A Strong Close—And an Iowa Poll Shocker

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Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor.
We are coming to you with a special episode with just one day left before the results start coming in. The final polls have arrived, including an atomic bomb from Ann Seltzer.
And this race is either headed towards the closest finish we've seen in our lifetimes, or a landslide, or a million different outcomes in between, none of which should really surprise us because of the last decade in politics. We're going to get into all that a bit later on, but first, the three of us, Dan, Vote Save America's own Nina Harris, were out canvassing in Arizona and Nevada over the weekend.
You guys want to talk about what stuck with you out of all of our door knocks and canvas kickoffs? Absolutely. I mean, the best part is meeting all the folks who are there from Vote Save America.
There were people who lived in Nevada, Arizona, and just came over to do a shift. There were people that traveled from out of state.
I talked to a guy who had come to a Pod Save America live show in Las Vegas in 2018 with his daughter who was in high school at the time. She asked a question, later got so interested in politics that she worked for intern for Jackie Rosen, now is getting advanced degree out here in California.
And those are just, you know, the best part of doing the show is meeting people like that who are, you know, taking action and getting off the polar coaster that last weekend and knock some doors. Yeah.
So first of all, one thing that was two hopeful signs. One is we were knocking on, we'd have to walk a bunch of doors before getting to the next door that we would knock in part, because we've hit a lot of these doors.
And a lot of these people have either said, please do not knock on my door again. I already voted or I'm planning to vote, but we were onto these last few doors.
And there's one person that the door while I was, I was knocking on doors with Nina and she was like, I'm, I'm going to vote sometime next week. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
You have to vote on Tuesday now. She didn't know how to vote.
She didn't know where to vote. We got her that information.
And there were other people. I know you guys knocked on a door of somebody who was truly undececided yeah she was uh 73 year old uh asian american woman in east las vegas and we knocked on our door and there was a very large barking dog and so that she was that was barking while she was trying to talk to us and it was sort of broke you know we're trying to understand her and um she basically was like she's like president trump trump and we're like no no trump and she's like uh and we held up our lit and it said kamala harris you know and we're like kamala harris he goes did she let in all of the all of the migrants that the and we're like no no yes but it's good no and we were like look if she becomes president here's what's going to do on the border.
And she's already done this. And it's going to close.
And people who are here and working have a path to citizenship. And also, and then Tommy's in the background.
Tommy goes, and she's going to lower your taxes, lower your taxes. And then Nina and I are like, and your prescription drugs and also your health care, stuff like that.
And she starts licking it all. And she goes, yeah, okay, I'm voting Kamala.
That could be it she's like i promise i promise kamala and we're like yeah shout out to nina who is absolutely fearless about talking to everyone like the trumpiest person we walked by the dude next to her on the plane that she then had to sit next to for an hour when he turned out to be a trump fan uh every waitress we had we got one we got two waitresses we lost the hostess that's right we lost that yeah we lost the hostess we got the waiter which is tough um i didn't get any of my dealers i will say and perhaps you're blackjack not not drug don't look at me like that i will say the people uh even the people who were voting for harris especially in vegas were like really enthusiastic they were like yes of course kamalov there's a of course, of course. We kept saying that the vibes felt better in Vegas than they did in Phoenix.
Part of that, though, when we talked to a lot of the folks who've been on the ground in Arizona, I don't know if it's necessarily a like the vibes aren't as good because we're losing is it is it's really tense in Arizona. Like like people are afraid to put Kamala Harris signs up

and there's a lot more Trump signs this time.

And there's like people talking about,

you know, threats and harassment and stuff.

And it was very, it really gives you a window

into like what it's like being on the ground

in a highly contested swing state.

