We’re digging into all of the data and spending numbers for digital campaigning in the 2022 midterms with Kyle Tharp, Managing Editor of FWIW Media. He writes the FWIW newsletter and has a long resume working for non-profits and technology companies on the left, including ACRONYM and NGP-VAN. Kyle and his team have been fastidiously tracking the metrics for digital campaigns across the country and his newsletters are must-reads.
Kyle Tharp:
Not only were, were Democrats on those platforms really far, outspending their Republican opponents, they were doing so in really smart, interesting ways.
Eric Wilson:
I'm Eric Wilson, managing Partner of Startup Caucus, the home of campaign tech Innovation on the right. Welcome to the Business of Politics Show. On this podcast, you are joining in on a conversation with entrepreneurs, operatives, and experts who make professional politics happen. We're digging into all of the data and spending numbers for digital campaigning in the 2022 midterms today with Kyle Tharp, managing editor of, for What It's Worth, media. He writes the for what It's Worth, newsletter and the Campaigner Newsletter. Both are, are most must reads. Um, he has a long resume working for nonprofits and technology companies on the left, including acronym and N G P. Van Kyle and his team have been fastidiously tracking the metrics for digital campaigns across the country this cycle. So I'm excited to, uh, regroup with him and, and dig into the numbers. Kyle, in a recent issue you wrote, I'm gonna quote here, we've repeatedly noted how Republican candidates have dropped the ball when it comes to basic online campaign tactics. What examples can you point to there?
Kyle Tharp:
Yeah, for sure. I think there are a couple sort of major parts of the internet that a lot of Republican candidates in the 2022 midterms kind of neglected. Uh, so the first and most obvious in my opinion is TikTok. I think, think, uh, you know, Republican candidates have continued to stay away from the platform. I did an analysis probably a month before election day and counted around 30, 36, uh, major statewide candidates, uh, whether gubernatorial or or US Senate candidates, uh, from both parties on the platform. The vast majority of those were Democrats, Republicans, you know, I totally get it. Um, maybe don't use the app due to security concerns with, uh, Chinese ownership, et cetera. I personally don't use the app for those very same concerns as well, <laugh>. Uh, but TikTok is unavoidable these days. It is taking up a huge share of eyeballs on the internet and will only continue to grow heading into 2024. So I don't, I don't care if republicans or, or, or campaigns need to get like a burner phone or whatever, but staying off the platform is increasingly not an option. I think that, you know, there's gonna be a lot of arguments about the youth vote, uh, this election cycle, but Democrats, you know, enthusiasm for using the platform to reach younger voters, uh, I believe had a pretty big impact.
Eric Wilson:
So, I, I mean, I, your, your assessment of course is correct, right? Republican campaigns did not go to the, the app because of the, the policy concern, right? It would've been incongruous with their, their policy. Um, and, and then there was also this sense of it, it primarily skews younger and, and we didn't need to go after the, the, the youth vote, which kind of a miscalculation clearly. Um, aside from the campaigns having a presence on, there were campaigns actually on, on the left actually using this effectively, and, and what did that look like? Or is it just showing up?
Kyle Tharp:
Yeah. First of all, I think it's just showing up, uh, says a lot about who you're trying to reach and how you, and if you value those users. But I will say some of the most effective, uh, strategies regarding TikTok on the left involve campaigns partnering with influencers that had much larger followings and could more organically produce content in support of Democrats or progressive policy wins, right? There's a, a whole host of sort of brokers on the left that build these relationships and connect campaigns with influencers, um, which I think is even more important. A lot of TikTok users and a lot of young people, uh, can kind of call BS on sort of really stale campaign messaging, um, like hello fellow youths kind of thing. And so, uh, having sort of authentic relationships with influencers and and large accounts already was really crucial for Democrats and progressives on that platform. There are conservative influencers on the platform, uh, that have very large audiences, and Republicans should have tapped into the Republican campaigns specifically, should have tapped into those relationships a little bit more, in my opinion.
Eric Wilson:
Yeah, I think that's one of the areas where, where folks are gonna be looking, um, in the coming months. What are some other, uh, examples of old school campaigning by Republicans?
