfaction to describe what we're all feeling. What exactly does that mean? And how does distrust in our electoral process play into this disillusionment?
Yeah, so we're not alone in this in the United States. I think almost all Western democracies over the last 10 to 15 years have been experiencing this sort of pervasive dissatisfaction among lots of citizens with democratic governments. People vote in one set of actors, one party, they're dissatisfied, they throw them out. They vote in the other party or other set of actors. They're dissatisfied with them. They throw them out. And at some very broad level, there's this general sense over the last 10 to 15 years that democratic governments have become much less effective at dealing with the major issues that lots of citizens are most concerned about.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
Why are Americans feeling existential anxiety about the upcoming midterm elections?
0:00–10:08
2
What does Richard Pildes mean by an ‘era of democratic dissatisfaction’?
10:08–23:05
3
Did recent election‑law reforms like mail‑in ballot restrictions backfire?
23:05–29:26
4
How have campaign‑finance reforms changed the influence of money in politics?
29:26–37:27
5
What was the Supreme Court’s decision on Trump’s mail‑in ballot executive order?
37:27–45:40
6
Should the United States create a national voter database or proof‑of‑citizenship system?
45:40–47:04
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