Yeah, we, the other, the other point to note

is that we didn't see any Trump

or Republican canvassers out on any of the,

we were in like, look, we have, we have knocked on doors in college towns we have knocked on doors in madison wisconsin and that's a breeze yeah that's when you get uh people who aren't on your list and they're walking their dogs and they're like oh friend of the pod yeah that's yeah you open the door it's a it's a uh call congress sweatshirt like i think we got this person in the back stop project 2025 button but these were the really, these were the really closely divided and like last kind of persuadable areas. And so you do feel that tension.
But the guy in Henderson, we were in a suburb of Vegas, Henderson, and it was like a pretty divided neighborhood, Trump and Harris. And one guy opens the door and we were actually like looking for his wife and he's like, she's voted.
And we're sort of nervous. We're like, well, what about you? Are you voting for Harris? He's like, yeah.
And they're like, what about your neighborhood? He's like, it's a tough neighborhood. He's like, half of us are voting for Kamala and the other half are treasonous assholes.
We're like, okay, we got him. We got him.
Joe Biden's message worked on it. Yeah.
That was the other thing too. It's like, there were so many people turning out to knock on doors.
doors we like in all these places there was like more people than we expected to see and you go look on some of these republican candidates and they're they're putting up their pictures of of their uh uh campus kicks off and they don't have they don't have the bodies yeah they don't have the people i will say just in case you're thinking like oh well door knocking is about like reminding voters or there's some people who still aren't super tuned in remember the guy who is like a like late 20s he's washing his car and henderson we go by we start talking he's got his headphones on like who you're gonna vote who you're gonna vote for and he's like uh probably kamala yeah love it's like probably what what else can i say to you what else can i say do you want to talk about politics here on a sunday morning like please go away and i also just like found myself too like there was somebody that answered the door and he he he was not on the list but i think his um two members of his family were on the list and he was like i don't vote and i'm not registered to vote and he's already passed the deadlines we're like well we'll get you next time and uh and i just found you realize like at the end here like you just want to go to something so simple. I was like, Kamala's for lowering costs.
Trump's for a national sales tax. Tell your family, tell your friends, tell everybody.
You also realize just how divorced the kind of cable news, Twitter conversation about politics is when we're in a very working class neighborhood. And I guarantee you, those people are not up to speed on, uh, the, uh, whether Liz Cheney should be out on the trail or how many interviews kamala harris had done or call her daddy versus joe rogan like squirrel assassination we were so busy i kind of have missed that like i don't want to anyway but yeah it's like a lot of people living in some tough you know economic circumstances and a reminder of who we as democrats are supposed to be helping we want the government to help and you know.
And then on the flip side, all of you, all the volunteers are so consuming all of the information. We got off the plane last night.
Tommy and I are walking to the car and it's like, I mean, I didn't even know who the hell Ann Seltzer was. She's been telling all my friends about Ann Seltzer.
She's been telling all my friends about the Seltzer poll. Hopefully a lot of you guys were out there on the doors too, making calls to your friends in the battlegrounds you know who else was making calls to his friends who this guy hello aaron tim here what's up man how are you hey i'm good anything going in not much going on right now just two days to the election so uh hey hey i'm calling we got it we got an operation going We're getting folks that are pushing to make sure their friends have voted and got somebody else to vote.
You guys done already voting? Yes, we have. All right.
You taking anybody else to the poll? Well, I made sure Wolfie voted. That's good work right there, man.
We're going to win this thing, Aaron, and I'm grateful for that support. If you get anybody else to the polls, I know you've got all the kids to vote and everything, but call somebody else, get them.
We're making a chain of this stuff. Pod Save America listeners, hey, I just made my call to friends, to my three friends.
Get out there, make the difference on this thing. We've got two days.
Let's win this thing. All right, Tim Walls.
Tim. You know what, guys? If Tim Walls, who is doing a million it.
Who is doing a million rallies a day can find the time to call his friends. You can find the time today and tomorrow morning, whenever, right up until polls close, to call your friends in swing states and get them to vote.
Three friends. Also, according to our folks over at Vote Save America, the Vote Save America volunteers have made nearly 12 million voter contact attempts, including 215,000 do knocks and nearly 5 million calls made.
So people have been putting in the work. So thank you, everyone.
So proud of you guys. That did that.
You should be proud of yourselves too. All right, let's talk about the candidate's final weekend.
Kamala Harris clearly believes every swing state is still in play because she was everywhere from Georgia and North Carolina to Michigan over the weekend. Today alone, the campaign has a series of rallies and concerts in Atlanta, Detroit, Las Vegas, Milwaukee, Phoenix, Raleigh, Pittsburgh,

and one final event in Philadelphia that will feature Lady Gaga, The Roots, Oprah, Ricky Martin, and Fat Joe,

which is always how you end a campaign.

What a coalition.

What a coalition.

Get Liz Cheney up there.

Maybe George W. Bush is a surprise guest.

George W. Bush and Taylor Swift walk up.
Joe looks like he lost a few. You know? No.
He's looking like a healthy Joe. I haven't seen him.
I just want to give him some credit. The big celeb cameo this weekend came from Kamala herself.
Body positive to you, Joe. Thank you.
I thought of it too late. The big celeb cameo came this weekend from Kamala herself, who made a surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live.
Let's listen.

It is nice to see you, Kamala.

It is nice to see you, Kamala.

And I'm just here to remind you,

you got this.

Because you can do something your opponent cannot do.

You can open doors.

