Harris Pollster: Trump Has No Momentum

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Speaker 5 Welcome to another special episode of Pod Save America. I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
This is the third of four bonus pods I'll be hosting on Sundays in the lead up to the election.

Speaker 5 In today's episode, I'll be talking to Harris campaign pollster David Binder about the last week of the campaign, who the undecided voters are, and what the best arguments are to make to them in these final days.

Speaker 5 Then later, I'll be joined by senior editor of The Atlantic and senior CNN political analyst Ron Brownstein to talk about how the demographic shifts since 2020 are impacting the election.

Speaker 5 But first, here's my conversation with David Binder. David Binder, welcome to Pod Save America.
How are you, man?

Speaker 4 Hello, Mr. Pfeiffer.
I'm good. Thank you.

Speaker 4 We are recording this about 10 days from the election uh you were at the dentist this morning uh i promise you this will not be the most painful thing you do all day a little numb on one side if i sound slurred it's not because i had a bloody merry before the show

Speaker 5 our guests are often better when they have a drink before the show but uh maybe a little uh localized anesthesia will have the same effect okay here's where we are we are 10 days out and everyone wants to know from someone who would know better than anyone else, where do you see the race standing right now?

Speaker 4 I see the race as a toss-up.

Speaker 4 And, you know, Dan, it's been a toss-up for

Speaker 4 almost as long as the vice president has been the nominee.

Speaker 4 There have been slight changes here and there, up and down,

Speaker 4 as you know from your review of polling. But the story is pretty much the same today as it has been ever since the vice president became the nominee, which is we're a margin of error race.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 the press has kind of decided for whatever reasons, maybe you see some of it in the public polling, which I know you abhor and ignore, that Trump has some momentum here at the end.

Speaker 5 What are you seeing in your polling? Has it really been static? Do you see momentum for him? Do you see momentum for Vice President Harris?

Speaker 4 We do not see momentum for Mr. Trump.
Not totally sure where the momentum stories are coming from, because, and you're right, there are public polls that we do pay attention to and some we don't.

Speaker 4 But they're all pretty much saying that

Speaker 4 when you you look at the Electoral College, you look at the seven states that are in play, the battleground states,

Speaker 4 all of them are still within the margin of error. And you might see a point moving toward Trump in some states, a point moving toward Harris in some states.

Speaker 4 I don't see any sign of a late break at this point. Late breaks do happen, as you know.

Speaker 4 You know, we've seen them in the past, but we're not seeing any indications of that now, a late break one way or the other. The polling is really very consistent in this sense.

Speaker 4 It's a couple points here, a couple points there, or a flat-footed tie in so many of these battleground states are going to be the decisive factor.

Speaker 5 I talked to Ploth a few weeks ago, and he

Speaker 5 estimated they're about 4% undecided and maybe about 10% in total persuadable voters. Who are those voters, right?

Speaker 5 What groups make up that, or disproportionately, make up that group of undecided voters?

Speaker 4 Among the undecided that we think will vote, because there's also the question of, you know, the undecided is that don't vote, which we could talk about separately if you want yes yes please do they tend to be independent voters um of all ages they're not really you know we don't look at any particular age group as having a higher proportion of undecided than others uh but that small amount of undecided is essentially people that are conflicted uh and happy to talk more about what is behind that conflict but right now uh they are pretty representative of the electorate as a whole we do find some more uh younger people people undecided these days.

Speaker 4 Young men is a group that is a little bit more undecided than we've seen in the past, but usually the undecided is pretty reflective of the electorate as a whole.

Speaker 5 Roy, let's talk about the conflict that some of these voters are having. What is it that is keeping them back from making a decision one way or the other in this race?

Speaker 4 Most of the undecided that we talk to are telling us that they have a fond memory of the economy under Donald Trump's presidency.

Speaker 4 At the same time, they are saying they have very strong concerns about him as a person.

Speaker 4 And they look at the vice president and they say, here is somebody new.