Kyle Tharp:
Yeah, on, on a similar level to TikTok, although I think less consequential is Snapchat. Uh, Snapchat advertising takes up a tiny share of paid media budgets. Uh, democrats almost exclusively, uh, are the, are the main political advertisers there. I don't think really. Maybe Marco Rubio, a couple, uh, a couple Republican campaigns, the cycle spent on Snapchat advertising, but it was overwhelmingly Democrat. That's another example where Republicans have just kind of seated a key corner of the internet, uh, to their,
Eric Wilson:
And, and that, again, to your point of, you know, was it determinative, but, but when you see such a lopsided, one or zero of, we are not engaging at all. Um, you know, we did some, some polling with the Center for Campaign Innovation after the 2021 Virginia Governor's race that found that, you know, a Glen Youngin's campaign built up a big lead when they were on radio and Terry McCullough wasn't. And so there is kind of a lesson there of you. You never want to just, just completely abandon a platform and, and seed all of the ground. And I think that's a little bit of what was going on with with Snapchat.
Kyle Tharp:
Yeah. And, and then much more important, uh, I think than Snapchat are sort of big four digital advertising platforms, YouTube, Google, Facebook, and Instagram. And I reported a ton on the spending. Uh, I track spending week to week every week of this election cycle looking at which entities were up and which campaigns were down, uh, on those platforms. And what we saw early on throughout the cycle was that Democrats were building up a heavy spending advantage on these platforms. They're all different, as you know, there's a lot of takes among Republican strategists as well as democratic strategists about the utility of, say, Facebook advertising or Google advertising, as those platforms have started to restrict different targeting, uh, criteria, but a lot of it, again, is showing up. I think one example I can point to there is Dr. Oz's campaign in Pennsylvania, in the general election, there were several months where they didn't buy a single Facebook ad, and then when they did, it was still just for fundraising, even just weeks out from election day, they didn't run a single persuasion related Facebook ad, uh, in the general really
Eric Wilson:
Ever,
Kyle Tharp:
Ever, which was really, uh, maybe they did in the primary, but not in the general. And, and that was really surprising to me. I think a lot of ad buyers and strategists still think of Facebook advertising or persuasion advertising on Facebook as like a, a well polished narrated video ad or something mm-hmm. <affirmative>, but even just like boosting a news article that was critical of his opponent to their core supporters could have, you know, maybe helped a little bit. I, I don't know. It was kind of,
Eric Wilson:
Yeah. I mean, you're picking up on something that that's coming out of a lot of the conversations I'm having now, which is we Republicans seem to have given up on, on Facebook and, um, the, the big platforms because they stopped working for direct response, right? And, and it it for a lot of reasons that, that got tough. And, um, but there was this mindset that Facebook is only for raising money and growing email lists. And, and when it stopped doing that, do we ignore it? And, and we, we certainly saw people ignoring that. And, uh, I think that was, that was ultimately a mistake. Um, and, and I incorrectly, I think made the assumption that when we didn't see money going from going into Facebook and Google that it was going into connected tv. And so we've all been tracking this and I think is a major headline coming out of 2022 for campaigning is the rise of political ad spending on CTV streaming services. Um, what did you see in, in that data that you were able to track?
Kyle Tharp:
Yeah, for sure. And, and I'll say one more thing about Facebook too, is that not only were, were Democrats on those platforms really far, outspending their Republican opponents. They were doing so in really smart, interesting ways. So for instance, the DGA created local shell entities that then created different branded Facebook pages to attack Republicans <laugh>. So like, you know, really meta level stuff, which I, I think both sides could take advantage of. Only one side did. You are totally right on the CTV front, and I've heard this from, uh, digital strategists on the left as well as yourself and others on the right. Um, a lot of folks that make their bread and butter out of out of advertising have, have said, you know, trying to reach cord cutters, people that watch their shows on Roku devices or on Hulu or whatever, these apps on smart TVs, um, that's where, that's kinda the future of political advertising.
And I do think that that's a story. You know, when, um, when I worked at a, a Democratic super PAC in the 2020 cycle, if I recall correctly, around 30% of our digital budget went to, uh, these types of platforms. I've heard that folks are spending even more this cycle. Um, wow. The the trick there is that, uh, those platforms do not generally have transparency databases or <laugh> or publicized spending numbers, and so they're really opaque. We don't know how much campaigns spent on, uh, apps like Hulu or whatever, uh, absent maybe some data in FEC reports, uh, but typically those budgets go to consulting firms and the
Eric Wilson:
Consulting, right. You don't see it <laugh>.