I see what you did there. Like to a garbage truck, right? Kamala, take my pomala.
The American people want to stop the chaos and end the dramala with a cool new stepmama. Kick back in our pajamas and watch a rom kamala like legally blondala because what do we always say keep kamala and carry on what do you guys think about snl just really funny it was good it was well done i mean i'm really gonna miss dana carvey as joe biden that just hilarious.
I didn't get to watch the entire skit until last night we got home. Once again, he just nailed.
It's also pretty intense that he's that they did that Joe Biden bit in front of Kamala Harris, who's sitting there in that chair, which is which is great. Yeah, it was good.
I mean, like, I appreciated that. It was a pretty on message.
You know, it was I know that Trump wants to shut down NBC and put Lorne Michaels in prison for some sort of law-breaking related to this. But it was a pretty good in-kind contribution.
I'll take it. Well, you see, they gave Trump.
They gave him NASCAR. They gave Trump the same amount of time during a NASCAR event, a NASCAR race yesterday.
Yeah, it was definitely a high-information skit. You had to know about Trump's stupid garbage truck driving press conference, which, by the way, Politico found some voters, some Puerto Rican voters in Pennsylvania who saw that and actually thought it was a continuation of the Kill Tony joke that kicked this whole off calling Puerto Rico an island of garbage.
So brilliant plan there. Yeah, I think SNL's not changing any minds, but I do think it projects confidence and optimism in the final weekend.
She can hang. I got a text from a friend who, he was always going to vote for Kamala, but a month ago I was really trying to convince him that she's good, she's a great candidate, she's going to win.
And he was really down on it and he texted me after that and he was like, oh, she, she's gonna win now, she's gonna win, that was amazing. I'm like, okay, well, let's not go too crazy, but I think it did give some people who were probably already on her side, like, all right, let's do this, it's fun.
Yeah, I mean, look, the message is like, we wanna move on from this kind of politics, and we wanna just go back to watching rom-coms and not thinking about it so much. I think it appeals to a certain SNL-watching person.
Who will be disappointed, even if but i thought i thought it was good i saw you know i think snl is primarily consumed on youtube these days and 9.3 million people had watched the opening skit so it's pretty good yeah uh harris pretty much stuck to the closing argument she delivered in dc over the weekend uh the campaign also released two final two-minute ads uh one that shows har Harris talking to people she's met on the campaign trail, promising to be a president for all Americans, touting her economic plans. They also have big, giant block letters on the screen, take on price gouging, bring down the cost of groceries, bring down the cost of prescriptions.
If that was the prose version of the final ad, there was a more poetry version that just came out right before we recorded. That's sort of more sweeping.
It's got the movie narrator voice. It's doing freedom.
Hits Trump and Elon Musk, ties Trump to billionaires and politicians doing the same old shit. I like that one, too.
Any thoughts on her overall final pitch in these last days, either with the ads or on the stump? Honestly, my overall reaction is that it's like there's nothing particularly new in the video. And it's a testament to how just exquisitely on message this campaign has been from the moment she became the candidate until these final days.
They are trying to hammer these key points that they think will bring along the last few undecided on things like costs, on common sense solutions, something that she said in her speech, and that is in both of these ads, clearly must be something that tests very well amongst a narrow sliver of voters they're trying to get to. And I like the ad.
Look, I'm a sucker for this morning we rise, kind of an ad works on me every time. That'll never change for me.
But overall, it is just a reminder that we're going to talk about what we know, what what we've learned over the course of this campaign and we have learned a lot, but I do think one thing we are going to find out on Wednesday is about the value of an incredibly effective campaign and a campaign that is on message trying to reach people. And yeah.
I will say at her rally on Sunday night, she didn't mention Trump's name once. It was the first time.
And in the first ad doesn't really mention Trump. Trump's barely mentioned in that second ad, the freedom ad.
And I think that I've been like listening to her message, the ads at the end of the week. Tommy and I had this, you know, like friendly debate on the last pod about the fascism and the economic stuff.
The truth is they did it all. You know, at the end of the day, they realized that you kind of you have to you have to raise the stakes of the election.
You have to remind people what they don't like about Trump. You have to introduce her.
You have to make sure that she's defined in a way that she's acceptable to people. And then you also have to talk about her plans for those.
You know, like I just, I think they did it all. They definitely did it all.
I mean, I think the question, the challenge in politics is measuring inputs versus outputs. And you can obviously put all of that in the speech.
The question is what gets to people. And it is kind of funny that there's two final two minute ads.
Like usually you have one because you're making some choices. This campaign that has a billion dollars.
Right, there's got so much money. But I think they're great.
Like I like the, I love the clips of her talking with voters where she seems like a human being connected to them i like the policy stuff at the top i hate the narrator voice stuff but whatever that's fine not us who knows what like what voter is going to see this ad that hasn't already seen a trillion ads we don't know uh but i like, usually these campaigns close on a positive message,

or at least Democrats close positive, close optimistically. I noticed too that they

proactively released to press that they had not mentioned Donald Trump in that event. I don't

know if that's undercut by then releasing an ad that very much does mention him and as a eclipse

of Elon Musk looking like a goober. I'm guessing no one gives a shit.
But I like her, like, you

know, telling us that there is a different brand of politics that we can achieve on Tuesday. I also think the decision to do everything everywhere all at once is very reflective of the information environment we're in now and how there's just like huge segments of voters that they need to reach that aren't getting their news from the same place that aren't watching the same media.
And so it's like, all right, little, little cost for this group of voters, little freedom and abortion for this group of vote, right? Like they kind of have to do it all. And for us, it seems because we are junkies who pay attention to this all the time, it seems like it's all over the place.
But if you're one of these voters we talked to over the weekend, you just happen to turn on the TV or look on YouTube or wherever you get your news from, hopefully you see the right message. Yeah, you feel that, like you feel that, like you just feel this ad, just like a pen an inch above the paper.
And they're just like trying to fucking drag the pen just down to get the fucking thing. I'm like, just get on the fucking thing.
I don't quite know what, what? That like a metaphor, I think. It's just like that, this feels to me like ads aimed at people who are either truly decide.
The ads trying to get them to vote? Well, the people that are leaning towards Kamala, that are open to Donald Trump, and they're just trying to get people to just like that last little gap of like, am I really going to vote for this person? It's what you were just saying about on the doors. Like the best thing about talking to undecided voters is you don't have much time and you

really do have to boil it down to just like, what's your, what's the thing you're going

to say to them if you have five seconds?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

And on the Republican side, it is like they're closing on a dead squirrel somewhere for some

reason.

I mean, look, and I will say they're at, we're about to talk about Donald Trump.

Their ads are closing on the message, probably the right message, you know, at least if you're the Republicans and want to win.

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out.