Speaker 4 We aren't all that clear on what she did when she was vice president, but she talks about things that we care about. We're not totally sure how she's going to do it.

Speaker 4 And we feel like there's a little bit of a risk in trying someone like her who we're not all that aware aware of.

Speaker 4 You know, obviously the run-ups after she was a nominee has been very short. And many people say that they didn't hear a lot about her when she was a sitting vice president.

Speaker 4 So because of that, some of these people are saying, let's go back to the guy that we know who's been there for four years and the economy was running.

Speaker 4 uh strongly during that period so they're telling us that they're conflicted a little bit about the economy uh concerns about whether the vice president will be able to uh really make a difference in their lives but at the same time having very strong concerns about Donald Trump as a person

Speaker 4 and the divisiveness and the anger and hostility that he brings to the body politic.

Speaker 5 I assume this is a balance, but it's sort of being portrayed in the press as sort of this choice the Harris campaign has, right?

Speaker 5 There is, should you spend these last 10 days with your paid inert media educating voters about who she is and what she would do, or should you spend your time warning people about the kind of president Trump would be, whether that's his economic policies, the claims from John Kelly and others that he's a fascist, Project 25, whatever it is.

Speaker 5 How do you think about that messaging mix with these voters? Is it different for individual voters or is there sort of a way to do it?

Speaker 4 In our mind, or at least in my mind, it has to be both. You cannot do one or the other.

Speaker 4 There are really three, and we also have to talk about abortion and reproductive rights and not leave that off the table because that is something that is still incredibly important to so many voters across the country.

Speaker 4 And they're not buying Donald Trump's statement that I left it up to the states and everything's fine. They all wanted me to do it.

Speaker 4 You know, so voters are rejecting Trump's comment on abortion and they're fearful for what might happen if he wins on abortion.

Speaker 4 But with regard to the two things you just mentioned, do voters need to hear more about Kamala Harris's positive policy prescriptions that are going to help the middle class, bring down costs, make sure health care is affordable, prescription drugs, and could just go down the line of the sorts of things that she's talking about.

Speaker 4 They do need to hear that and they need to know that she's committed to fighting for those things every day.

Speaker 4 But at the same time, we cannot ignore the threat that Donald Trump poses as a potential leader of the free world for the next four years because of not only what John Kelly said, but many other people who have worked closely with him that say that he is a threat and he will be a threat to the world order and the country's peace.

Speaker 4 So it's hard to say some voters need to hear the positive Harris, other voters need to hear the concerns and threat about Trump. Both messages need to get out.

Speaker 5 And when you talk about, as the vice president did in her press statement on Wednesday and then in the CNN town hall on Wednesday evening, about saying that Trump is a fascist, does that word mean anything to people, or do you have to go a step further and sort of explain what it is?

Speaker 5 And how do you connect that threat to people's lives, right? If it's sort of like he's a threat, he would do these things, but also price of eggs, like how do you make it fit for people?

Speaker 4 You know, I don't think it's so much about a word

Speaker 4 because one word doesn't necessarily communicate in of itself what the threat is. I think the things that John Kelly and

Speaker 4 we can go down the line with Mark Milley and everyone else are saying is that we cannot trust Donald Trump to have the country's best interests at heart because he's focused on himself.

Speaker 4 He may be focused on retribution and that their experience.

Speaker 4 with him in the Oval Office, in the situation room, is he is one that doesn't follow the norms that are needed for the president of the country.

Speaker 4 So what voters need to know about him is that four more years of him could lead to greater chaos. It could lead to disorder, both domestic and international.

Speaker 4 And it's not just Kamala Harris and the liberals saying this.

Speaker 4 It's the people that worked with him, that were closest to him, who say that they are scared about and they don't trust him to be the leader of the country.

Speaker 4 So those are the things that need to be communicated to the voters at the end here.

Speaker 4 They have to understand that the people closest to Trump who work with him in those very difficult periods, you know, in the situation room when Trump is dealing with international issues that are coming back and telling America now that what Donald Trump said during those circumstances were scary.

