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Two Data Nerds on What Conservatives Conserve: Jim Pfaff with Chris Saxman at the RNC Midterm Convention | Sep 10, 2026

Published: September 10, 2026
Network: TCC Live — RNC Midterm Convention coverage, Dallas
Analysis: Conservative Caucus President Jim Pfaff

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On September 10, 2026, from The Conservative Caucus media suite at the RNC Midterm Convention in Dallas, Jim Pfaff brought Chris Saxman to the booth and both men settled the introductions in two words: data nerds. Saxman is the executive director of Virginia FREE and served four terms, eight years, in the Virginia House of Delegates. Pfaff’s own case in the conversation is that conservatives have to be realistic about where people really are before they can move them. What followed was a working conversation between two people who read numbers for a living — polling methodology, precinct math, what you learn only at the door — and then a harder question Saxman kept returning to: what are conservatives trying to conserve?

Topics Covered

• Two Data Nerds on Methodology and Who Gets Polled
• Four Terms, Eight Years, and What You Learn at the Door
• A Proverb a Day, Zig Ziglar, and Politics as Listening
• What Are You Trying to Conserve?
• The School Choice Moment Republicans Missed After COVID
• His Verdict on the RNC Midterm Convention in Dallas
• Key Takeaways

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Two Data Nerds on Methodology and Who Gets Polled

Pfaff opened by introducing Saxman as his friend, telling viewers that many of them know the John Fredericks Show, and describing Saxman as the man who follows the politics of Virginia in particular and the country nationally. Within seconds the two had agreed on the label — total data nerds, political nerds — and on why it matters: most people make judgments based on their feelings or their hunches. Pfaff’s point was not that instinct is worthless. There is a place for feelings and hunches, he said, but without that foundation under them they do not work very well.

Saxman agreed and added the discipline that separates data nerds from poll consumers. A raw number can help your argument, but only after you have taken the survey apart.

“When you look at the raw data, then it can actually help your argument. But you have to break down the methodology in polling. You have to break down who’s being polled.”
— Chris Saxman, Executive Director, Virginia FREE

He traced the habit to the sports page. His parents said that is how he learned to read; he memorized baseball numbers as a kid, and he has been deciphering them ever since, asking what is really going on here. Applied to politics after the great financial crisis and after COVID, the questions he wants the numbers to answer are these: what issues are important to people, where do they want to take the Republican Party, what do they believe in the 21st century.

Pfaff turned that into a criticism of his own side, and he did not soften it.

“I think conservatives in general, or constitutionalists like myself, need to be realistic about where people really are. I think that’s one of the big problems the Republican Party in particular has right now that actually Democrats do a better than decent job at, because they actually pay attention to what the attitudes are and who are the people that have those attitudes on the data.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

The failure he named is specific: hopefulness about reaching a certain end, and missing how you have to communicate with someone to get there. That is the same gap TCC has been documenting all convention week in our coverage of the RNC Midterm Convention in Dallas.

Four Terms, Eight Years, and What You Learn at the Door

The data nerds’ argument only works if someone has tested it in a race, and Saxman’s evidence is his own record. Four terms in the Virginia House of Delegates taught him that a brochure carries what the candidate believes, and that it is worth almost nothing until the candidate knocks on the door and asks the reverse question: what do you believe, what concerns you. Without that, he said, he cannot represent them.

Then the aggregation. One door is an anecdote; enough doors is a data set, and the data set has a shape.

“But when you aggregate the data, you learn very quickly what a neighborhood thinks. And what a precinct thinks and what a district thinks.”
— Chris Saxman, Executive Director, Virginia FREE

He is emphatic that the numbers do not replace the conversation. Talking to a voter gives you the inflection in the voice, the intonation, the language they choose — the thing that tells you there is something else here. Pfaff compared it to counting votes in a legislature: everyone thinks counting votes is one, two, three, four, and it is not. It is yes, or yeah, or sure. Saxman said that habit is one of the reasons he was effective in the legislature.