Trump, on the other hand, he's taken a different approach to his final days on the trail where he has openly fantasized about people shooting Liz Cheney and journalists, said he regrets ever leaving the White House after his failed coup, promised to put an anti-vax conspiracy theorist in charge of public health, mused that it should be illegal to release polls that show he's losing, called Democrats demonic, and deep-throated a microphone. Let's listen.
To get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news. And I don't mind that so much.
I don't mind. This is a group of people, a large group of people, larger than people think, but it's a very demonic party.
We had the safest border in the history of our country the day that I left. I shouldn't have left.
I mean, honestly, isn't this better than my speech? I love being off these stupid teleprompters because the truth comes out. Isn't this better than my speech i love being off these stupid teleprompters because the truth comes out isn't this better than my speech sounded like if i didn't know that he would he didn't drink i would think he was a little he hates his prepared remarks so politico's headline about trump's final weekend is trump returns to his grievances for his closing argument the washington post went with GOP's closing election message on health baffles strategists, worries experts.
And the New York Times story out of the Pennsylvania event called Trump, quote, sluggish and aggrieved. That was in the headline.
And the piece pointed out that Susie Wiles, who's running the Trump campaign, appeared to be giving Trump the wrap-it-up sign at some point during the remarks, I bet. What do you guys think is going on with Trump in these final days? And would anyone like to argue that any of it is strategic? No chance.
I mean, I walked by the TV this morning and I heard him repeatedly mention Al Sharpton. I was like, what? What happened here? Did Al Sharpton endorse Donald Trump? No, he was telling a long, whiny story about Van Jones being mean to him.
And I believe 2017. That's where we're at.
It's just like a grievance fest. And I think we're not, we don't know if he's going to win or lose, but there's just no question if he loses that part of it is because of this last, since what is it? October 27th was the Madison Square Garden hate fest, which was so terrible that even Megyn Kelly, like a dyed in the wool MAGA person now, was complaining about it.
Then he's talking about shooting reporters. I mean, the Bulwark just had a piece out where Trump came off stage after the event where he suggested that reporters might get shot, and he knew he had screwed up.
He knows that relitigating 2020 is bad. So he seems just like an exhausted old man who is, you know, at the end of a process that would be brutal for someone half his age.
And I think he also takes cues from the audience and he wants to entertain them. And he doesn't think his speech is entertaining.
You know, he starts with, are you better off than you were four years ago? And then he's bored of that. And by the end, he's doing the weave for 96 minutes.
And we're talking about, you know, squirrels or something. Yeah.
I mean, like he jokes about, it's worth hearing the amount of like kind of a performative laughter from the crowd when he jokes about reporters getting murdered uh you know we went through a news cycle of uh actually there's an explanation for his weird violent fantasy about murdering liz cheney right right the uh chicken hawk yeah the the snl trying to call the journalists chicken hawks too yeah right yeah the snl part that people aren't talking about is part where with the trump impression and actually really kind of capture something about trump in the home stretch here which he's like i don't want to keep doing this i don't want to be up here

anymore there is a like i want to be with you people donald trump still wishes he were running

against joe biden he i i you can see in how he is right now that he is like fundamentally like

pissed off because if joe biden were the candidate he thinks he'd be walking away with this thing

and now he's fighting it to a draw i am sure he is seeing the actual internal polling from the

Thank you. right now that he is like fundamentally like pissed off because if joe biden were the candidate he thinks he'd be walking away with this thing and now he's fighting it to a draw i am sure he is seeing the actual internal polling from the trump campaign showing how fucking close it is it's infuriating to him and uh there's like just he's angry he's angry and he's tired and when he's tired he can't help but be himself and it's kind of productive i've heard some people surmise that maybe all this RFK Jr.
shit that's going on