Kyle Tharp:
Yeah. Really hard.
Eric Wilson:
And so you did have some data from, from Roku, which, which makes some of that available. What, what did we, what did we learn from that?
Kyle Tharp:
Yeah, that was interesting. Um, Roku provides, uh, not spending data, but a list of which advertisers were running on the platform in a given week. And in the final week of the election, I saw that there were more major democratic campaigns, outside groups, advertisers on Roku than Republicans. It was probably about a 60 40 split. Um, although I did see a ton of really far down ballot races advertising on that platform, so you're looking like Republican state representatives or, or, or whatnot, which was really interesting. Um, but again, it's, it's super hard to track really opaque. I hope that those platforms and and service providers provide some more transparency heading into 2024. Um, but you can't, can't be sure.
Eric Wilson:
Yeah. We've had a couple of guests on the show, um, Kyle Roberts and Adam Meldrum, uh, two separate episodes that'll link in the show notes where they've talked about this, um, ACR automated content recognition, which gets us a little bit of the content of what we are seeing, but as you point out, we don't have visibility into the, the spending from that, so we could know what's, what's being shown, how many times it's being shown, but we don't, we don't have more beyond that. Um, I did think it was particularly interesting that, that the Democratic outside groups of the Super pacs and, and 5 0 1 C four s were, or, uh, more heavily spending than, than everyone else. I mean, or well, well, well had a bigger presence, I'll say. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Uh, and, and I think that's been a really interesting development where you saw, um, Republicans rely on their outside groups to close the gap on tv, whereas Democrats had more hard dollars, so they could be a little more effective than that. And that left the Democrats, um, to be competitive on, on ctv, where they don't get penalized for that, that candidate rate, um, which is something we'll elaborate along, uh, in a future episode.
Kyle Tharp:
Yeah, that makes sense. Um, no, I, I think there were a couple Republican outside groups this cycle that were spending, in my opinion, pretty wisely on digital. You're looking at like One Nation citizens for sanity, um, congressional Leadership Fund, Senate Leadership Fund. I want, I wanna, uh, also note I completely disagree with all of their messaging. A lot of it I, I determined repulsive and reprehensive. Uh, but, um, I, I do think that, you know, they were running a very different game than a lot of Republican candidates were.
Eric Wilson:
Yeah. Um, and, and it wasn't just on paid advertising either. You, you point out, uh, the case of right wing media personality, Dan Bina, who on, uh, election day in 2020 was averaging about 8 million interactions on Facebook every week, um, two years later. He's at about a 10th of that each week. What, what do you think is behind the decline in engagement and is there a breakdown between conservatives and, and and liberals, or is it kind of across the board?
Kyle Tharp:
Yeah, that was something really fascinating we discovered last week. Uh, every week we, in addition to tracking, uh, paid media spending, digital ad spending on Facebook and Google or whatever, we're also looking at organic engagement on platforms like Facebook and Instagram. We do this using a tool called CrowdTangle that Facebook, uh, provides to researchers and journalists. What we saw last week, looking at this sort of big picture decline in, in conservative, uh, social media engagement, uh, was really emblematic of something that I believe Facebook has been doing over the past two years, which is down ranking news and political content in order to become a platform that is much more like Tech Talk. And so we noticed from Ben Shapiro, Dan Bonno, uh, Franklin Graham, a whole bunch of these conservative mega pages that historically have been some of of the top publishers on Facebook have seen a precipitous decline in their engagement, which means like, likes, comments, shares on their posts.
Over the past two years, mainstream news publishers I looked at as well saw a little bit of a decline, and some, some major democratic Facebook pages saw somewhat of a decline as well. And like I said, I've, I've heard rumors from, you know, folks that are close with, with staffers at Meta and, um, other reporters and, and researchers. And it seems like Facebook is making an intentional decision to slowly kind of reduce the heat and in the political realm and, and, and start to deprioritize that content in people's feeds as they're starting to prioritize, you know, discovery engine, vertical video, that kind of stuff. Really interesting. And it will have huge implications on our politics moving forward.