Speaker 4 And we don't want to give him the keys to the car again.

Speaker 5 You obviously are the focus group maestro. You've done more focus groups probably than anyone walking the planet over the long course of your career.

Speaker 5 One of the things that I've seen, some focus groups I've seen when you do the dictator argument, this is now before Kelly and Millie said it publicly, just Democrats asserting or using Trump's words that he is a dictator, is voters will say, well, he was president for four years and I didn't love all the things he did, but he wasn't a dictator, right?

Speaker 5 Democracy didn't fall. The country is still standing.
What's the best response to that?

Speaker 4 Yeah, no, we do hear that all the time, Dan. People are saying that frequently.
You really nailed it kind of where they are.

Speaker 4 The best response to that is that the people who were around him that kept him in check during his first presidential term are now gone.

Speaker 4 And we sometimes say there are no guardrails is another phrase that we use to describe that. And it's true.
There's several proof points for that.

Speaker 4 Not only is John Kelly gone and is Rex Tillerson gone and is Mark Milley gone, but Trump has said

Speaker 4 that he wants to appoint people that are loyal to him. both as advisors, but also as cabinet members and also, you know, as the head of the Department of Justice.

Speaker 4 So that when Trump says, I want to go after that guy, the DOJ will say, yes, sir.

Speaker 4 And that anytime he says, you know, if he says something about, I want troops to go clear the National Mall before I go out there, they go, yes, sir.

Speaker 4 And what we hear in our focus groups, and we tell people that, Dan, is that people are saying, you know,

Speaker 4 we don't want the president to be surrounded by a bunch of yes men. The president needs to hear a diversity of opinion.

Speaker 4 And we know that when Donald Trump gets in office, office, it's my way or the highway.

Speaker 4 So when Donald Trump has impulses, he will act on them. And there won't be anyone there to say, sir, you're out of line.
Think twice about this. What you're doing may be illegal.

Speaker 4 Instead, they'll say, yes, sir, go do it.

Speaker 5 We are recording this right before Donald Trump's sitting down with Joe Rogan, which is part of his very public, very aggressive, it seems, appeal to a certain set of Gen Z men, particularly online ones, I think, are the ones he's targeting here.

Speaker 5 Talk to me a little about the role that Gen Z men play in your coalition and how you guys are trying to appeal to them and what issues they care about.

Speaker 4 Yeah, you know, Gen Z men are interesting in this case because I believe the Trump campaign has frequently looked at younger men, Gen Z men, as someone that he can appeal to.

Speaker 4 You know, sometimes I question whether, you know, you go to the Republican National Convention, you see Hulk Hogan ripping his shirt off or Kid Rock playing music.

Speaker 4 And I'm not totally sure that that's the best way to reach them. But if you talk to young men, their issues are not all that different than anybody else's.

Speaker 4 They want to have the ability to have a good job with benefits and have a family and provide for family.

Speaker 4 So they are focused on not only the day-to-day economy, but the future economy. And I think there's a lot of frustration.

Speaker 4 We hear young men saying, you know, I want to be a home buyer, but the home housing costs are out of control. Things like that, that are frustrating them with the status quo.

Speaker 4 And I think if you ask me, Dan, like, why is it that younger men seem to be not as strong right now in the polls for Harris as they may have been for Obama or for Biden?

Speaker 4 One thing we would say is that they have concerns about the last four years not giving them what they wanted economically, not giving them that economic security.

Speaker 4 And there are a lot of reasons for that. I think the aftermath of COVID messed everything up economically.

Speaker 4 But right now, when we're talking to young men, they are talking to us about making sure they have a good job, making sure they have benefits, making sure they have salary, making sure interest rates are low, and making sure they can buy a home.

Speaker 5 So they're like normal voters, right? They're not this mystery, you know, sort of when you read the press accounts, it's like they care about crypto and gaming and cancel culture.

Speaker 4 They don't buy any of that. Oh, yeah.
Or you hear stuff like, you know, there's been a war on white men.