where he's like letting RFK Jr. out

saying he's going to run public health

and Trump saying,

I'm going to put him in charge

of women's health

and Trump's appearing with him

in Michigan and all this kind of stuff

has to do with like,

maybe they're trying to like

get some RFK Jr. curious voters

on board with Trump,

especially places where RFK Jr. couldn't take himself off the ballot like michigan like wisconsin like maybe but i also think uh occam's razor here is just like uh trump says whatever the fuck comes out of his what's on his mind yeah and i don't know that rfk is the most loyal guy i mean he's always been kind of a narcissist in it for himself but yes yes, you know, Trump's out there getting questions about whether he would ban vaccines, not get rid of vaccine mandates, ban vaccines.
And, you know, we're not just talking about like mRNA vaccines or COVID. You know, RFK Jr.
is someone who questions the polio vaccine, measles. I mean, things that, you know, put humanity in a much better situation.
And by the way, Trump left it open when asked. Left it open.
Left it open. Yeah, I mean, again, as you're making arguments to people in the last minute, RFK Jr.
also, he decided to tweet, like, when Trump takes office in January, the first thing we'll do is remove fluoride from drinking water. Take what? Like something that has helped people's dental health for decades now.
Yeah, like that's what america is going to go for the polls they want more cavities let's time for america's children to have more cavities that's what everybody's out for right now i do like i i think two things can be true right i think he is hearing like hey there's some the the low information rfk people still may be voting for rfk let's try to get something in front of those people counting on the fact that in the last 72 or 48 hours of the election, the fact that Donald Trump is suddenly promising to end all vaccine mandates and maybe take vaccines off the shelves is not going to reach the other kinds of people for whom that might be persuasive, or at least another final proof point for how Donald Trump is unstable and dangerous. Tim Alberta in The Atlantic has a long piece about sort of the Trump campaign towards the end.
And you know, he makes a good point that based on all the people he talked to close to Trump, Trump just doesn't like calm and normal and disciplined. He doesn't trust it.
And he gets bored. Like Tommy's saying with his speech, he also just gets bored with everything seeming normal and going well for him.
He loves the chaos. He wants to trust his gut and say whatever the hell he wants.
And all the kind of qualities you want in a president. Just a classic, look, the man needs therapy.
You recreate the patterns you had in your childhood. It makes you feel safe.
You don't trust when things are going well. Trump, we've been there.
We've all been there. Got to work through that.
I can't believe that Tim Alberta piece came out this weekend. Yeah.
I was on our flight on our flight to Arizona. Yeah.
But I do look, I think he has closed horribly again. He might win.
Right. Because maybe a lot of the vote is already a lot of vote is already baked in and a lot of people have already decided.
And so maybe that's enough for Trump to win. I just it is not it was not surprising to hear David Plouffe and Jen O'Malley Dillon and folks on the Biden campaign saying that they are in the last week they won undecided voters by double digits because I don't think Trump has done anything to convince people in this last week who weren't already inclined to vote for him.
Detroit Free Press front page split screen. It says VP Harris voices optimism for America in message to Michigan.
And then on the other side, it says Trump campaigns and swing states says he shouldn't have left White House. Like that's the front page that Michigan voters are waking up to, you know, that news.
All right. So this weekend, we also got the final dump of polls in this race.
The last round of Time Sienna swing state polls came out on Sunday morning. It's kind of a surprising mix.
They have Harris up three points in Nevada, two points in North Carolina, two points in Wisconsin, one point in Georgia, tied in Pennsylvania and Michigan, and down four in Arizona. Nate Cohn wrote in his analysis that there's some evidence of late deciders breaking for Harris.
He has it at 16 points, 58 to 42. The gap is much wider in the Sunbelt states.
And then Trump leads by about the same margin among late deciders in the blue wall, which is interesting. That was the, yeah, you want to stop and talk about that? No, you want to keep going? Let's keep going.
All in all, it suggests that there's more movement in the Sunbelt and it's going towards Harris, but basically everything tied everywhere, at least according to the times. Their average now is one point or less in every battleground except Arizona.
Want to stop and just talk about these polls? Yeah, let's do this first. Because overall, it's just another set of polls showing it's really, really close.
And the fact that voters in the Sunbelts are breaking George Harris comports with what David Plouffe was saying. there is this one strange number out of these polls which is that in the uh the northern swing states

trump led with what David Plouffe was saying, there is this one strange number out of these polls, which is that in the northern swing states, Trump led 60 to 40 among late deciders, which is in opposite of the three Sunbelt states and from what we've heard from the Harris campaign. So it was just strange and just one of those like, well, that data point makes a narrative really hard to form and that's all.
Yeah. So that, you know, it's all tied up.