Eric Wilson:
I totally agree. It's, it's really already changed the, the playbook for, for campaigns mid-cycle in 2022, and we've got a lot of work to do to figure out what that looks like in, in 2024. You're listening to the Business of Politics Show. I'm speaking with Kyle Tharp, who writes the, for what It's Worth newsletter, a must read for anyone in the political space if you wanna keep a pulse on, uh, who's spending, what, what are they saying, um, and get some real hard data behind digital campaigning. Kyle, you also wrote about Democrats Get out the Vote Hype machine, as you call it. Um, and after the election results, a lot of Republicans are, are starting to study that, uh, you're starting to see this narrative of, of we need to focus on ballots, not votes. I, I don't really understand what that means, but, but people are waking up to the, um, the idea that get out the Vote matters. Um, so what are the platforms that Democratic campaigns and their allies are using that have been so crucial to their, their Get Out the Vote success?
Kyle Tharp:
Sure. I think there's, there's two big things. A couple weeks before election day, I started to ask the question, you know, in 2020, Democrats did not really focus on, in person get out the vote efforts because of the pandemic. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, that was kind of controversial, and I believe that it made the election much closer than it otherwise would've been. This cycle Democrats were back hitting the doors with, with thousands and thousands of volunteers around the country. It's very important for Democrats to do that. Maybe less important for Republicans on, on turnout because democratic voters have to be turned out. Uh, but the sort of strength of the Democratic organizing machine really kicked in in October of this year with massive amounts of volunteer events heading into election day. What republicans may not know is that Democrats have one central hub or clearing house for recruiting volunteers and volunteers discovering events in their places.
It's called Mobilize It, it, it was Tech Startup that's, that was created after Trump's election and, uh, later acquired by NPY Van, my former employer. And it's, it's a one stop shop for, for folks who want to volunteer for democratic campaigns to go and find places. I interviewed the president of Mobilize a week before Election day. They were really feeling good about all the activity that they were seeing on their platform, and that's what I kind of wrote about the, the Democrats hype machine really kicking into gear. Um, and then secondly, you mentioned, uh, <laugh> the need for campaigns to chase ballots instead of votes. And you're totally right. And I, I saw this a lot in, in the Virginia Governor's race in 2021 as well, and Republicans did a good job of it, but running specific ads, targeting specific voters, asking them to return their ballots or, uh, you know, feeding them with exact information about where they can pick up or drop off their ballots or request ballots or whatever key dates, that type of information that has moved into the digital space. A lot of campaigns, good campaigns are running, uh, ads for that, and I think that really helps too, as long as Democrats or or Republicans are trying to bank votes before election day. That's, that's pretty critical.
Eric Wilson:
Yeah, I think that's been a, a really interesting, I guess, analysis, um, post-election is that, you know, you can't trash voting if you also need people to <laugh> to, to vote. And, and being able to bank those votes before election day is so important because then we go after, um, other voters. And, and to your point though, we, we do have to turn out Republican voters. There's plenty of evidence that suggests when voter turn out is high, it helps Republicans, um, as well. And so, um, I think there's, there's definitely some soul searching on that front. Mobilizes one of those platforms that I just, uh, am very impressed with, uh, and envious of on the other side, because it is software that follows the supporter, not the campaign, and Right, exactly. So you have a, you have a mobilized profile, sort of like event Bright where, you know, the campaigns come to you and you're able to plug into them rather than each campaign having to go out and identify and recruit volunteers every single time. Uh, and, uh, I, I think that's a huge advantage, uh, on your side.
Kyle Tharp:
Yep, absolutely.
Eric Wilson:
All right. Well, I wanted to shift gears here because we've been really critical of Republicans so far in our conversation, uh, but I wanna hear from you, where, where did Democrats make some mistakes? Where do you think they could have done a little bit better?