Speaker 4 White young guys feel like they're to blame for the world. You know, we don't hear that.
I mean, I see it online sometimes.

Speaker 4 Like, Like, you know, there's a woke culture, a feminist movement that has made young men feel that they are outcast. We never hear that.

Speaker 5 You know, you and I obviously worked together in two Obama campaigns where change was the predominant issue. A lot of campaigns really are a battle between change for status quo.

Speaker 5 This is a very confusing one because you have the sitting vice president to the incumbent president, and then you have the former incumbent president. So it's sort of, is it change? Is it status quo?

Speaker 5 What is it? How important is it for Vice President Harris to represent some form of change from either the present or the last decade or from the, you know, how are you guys thinking about that?

Speaker 4 I think it's very important. And I think the vice president thinks it's very important.

Speaker 4 You know, she's obviously said many times that she is not Joe Biden. She won't be a continuation of Joe Biden.
And she does talk a little bit about the generational difference.

Speaker 4 You know, Donald Trump is 78. And when we know how old Joe Biden is, and the vice president just turned 60, but she's of a different mindset, a different generation.

Speaker 4 Her upbringing has given her a set of experiences that are very different. So I think that it's important for her to tell the country,

Speaker 4 I am different. I have a different approach.

Speaker 4 And I'm going to be very committed to making sure that

Speaker 4 I will improve the lives of middle-class Americans today

Speaker 4 and for their children or their grandchildren. She has stepchildren herself.
She will have grandchildren.

Speaker 4 She is someone that is looking at the problems problems of the country from a little bit of a different lens than these guys who were born in the 1940s.

Speaker 5 You brought up Trump's age, and there's been a big effort from the campaign, at least in some of their public remarks and on social media, to talk about how Trump politically reported that Trump is exhausted.

Speaker 5 He's canceling events. Is there, you know, I've seen polling, you know, the New York Times poll out today.
It's like 40% of people think Trump's too old. What role does his age play in this at all?

Speaker 5 Or sort of questions about his mental capacity?

Speaker 4 You know, it's funny, Dan, when we were doing the groups of

Speaker 4 Biden and Trump before Biden stepped aside,

Speaker 4 they were focused on Biden's age, saying, you know, he were worried about his mental capacity and agility. And will he go downhill in four years?

Speaker 4 They weren't saying that much about Trump because Trump appeared a little bit more vigorous than Biden during that period.

Speaker 4 But now we are hearing that more about Trump because without the contrast to Trump and Kamala Harris, and now there's no question about people saying that Kamala Harris is vigorous and energetic, but they do start to say the same about Donald Trump.

Speaker 4 And part of that is because more people are hearing what he's saying in the rallies he calls it a weave uh other people call it rambling uh it has

Speaker 4 it has set into motion some questions uh is he going to be mentally able in four years you know because right now if he wins he's going to be in office from 2025 to 2029 is when when a new president would be you ask voters what do you think about donald trump in 2029 and they're like

Speaker 4 you know so his his age is an issue, both because of just the actual number, the actual numeric age of him, you know, being in office until he's in his early 80s, but also because he's behaving a little weird in his rallies and the things he says.

Speaker 4 And when voters see that, they get more and more concerned.

Speaker 4 You know, it's funny because his age, I said age is a number, something that bothers people, but it's really, you have to tie that in with some concern that mental capacity isn't going to be as strong strong moving forward.

Speaker 4 You want a president who's going to be nimble, who's going to be spontaneous, who will make the right decision

Speaker 4 in a crisis. And if you have doubts about

Speaker 4 the person's mental capacity to be able to understand what's happening in a crisis,

Speaker 4 then you may decide to choose the younger person who you have more confidence in.

Speaker 5 You know, at the debate, Kamala Harris invited Americans to attend a Trump rally, which is, as I joke, a good way to win votes and lose friends.

Speaker 5 and then at the recent rally, she's been showing video of Trump's events. I take it that this, that's part of that argument.