I do think one explanation for her doing better in the Sunbelt and then slightly worse in the Northern Battlegrounds is it's just the electorate is starting to return to form to the 2020 electorate a little bit. And, you know, you saw this.
Some you gov did had done a series of polls of voters. And Trump's share of the black vote has basically stayed the same over the last several months.
But Harris's has grown in their final wave of polls. And so you're starting to see in high quality polls that sort of focus on an entire demographic so that you don't get these like, you know, cross tab small samples.
You see the black vote starting to look more like it did in 2020. You see the Latino vote starting to look more like it did in 2020.
The youth vote starting to look more, right? So you're seeing some reversion in some of these polls to like what the electorate was like in 2020, which would make sense of why the Sunbelt is getting a little better for her. And then it's getting a little tighter in the Northern ballot.
Yeah. I also, the one of Nate Cohn pointed this out about late deciders that both of these things can't be true.
It can't be true that in Pennsylvania, according to the Times, late breakers are going towards Trump. And according to the Harris campaign, they're going towards Harris.
Just one of those things has to be true. And the question is like, what is the artifact of this polling that's pulling out that kind of information? It might just be that people saying that they are late deciders may have in a previous poll is what Nate pointed out might've already have been saying they were voting for Harris.
Had they been called a week or two earlier? Yeah. There's a generally just a mixed bag.
I mean, we want her to win in the Midwestern states first and foremost, because that seems to be the most likely path, but there was a surprisingly strong result out of Nevada that we hadn't seen in a while, which seemed to cut against the doom and gloom we'd seen from John Ralston about the early vote. So again, we're just emotional basket cases.
That's right. Well, the poll heard around the world.
There we go. Dropped on Saturday night as the legendary Ann Seltzer of the Des Moines Register came down from the mountaintop with a tablet that showed Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump 47-44 in the state of Iowa, a state that Donald Trump won by eight points in 2020, and where Seltzer's June poll of this year had Trump leading Joe Biden by 18 points.
In 2020, Seltzer's final poll showing Trump up by seven was the first and only sign that the polls were underestimating Trump, like they did in 2016 when Seltzer's final poll showed him with a seven point lead over Hillary Clinton. He ended up winning the state by nine that year.
That was a terrifying moment for all of us in 2016 when we're like, oh, maybe this is not going to go the way we think. I remember where I was.
Let's all ignore that. Yeah.
According to the poll, the shocking result this time around is based on a surge towards Harris among older and independent women. Trump, of course, called it a fake poll done by a Trump hater and a call with an NBC reporter.
He'd previously called it a really great poll, of course. The Harris campaign said on a briefing call, quote, we are seeing that we're closing strong.
I would not read into it any more than that. Point taken, but let's do it anyway.
Tommy, how should people be thinking about this poll? I mean, I think it's a shocking outlier, but one from someone who's considered one of the best pollsters in the business, if not the best. I personally cannot overstate how large insults are loomed in my life because she basically called the Iowa caucuses in 2008, or at least she had Obama winning by basically the margin that he ultimately won by.
So, you know, you explained how Seltzer got this result, which was older voters, independent women breaking for Kamala Harris. Oddly, she has Harris winning senior men, men over 65 by two points, which is just kind of like hard to fathom.
Seltzer says she doesn't know exactly how, why this is happening. She thinks it's because of Iowa's extremely draconian six week abortion ban and the impact that is having.
The one thing that's just worth knowing is Seltzer's methodology is different from a lot of other pollsters because she basically just draws her sample by randomly calling Iowa phone numbers, landlines and cell phones. They contacted a thousand adults to get 808 Iowans.
They waited a little bit, but they're not doing all the kind of monkey business that a lot of other pollsters are doing, where they are basically asking respondents who they voted for in 2020 and waiting their sample that way. So it looks like that electorate.
So, you know, it's a gutsy poll to release because she knew, you know, she says in an interview with Tim Miller, she did yesterday, uh, one day my methodology won't work and I'll explode and like spread into little pieces over Des Moines or something very funny like that. But, uh, we'll see.
Yeah. I mean, like my takeaway from the poll.
So first of all, there's another poll out of Kansas that showed Trump only winning by five. And I bring it up only because these are polls that can't hurt because no one else is polling these states.
And those polls could actually end up becoming outliers. And it turns out that the polls showing a tie or Trump ahead are correct.
And we'll say, oh, these were outliers because maybe those voters were because of how she samples or because of the politics of those places slightly different. But all in all, it tells me like, you know, Nate Cohen wrote up about these times Siena polls that basically if there's a polling error like 2020, it could turn out that Donald Trump could run the table.
If there's a polling error like 2022 could turn out that Harris runs the table. And I think the truth is we just don't know, because as Tommy pointed out, a lot of these polls are being weighted towards the 2020 sample, which is just a way to kind of basically have them all heard towards a result that kind of looks like 2020 with certain assumptions about how the electorate has changed baked in.
But that's not really a poll, right? That's something else. That's a model or that's- I would say, and Seltzer this to to tim but um her waiting that you know she's defending her waiting right which is not weighted towards recalled vote or party even party id or registration but it is by demographic and so she's getting enough of each kind of voter in iowa and by region right so she's trying to get so she's trying to avoid the light congressional district breakdowns yeah just getting a bunch of excited libs but yeah

but

yeah voter in iowa and by region right so she's trying to get so she's trying to avoid the least congressional district just yeah just getting a bunch of um excited libs but who knows um i think there's just a signal in the poll i think that's the best you can say right which is that there is that harris is holding up surprisingly well maybe among older voters uh now of course the poll said that b was doing really well with seniors, and then he did typical performance with seniors. He did a little bit better than Hillary had.
But, and it's showing that women, older women, independent women are really, really motivated to go vote. And that could have implications for Wisconsin.
Traditionally, that has been

what Seltzer's poll has told people, and this was the case in 16 and 20, like, oh, well, if Trump's doing that well in Iowa, then maybe Joe Biden or maybe Hillary Clinton aren't doing as well as we think, according to the polls in Wisconsin, which ended up being true those years. She could be wrong, of course.
Her last miss, her last big miss on the presidential level was in 2004.

But even then,

she had Kerry up by three.

Bush ended up winning by point. She could be wrong, of course.
Her last miss, her last big miss on the presidential level was in 2004.

But even then, she had Kerry up by three.

Bush ended up winning by 0.7.

So that wasn't it.

So like he's tight.

What she has in this result is an 11-point swing from the 2020 results.

Margin of error at the 95% confidence level is nine.

Let's say that it's nine, right?

Let's say she's off by nine.