Kyle Tharp:
For sure. I, I think last week maybe on election day, you tweeted something like, bad campaigns can win all the time, and good campaigns can lose. And, and I totally agree, all these things that we're talking about, uh, are really about tactics that matter the most at the margins. You're talking like really tight races, these can, these can shift votes in a couple places. Um, and so it may come as no surprise. I'm gonna say, I think, think Katie Hobbs campaign in Arizona left a lot to be desired, um, both candidate and campaign. Um, I noted earlier this summer, uh, before Carrie Lake won the primary, I think that was June or July that Katie Hobbs social media accounts, her Facebook page were completely silent for weeks. <laugh>, I mean, not a single Facebook post for, for like three weeks in July when she's taking on, uh, someone that I considered to be a completely deranged candidate, right? That, uh, she should be aggressively,
Eric Wilson:
Who was very active on Facebook,
Kyle Tharp:
Who was, who was a massive audience on Facebook, who, so, you know, I thought the Hobbs campaign back then should have been aggressively trying to get grassroots democrats around the country to actively give support, follow, et cetera, her campaign. And that was kind of a missed opportunity during a very critical period. Now, you know, she won the governorship. So to the Victor goes, the spoils elections exist. I'm GAMP campaigns, you know, I'll probably be ized just for criticizing her. But, um, I think, uh, I think that, uh, that race was a little too close for comfort is what I will say. Um, there's plenty of other examples this cycle, you know, Conor Lamb was this establishment, uh, golden boy in Washington DC circles, uh, taking on John Federman in the primary, uh, a lot of his campaign got a lot of attention and didn't pick up steam.
They just neglected basic online tactics. Uh, and it really came back to bite them. Uh, I think a lot of republicans there, there were some notable exceptions to Republicans sort of screwing up on Digitalist cycle. I think Ron DeSantis and his allies in Florida really focused on building a massive operation online. Greg Abbott in Texas, I was surprised, did not take his reelection for granted and ran persuasion and mobilization and fundraising ads on places like Facebook and Google. Um, also racked up a ton of organic engagement and built a huge supporter base on Facebook. So, uh, there were some bright spots for Republicans as well.
Eric Wilson:
Yeah. And that's what makes it so tough is, is you, you know, you want to draw a a big massive sweeping conclusion of, oh, this is what all Republicans need to do. And, and you dig into it and it's, it's kind of a case by case. Um, but I think at the core, it, it's remembering your fundamentals of campaigning, which is, you know, turning out voters, getting attention, raising money, taking it to your opponent, and, and when you focus on those and, and you know why you're doing it, the the digital falls into place because it, it's, the numbers are just gonna lead you there.
Kyle Tharp:
Yep. No, you're exactly right. Yep.
Eric Wilson:
So, can we talk shop for a minute? I wanna, um, hear what you think about the, the Facebook political, uh, ad freeze that week before elections. Um, I, I think it's a little peculiar so that like the, the, the stated policy is that they want to have plenty of time to review all of the ads. And so you, you have to rush, I think, like Katie Porter had 700 ads that she got, um, published before the freeze hit, and then, uh, Chuck Grassley did one. So you kind of have two ends of the spectrum there. Um, do you think it's effective in, in helping them make sure that everyone's abiding by those policies?
Kyle Tharp:
No, uh, I don't, I think it's a, it's a very strange policy. Um, it may also prevent folks from, uh, particularly when we talk about organic engagement on Facebook and, and what kind of misinformation or or bad information is circulating on the site, ads can often act as a way for folks to correct that bad information directly to users who are more susceptible. So I, I don't buy, you know, I guess the company doesn't have enough resources to check all these ads in real time, but that's just an admission that, uh, they're not putting resources in the elections department as much anymore. So, uh, I've always disagreed with their, this blackout period. I think it's kind of weird. Uh, you, you can't like upload new ads saying today's election day, right?
Yeah. It just, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Um, I don't know how much of an effect it has. A lot of consultants in, in digital ad in 2020 had to deal with it, and so they've now learned and strategized different things that they can do to get ahead of it. Um, uh, particularly, I, I, I heard a bunch of people kind of stressing out on October 30th or or whatever the day before the, the band went into effect. Um, a lot of gripes from, from consultants I've heard this year, but, uh, now it's back on and you see the Georgia runoff is in what, less than a month, <laugh> and a Rafael Warnock campaign is back to spending $500,000 a day on Facebook ads. So we'll see what
Eric Wilson:
Happens, right. And, and wasted no time in, uh, getting back to business, which was not the case in 2020. Right. So the, the, the ad stayed down for most of the Georgia runoff. Um, I, I, I do agree with you that is, is particularly strange that you're not able to use this critical platform where we know voters are, are logging in and discussing elections, um, to, to advertise. And, and we know that the name of the game on Facebook is you don't get organic reach for nothing. You, you do have to pay, uh, to advertise. So it is, it is a, a very odd, um, sort of thing. Um, and, and what's crazy about it is they, they got this idea from from Australia where for, for a period of time before election day, you're not allowed to advertise on, on tv, but you can still advertise on, on digital. Um, so it's really interesting how they, they sort of borrowed this idea from someplace else and didn't really understand why they did it. Um, so obviously the core of, for what it's worth, the newsletter is keeping track of all of this, this data you already mentioned CrowdTangle. What are some of the other tools that you're, you're using to, to keep track of spending and engagement, um, and, and just stay on top of all of this because it is a huge undertaking?