“One of the reasons I was effective in the legislature is I would go into a meeting and they would say, oh, so-and-so wants such and such. I’m like, that’s not what they want. That’s what they’re willing to do. But what they want is that. How do you know that? Because I listen to them.”
— Chris Saxman, Executive Director, Virginia FREE

A Proverb a Day, Zig Ziglar, and Politics as Listening

Neither of the two data nerds treats listening as a soft skill. Pfaff said politics is also sales, and gave anyone who wants to be a good politician two assignments. Read a proverb a day, because you want to learn to be wise. Then listen to Zig Ziglar’s Sell Your Way to the Top, or something like that, he said, because selling is listening, not announcing what you want and what the other person has to do. Ziglar’s formulation, as Pfaff put it: if I give enough people what they want and need, I am going to get what I want. There is a political exchange very similar to that.

Saxman’s version of the lesson came from his first campaign. Voters told his wife her husband would win because he was such a good listener, which made her ask who exactly they were talking about — her husband does not listen. He listened to the constituents, he said, and ended up becoming his constituent. Pfaff drew the line that keeps this from being a counsel of drift.

“This isn’t about compromising your values. It’s applying them.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Saxman finished the thought, and it is the argument of the whole segment in one sentence.

“If you don’t know what someone thinks, believes, and feels, you can’t take your principles and go, how does this overlay and how can we create something very powerful?”
— Chris Saxman, Executive Director, Virginia FREE

Pfaff tested it on New York. He had talked the night before with a man from WABC in New York City and put a proposition to him, which the man — a New Yorker himself — agreed with entirely: your average New Yorker, not the ones who voted for Mamdani and have lived there three or four years, but your real New Yorker, is at the core very conservative. So why the results? First, no hope that a vote for a Republican does anything. Some of it is muscle memory. And part of it is that there is not good messaging there. Rudy Giuliani gave good messaging and moved people, Pfaff said; so did Bloomberg. Saxman’s gloss on Bloomberg: about as conservative as you were going to get in New York City. Pfaff’s point was that it could be done.

What Are You Trying to Conserve?

Pfaff said he is all about the Constitution and getting back to the constitutional republic, and asked the operative question: how do you get there? Saxman said conservatives have to answer a prior one first.

“And that’s what conservatives have to understand is what are you trying to conserve? Are you trying to conserve the Constitution and our way of life and our culture? Let’s do that.”
— Chris Saxman, Executive Director, Virginia FREE

That is the question the data nerds’ numbers are supposed to serve, not replace. He noted that Constitution Day is September 17 and said the conservative movement should be celebrating it. His own beginning was Barry Goldwater’s The Conscience of a Conservative, read at 19 or 20 — a little pamphlet that told him this is what I believe. The moment is common, he said; what follows it is the hard part. How do you apply it to raising children, to a marriage, to running a business, to standing in line or sitting on an airplane. How am I going to be conservative on a daily basis.

Pfaff pressed the point from the other direction, because it is the reason the label alone does not settle anything.

“What do we want to conserve? Actually, there are a lot of conservatives who want to conserve something else than the Constitution too. So this is the challenge I think we have.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

He said he likes calling the organization a conservative caucus and that people do not always understand what it means. TCC are constitutionalists who want to push the Constitution, and the problem is making the connection to what is practical for an individual voter — which, he said, is again where data and numbers and asking questions come in. That is the same case TCC made about the convention’s purpose in our analysis of whether Dallas can reset Republican enthusiasm.

Saxman, a former teacher who lived down the street from James Madison University, made the structural argument. Americans are successful as a nation because of the constitutional framework, because of the battles between Democrats and Republicans over the years, and because the system of government divides power among three layers, and then among the judicial, executive and legislative branches.

At every level, he said, Americans check the power of the central government so they can live peaceably among each other and thrive, which no other country can do.

People came from all over the world saying America is fantastic, he said, and that does not happen because he and Pfaff are great guys. It happens because of a great way of life constructed by a great government — a framework set up in 1789 that still excites him after all these years.

The School Choice Moment Republicans Missed After COVID

Saxman turned, unprompted, to the thing he thinks conservatives should be selling every single day: school choice. He has the receipts. He carried the bill for seven years in the Virginia House and passed it out every year.