That's still Trump plus six in Iowa instead of Trump plus eight would still be a shift to the left by two points yeah the the the the the takeaway for me like stepping all the way back is okay well it seems like anna suggesting there's an error in the polls that looks a bit more like 2022 that there is this pro-choice anti-dobbs vote and then the, okay, Iowa is a place with a draconian abortion law. Wisconsin's a state that just elected a Supreme Court judge to stop them from having a draconian ancient abortion law in place.
But it's a state where that was very much a fear. You have Michigan where Gretchen Whitmer campaigned on protecting abortion access.
You have Pennsylvania where you have a Democratic governor that has been able to protect abortion access. The question is, what does that anti-Dobbs pro-abortion coalition look like in states where abortion isn't as much under threat or in a state like Arizona where they have a ballot measure or Nevada where they have a ballot measure? And I guess that to me is the open question.
For what it's worth, Tim asked Ann Seltzer about what this result could mean for Wisconsin. He's like, because there's a lot of white people in both places and they eat at Culver's.
And she cautioned against that kind of analysis. I mean, Iowa...
She just said she can't. She's like, I'm not qualified to know because I don't pull Wisconsin.
Well, yeah, she said the only way I would agree to do that is if I pulled that state. But it's also just worth pointing out that Wisconsin is getting hundreds of millions of dollars worth of messaging every day.
There's field teams, there's people knocking doors. Iowa's got none of that because it's not a competitive state.
So it's probably easier to reach people. They're just not hearing the campaign messaging.
So it's just like, it's a big, like, who knows? But the hopeful version is definitely like, okay, maybe this is a signal that something good is happening out there. Another high quality, highly rated pollster, Marist, just came out with their final national poll, 5147 Harris.
They are the other big, high quality pollster that does not wait by education or pass vote. So there's some split there and we'll find out.
Yeah, we will find out. But I will say, I just want to be like, even if the election results end up mirroring the kind of cascade of ties, that will not mean that their approach was the correct one.
It will just mean that they they herded luckily correctly. And we will run in in the next midterms and the next presidential the same confounding.
What do these mean? We will have no idea until the votes come in. OK, we're going to take a quick break.
But two things before we do that. First, reminder that we're going to be doing a show every day until the race is called.
Yay. What a day, as always, is going to have a new episode in your feed every morning, breaking down what you need to know in just 20 minutes.
The hosts of Strict Scrutiny and Hysteria will be making appearances across the network to unpack breaking news. So make sure you're following all these shows to get the very latest.
And again, Vote Save America shout out and request. As you probably know, mail-in ballots come in all the time with little mistakes, like a missing signature, and they can get thrown out if they aren't fixed.
That's why we need your help reaching these folks to correct or cure their ballots. That's what it's called by going to votesaveamerica.com slash cure and signing up to volunteer.
This is incredibly important. So important.
This is like a signature issue or whatever, and they give you a chance to fix it. And you know, there's like thousands of ballots that need curing usually in every state.
I think there's already a couple thousand in a bunch of the states where early votes come in. And that can be the margin.
Yeah, this is the voter who voted who made a little mistake and you can make sure their vote counts. Yeah.
Yeah. It's a reminder too, that there's going to be work.
We're going to have to like, even if we get good numbers, good results starting Tuesday night, we have to be vigilant and there's going to be work to do between now and the moment Kamala Harris is inaugurated. Yeah.
And of course, again, as we just heard from Tim Walls, uh, you can call a friend, you can reach out to a friend, text a friend in swing States, not in swing states. Just get people to vote in these last 24, 48 hours.
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They'll be there to break it all down. Comedy Central's The Daily Show, new tonight at 11 on Comedy Central and streaming next day on Paramount+.
All right, we're getting to the end here. We said all along, rather be us than them.
You guys still feel like that's true? I think so. I would have had a different answer two weeks ago, to be totally honest with you.
And now I feel hopeful because Kamala Harris is closing strong. I think Trump has fumbled every bag he has been handed for 10 days now.
Yeah, I would rather be us than them. It wouldn't have changed for me over the last couple of weeks, even with the ebb and flow, because the push to replace Joe Biden with Kamala Harris was just a bet on politics.
And we are practicing politics. Donald Trump is doing something else.
And I still would rather bet on politics. Yeah, I'd much rather be us.
I mean, I think the question is, what are we talking about when people head into the voting booth? And what the Trump campaign would want people to be thinking about when they head into the voting booth is Joe Biden, whether or not you feel better off than four years ago, inflation, immigration, squirrels, right? Yeah. We're not talking about any of the things that we know the Trump campaign wants people to think about because it's in their ads.
And so now again, maybe people have already decided. And so that doesn't matter.
But they are not doing that at the end. And Trump's just saying crazy shit.
He's being off his rocker. He has anyone who's just tuning into this whole thing.
Think of what they have seen in the last week from Donald Trump. And because it's maybe like, well, sometimes that works with people.
Yeah, that works with his base, but not people who are just doing it. And I think fundamentally, if you're zooming out, her coalition is relying on more more reliable voters than his right and now his base is certainly reliable the turnout in the rural areas already early vote is like through the roof but um he's betting on low propensity men to save the day for him and it it could pay off but it's a it's a riskier bet plops army of incels i just think about like i about like, for me, like the last week and a half has truly to me been about Trump on Joe Rogan versus Michelle Obama.
And I just think like Michelle Obama made a case, not just to people who are going to vote for Harris, but for the people around those people, right? Like for them to go to their husbands, to go to their brothers and their sisters and to say, please come with me. I don't do Donald Trump has not given a message to his MAGA base or on that show that says, I know you're with me.
Here's how to go get some other people. He just has not done that.
Yeah. All right.
Before we sign off for the last time, before results come in, while we're all in agonizing suspense, we thought it'd be a good time to talk about what we've learned from this race and any takes we feel confident about regardless of what happens on Tuesday. I'll run through a couple quick.
Polling is broken. I hit that one.
Candidates matter. Switching from Biden to Kamala is why we have a chance.
She has been an extraordinary candidate. She took on the mantle and she deserves so much praise for that no matter what happens.
And I am sure there'll be plenty of recriminations if we were to lose. And I just want to be on record saying that because I would like to not be a part of that.
There'll be not a perfect campaign, but if it required a perfect campaign to defeat this fucking moron, then America's got bigger fish to fry. Campaigns matter.
She ran a great campaign. The bigger points to me are the full takeover of the Republican Party by Trump is complete.
And I don't know what comes next for Republicans if Donald Trump loses, but we cannot forget what these people fucking did. Every single one who capitulated, every single one who sold their souls for him, they're not walking away from that.
We will remember. The last piece too is because Kamala became the candidate late because of a lot of headwinds around people being frustrated by the cost of living and anti-incumbency trend that is global.
It may not manifest in this election, but there's not just an anti-Trump coalition out there. There is a pro-freedom, pro-democracy, economically populist coalition out there that we can assemble.
We see that with Dan Osborne and the success he's had. We see that with ballot measures across the country.
That movement, that majority is there for us, win or lose. Yeah.
I mean, I think I totally agree that candidates matter a lot. I think that if this were Biden versus Trump, we would be on a path to, you know, Trump getting 400 electoral votes or more, and it would be very, very bad.
Yeah, the good news there is there'd be less anxiety.