Speaker 5 You want people to see him because a lot of voters really, because of the change in the media environment, have not seen him like actually speak like live in maybe in years, right?

Speaker 4 Right. Yeah, I think that that was strategic.
The debate was one of the first times that voters saw him spontaneous.

Speaker 4 I'm talking about voters that aren't kind of, you know, people that watch us.

Speaker 4 people like you.

Speaker 4 But, you know, but then he talked about, you know, people were eating the cats and eating the dogs. And people got, oh,

Speaker 4 and now I think when we see that that wasn't just a one-off, that's really the sort of person that Trump is. He says stuff like that.

Speaker 4 So showing him speaking at rallies and saying crazy things. And like, he said, America's a garbage can.

Speaker 4 you know, and I don't know how many people would have seen that particular phrase, but I doubt that the vast majority of American voters believe that America is a garbage can, nor want a president who thinks that.

Speaker 4 That's one example of the sorts of things that people, the vast majority of voters may not be seeing or hearing that is a reason why the vice president is trying to show that a little bit more frequently.

Speaker 5 Like one of the defining characteristics of this campaign, dating all the way back to 2023, when Trump was running, has been a media environment where casual voters, right?

Speaker 5 Even some of the, even maybe in some cases, the majority or priority voters are just not consuming political news in the way they used to, right?

Speaker 5 They're not seeking out and it doesn't get to them sort of organically anymore because of changes in social media. And so, you know, there was the folks at Blueprint did a poll a few months ago.

Speaker 5 It was just like, how many people heard anything about like, but the Biden debate? And it's like 25% of people heard nothing about it.

Speaker 5 30% of people heard nothing about either of the convention speeches. Are you seeing your persuadable voter universe or your undecided voters tune in more in recent weeks?

Speaker 5 Are people now kind of dialing into this race here in the final weeks or they are people still a little removed from the news they're not doing it of their own volition what what they're telling us you guys are spending a billion dollars to show it to them

Speaker 4 they they feel they're being inundated with election information but but a lot of it's coming from tick tock or instagram um

Speaker 4 from their social media sources. They are not seeking it out.

Speaker 4 I mean, we talked to, especially younger voters, but we talk to our full range of voters about where they're consuming their political information, and it runs a whole gamut.

Speaker 4 There's still people that watch the local news at six o'clock. There are people that say, I'll watch CNN and then I'll go to Fox and I'll go to MSNBC and see how they're treating the same story.

Speaker 4 But there are other people that are saying, like, I've had enough of this already. Like, I just want it to be over.

Speaker 4 And those people are primarily, they're not seeking out anything, but it's coming to them through their various channels, their social media channels.

Speaker 4 And that's a little bit of a problem because the information they're getting isn't vetted, obviously. A lot of them know it.
They They say, like, I don't know if it's fact-checked.

Speaker 4 I don't know what's true anymore. But for some voters, it's like, you know, such a difficult situation or a difficult time to consume political news and not know if it's AI,

Speaker 4 if it's a deep fake, if it's PSYOPS. You know, this is stuff we hear all the time.
And for some people, it just kind of give up.

Speaker 4 And that's why I go back to the question you asked before about are the undecided going to vote?

Speaker 4 You know, who are the undecideds? And then I pointed out some of them may not vote at all.

Speaker 5 Yeah, talk a little bit about that, please. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Well, no, it's interesting because the,

Speaker 4 you know, it used to be, Dan, when we and I started our youth

Speaker 4 that we had a

Speaker 4 rule of thumb that the greater the turnout, the more, the better it was for Democrats or liberals, because young people tended to be a little bit more left-leaning. They were the ones

Speaker 4 that were a little bit iffier on voting regularly, while older people who tended to be a little bit more conservative would be, I'll vote hell or high water. That has changed now.

Speaker 4 It's no longer the sense that a high turnout necessarily means good for the liberals, because now with Trump, he brought out. a group of new voters back in 2016 that normally would not have voted.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 the question we're facing now in 2024 is, are the people that, you know, Trump's focusing on kind of, you know, the maybe young men that have not voted before, will they get off the couch and vote for him?