Kyle Tharp:
Yeah, it definitely is. Uh, there's, there's never a shortage of interesting things to track and write about. I think the biggest impact that these companies have had on our politics in a positive way over the past couple years was in 2018, Facebook and Google created archives, these searchable databases of all political advertising on their platforms. And that provides me with a weekly or real time data on which advertisers spending how much money targeting what, what voters in what places. I can see that on Facebook, on Instagram, on Google and YouTube. Um, those companies were followed by Snapchat, which also has a searchable database of advertising. Um, and so those really help paint a picture of not only how much campaigns they're spending, uh, but what messages they're pushing and what, what they're kind of focusing on. Uh, in addition to just kind of signaling to me which campaigns have their stuff together, <laugh>, right, and which ones are not really taking the internet seriously or maybe don't have enough staff to, to engage with voters online. And, and so it's kind of a good barometer there of, of who's actually running a serious campaign. So yeah, those data, those ad databases are, are critically important. You can just Google transparency libraries for Facebook or whatever, and, and find them. They're, they're becoming more and more user friendly.
Eric Wilson:
Yeah, a
Kyle Tharp:
Lot better. Yeah, for sure. I think, uh, the organic engagement piece, CrowdTangle is an incredibly valuable tool. It is owned by Facebook, and Facebook has signaled slash meta. Meta has signaled that they want to kill the tool. They
Eric Wilson:
Hate it. Yeah. Yeah. They
Kyle Tharp:
Hate it because it exposes a lot of really negative things about their platform. And, and journalists can see, you know, really bad posts or, or misinformations rising to the top, they report on it and makes Facebook look bad, right? Um, so that tool might not be along for, uh, much longer. Um, there's similar tools by other companies. There's one called News Whip, which does a very similar job. Um, and then, you know, I talk to a lot of people. Uh, I try and stay in touch with as many strategists as possible, hear what they're saying and seeing, uh, folks point me to different data points and directions. Um, and I think particularly, like we mentioned with the rise of TikTok, that's another kind of opaque platform. Um, so coming up with ways to track engagement on TikTok or views or, uh, followers and, and things like that will be something that I'm gonna be keeping an eye on in the next couple years.
Eric Wilson:
Yeah. And I, I think that, uh, one thing that we all expected with these ad databases that you would see more competitive spending, right? Where people would say, oh, I want to keep pace in, in the way that you do with, with TV advertising, right? You never wanna be down a thousand points a week or whatever. Um, didn't have that same effect. Uh, I'm just, I'm surprised at how, um, campaigns really do not use what they're seeing about their opponents as a way to say, Hey, look, we need to level up spending here. Um, so it was a little surprising to me, but certainly a, a good tool to, um, as you say, figure out who's got their stuff together, uh, who's taking it seriously, and, and where are their signs of life.
Kyle Tharp:
Yep. Yeah, you're totally right. The competitive stuff really matters at the margins. If I, I don't really care if Dr. Oz isn't spending a lot of money on fundraising ads, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and his opponent is maybe that just means his opponent has a better roi. I trust folks not waste money on, on fundraising, but you know, when I see one campaign is not run a single persuasion ad, and the other is spending half a million dollars a week, that's where you're like, okay, there's something here that we need to talk about and
Eric Wilson:
Analyze, right? Yeah. Is there data so vastly different that you're, you're just seeing, you know, the, the divergence is a problem. Yeah,
Kyle Tharp:
For
Eric Wilson:
Sure. Well, really interesting. My thanks to Kyle Harp for joining us. I'll include a link to the, for what it's Worth, newsletter in the show notes. Definitely go subscribe. It's one of the, the most important newsletters that, that digital campaigners should be reading every week. If this episode made you a little bit smarter, consider subscribing, uh, or sharing it with a friend. You'll look smarter in the process too. You can get it wherever you listen to podcasts. And you can also sign up for email updates at our new website, the business of politics podcast.com. That's business of politics podcast.com. With that, I'll say thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.