Less suspense.

Yeah, there'd be more battening down the hatches.

Yeah.

More applying for passports in other places.

I think also we learned that abortion

is not a secondary issue for people.

It's not a quote-unquote social issue

or one that declined in salience

as we got further from Dobbs.

It's an issue where the results of the Dobbs decision

became more and more prevalent, and the stories became more personal and horrifying. And I think that drove voters.
There's been a lot of polling where you've seen abortion tick up over the last few weeks in terms of its relevance. I also think like there was a very annoying kind of internet Twitter meme for a while when Trump would say something and people would like lol nothing matters you know i remember that and like sometimes that's true you know when you're in the kind of dregs of an off year he can say something most people won't see it it won't matter and i also think that ultimately look the fact that we're here suggests that january 6th wasn't the career ending event like it should have been but what he says and does matters on the margins.
I mean, the Madison Square Garden rally has hung with him. There was a Univision poll of Pennsylvania Latino voters that found a lot of people personally offended by that joke.
The Kill Tony joke about Puerto Rico. 71% of respondents said the joke suggested there was racism in the Trump campaign and 53% think Trump is very disrespectful to Latinos.
So racism in the Trump campaign. And a shocker, right? Yeah.
Nick Fuentes. Yeah.
I mean like the flip side to Joe Biden would be down to Trump. Uh, we don't know what it would be like right now if they had run a normal public like Nikki Haley versus Biden, but like Nikki Haley versus Kamala Harris., we don't know what it would look like that they had all the trends of anti-incumbency, all the anger at the economy, all the anger at the Biden administration behind a normal candidate running a strategic campaign.
I don't think we'd be pretty happy sitting here either. Yeah.
To buy the country, anything could happen. Sucks that we got here, but feeling better.
If she loses, I think the explanation to me feels pretty straightforward, which is that voters who don't follow news closely, who don't show up in every election, we're still pissed about high prices and or at the border, which is sort of the post pandemic malaise that has, as you said, Lovett, just taken down incumbents all over the world. And trading our very unpopular incumbent for his vice president 90 days out from the election still wasn't quite enough to overcome that environment.
I think if she loses, that to me is the most likely explanation. If she wins, it is because the anti-MAGA coalition that has turned out in every election since 16 to beat Donald Trump and beat MAGA politicians did it again.
And it was fueled by women who were pissed about Dobbs and people in the anti-MAGA coalition very pissed about Donald Trump's threat to democracy. And what Kamala Harris did, which would be an incredible history-making achievement, is in 90 days, she reminded people of what's at stake and also defined herself in a way where she neutralized Donald Trump's advantage on the economy and on immigration just enough to make sure that that anti-MAGA coalition could propel her to the White House.
And it's sort of why I'm like relatively calm because I feel like we have done all we can to make sure everyone who's paying attention knows the stakes. And when I say we, it's like the other thing that makes me sort of proud and happy at the end here is like the anti-MAGA coalition got the assignment.
We were used to seeing that at the convention. Kamala Harris had to walk the highest, narrowest tightrope.

And you can count on one hand the number of times that she stumbled.

Jen O'Malley Dillon, who was the Biden campaign chair and now Kamala Harris's chair,

and the entire Biden campaign, who's now the Harris campaign, plus all the new people who joined.

They all got the assignment.

They did everything they could.

The left, AOC, and Bernie did everything they could. Liz Cheney and the Never Trump Republicans did.
Like the legacy media clearly covered the stakes. A lot of people have complaints about the media, but like plenty of articles out there about how, what Donald Trump's planning to do if he wins again.
And so if people choose that, then like, that's what the country wanted. And I don't believe that's what the country wants.
And I think that we can overcome that. But that's I really I'm proud of everyone for for pulling together and and doing everything we can to stop this guy.
Yeah, it's it's I will say, too, though, even in that circumstance, even with all of us doing everything we can, if we lose, I do think like, will that be because this country wanted someone as awful and terrible as Donald Trump? Because that be because this country wanted tariffs and a national sales tax and mass deportations? I think some people really want those things. I think some people are pretending to believe he won't do those things or actually believe he won't do those things.
But I also do think that like we can't always lay at the feet of the Harris campaign or Democrats or even the media, like what it means for someone like Donald Trump to be anywhere close to the White House. And those are deeper economic problems.
Those are deeper social problems. Those are problems with social media that will continue that we have to keep figuring out how to fight back against.
And it's true regardless of the outcome. And that is true regardless of the outcome.
Yeah. That's our show for today.
Tomorrow is election day. If you can get away from work to help get people to the polls, do that.
We're going to record the show as late as we can tomorrow night to get the fullest picture we can dan will be here too the whole gang uh we will release that show as soon as possible and as we mentioned we'll have a show every day until there's an official call stick with us uh hang in there everybody go get every last vote and uh you know feel good you should good. Yeah, feel good, everybody.
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