“I fought that battle because I believe in the freedom of kids to be able to go to the school they want to go to, the parents want to send them to. And that’s a base freedom.”
— Chris Saxman, Executive Director, Virginia FREE

He called it one of the biggest misses of the conservative movement. Pfaff agreed and put a date on the miss: after COVID. Every school had been shut down, and Louisiana and Arizona, he said, did a good job of it. No other Republican state, in his telling, said okay, that’s our cue — you just shut every school down, so we’re going to let schools choose their own way. Saxman’s conclusion is a standing instruction for the movement: we have got to get better at not missing those moments.

Pfaff said Democrats never do, and Saxman — who says he has many Democratic friends and family he loves dearly, and differs with them on the philosophy of governance — conceded the point about tactics outright: he tells them y’all are better at politics than we are. Then he answered his own concession — they have to be, because their ideas suck — and Pfaff agreed: that’s right.

His Verdict on the RNC Midterm Convention in Dallas

Pfaff closed by asking for an impression of the event and where things go, not just in November but after it. Saxman said he had not been looking forward to Dallas because he had heard it would not go well — negative talk about attendance and the rest.

“This has been fantastic. It’s secure, it’s safe, people are excited, they’re happy. And it’s been overall a very successful thing for the Republican Party. And I think they should do more midterm conventions.”
— Chris Saxman, Executive Director, Virginia FREE

That is a data nerd’s correction of his own prior, stated plainly. Getting people together to say what we believe is worth doing on its own, he said. On where the movement goes from here he would not predict — but he said the conversation itself is healthy in a republic: who are we, what do we believe, where are we going. He reached for Modern Family, the car rolling back down the hill with Phil Dunphy on the hood and Claire yelling what’s the plan, Phil.

The movement needs a plan, he said, to steer the ship of not just the United States but also human freedom around the world.

Pfaff agreed that America is still the beacon of that freedom — the best worst country in all the world, and one that can be made better with a lot of hard work. Saxman, reaching this time for the scene in The Lord of the Rings where they light the fires — he could not remember what it is called — said the visual is the question of where we are going. Then he gave the instruction that closes the case the two data nerds had been building for eleven minutes.

“We have to be unafraid of what we believe in, but say it in a way that can be understood.”
— Chris Saxman, Executive Director, Virginia FREE

And the way you learn how to be understood, he said, is by using the data that organizations like The Conservative Caucus collect and asking: who are we, who are we really, and what are we trying to do?

Key Takeaways

1. Methodology before the number – Saxman’s rule for data nerds: a raw poll only helps your argument after you break down the methodology and who is being polled. Most people, Pfaff said and Saxman agreed, make judgments on their feelings or their hunches instead.
2. Republicans are behind Democrats on attitudes – Pfaff said Democrats do a better than decent job of paying attention to what voter attitudes are and who holds them, and that conservatives and constitutionalists need to be realistic about where people really are.
3. Four terms taught him to ask, not tell – Eight years in the Virginia House of Delegates: a brochure says what the candidate believes; aggregated door-knocking is what tells you what a neighborhood, a precinct and a district think.
4. Listening is not compromise – Pfaff: this isn’t about compromising your values, it’s applying them. Saxman: without knowing what someone thinks, believes and feels, principles have nothing to overlay.
5. School choice was the miss – Saxman carried the bill seven years in Richmond and calls it a base freedom. After COVID shut every school down, Pfaff said, Louisiana and Arizona did a good job of it and no other Republican state took the cue.
6. A data nerd’s verdict on Dallas – Secure, safe, excited, happy, and a success for the Republican Party, against the negative expectations he had heard. He says the party should hold more midterm conventions.

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About The Conservative Caucus:
The Conservative Caucus is a grassroots public policy action organization, formed in 1974. Headed by President Jim Pfaff, the Caucus is committed to advancing free enterprise, limited government, and traditional values.

Originally broadcast Sep 10, 2026 live from The Conservative Caucus media suite at the 2026 RNC Midterm Convention, Dallas.