Speaker 4 Similarly, will some of the people that are normally

Speaker 4 constituencies of the Democrats come out and vote? So, you know, it may be that in this election, a higher turnout does not necessarily mean good things for the Democrats. And it may be that

Speaker 4 some of the people who are leaning Trump end up staying home themselves. That's why it's such a question mark right now.

Speaker 4 The whole game comes out to turnout. And the turnout skew could go either direction.

Speaker 5 I think it feels like a lot of people, not you guys who have the actual data, but the people who sort of analyze the election or maybe on the periphery of the efforts to elect Terrace or defeat Trump, really just say, this is like 2020.

Speaker 5 It's like 2020. It's going to be just like 2020.
And whether she gets, can she get

Speaker 5 Biden's numbers with Latinos in order to get, if she falls by one point, where she can get that other point? Cause it's so close.

Speaker 5 But it seems very possible this election could end up looking very different than 2020, right? It's just in terms of turnout and composition. How are you guys thinking about that?

Speaker 4 Yeah, no,

Speaker 4 it's clear. I mean, there are

Speaker 4 some polls would indicate that the

Speaker 4 proportion of younger black and Latino men

Speaker 4 may not be this,

Speaker 4 Harris may not reach the benchmarks that Biden got with them. But there are also indications that Harris is doing better with some cohort of Republicans.

Speaker 4 I mean, she campaigns with Liz Cheney and has significant Republican support.

Speaker 4 So the question mark, will it be like a little 5%, 7%, 9%, 10% of Republicans that cross over and vote for Harris that would mitigate

Speaker 4 what small losses she could get with some of the

Speaker 4 younger men, both white men and men of Latino. And I think the concern about black voters not being as strong for her, I think, is not.

Speaker 4 is a bit misguided. I expect her to meet those thresholds with black voters.

Speaker 4 But that is the

Speaker 4 question now is, are there different dynamics dynamics at play with Harris as the candidate that would cause her maybe to not gain as much

Speaker 4 or to slip a little bit with the Latino vote, but make up with it a little bit among Republican women, especially younger Republican women?

Speaker 5 I take it that like Liz Cheney is a good surrogate for those people.

Speaker 5 Who are the other some of the good surrogates that are helpful in persuading some of these undecided voters to get off the couch and vote?

Speaker 4 Well, there are

Speaker 4 Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen,

Speaker 4 a couple of surrogates. I think

Speaker 4 on the stump,

Speaker 4 the former

Speaker 4 Trump staff that have now come up for her, so Liz Chandey, obviously, was a Congresswoman from Wyoming.

Speaker 4 We have people like Olivia Troy, you know, people that were within the White House administration, that were...

Speaker 4 you know, working for Trump, wanted his administration to succeed, who watched it and now say, I'm endorsing Kamala Harris, and I hope you will too. So those sorts of people

Speaker 4 are important. And I think, and you can even go back to Adam Kinsiger, who's still a very good circuit himself.

Speaker 5 Okay. Kamala Harris is going to give her closing argument speech on Tuesday.
She's going to do it from the ellipse, the site of Donald Trump's infamous speech before the crowd marched to the Capitol.

Speaker 5 What is the one thing that you want undecided voters to have in their head? when they walk in the voting booth, sit down at the kitchen table with their ballot.

Speaker 5 Like, is there a moment, a vision, an issue you want them thinking about? Because that's really what the battle of the last days of the campaign is.

Speaker 5 Like, what's the last thing people are thinking about?

Speaker 4 I want them to be knowing that with Kamala Harris as vice president, she'll wake up every day thinking about them, thinking about how to improve their lives, what she can do to help Americans of all parties, all ages, all Americans have a better life.

Speaker 4 They need to know that she will be focused on that every single day.

Speaker 4 And then there are corollaries, and we could talk about what that means with regard to bringing prices down or helping with child care and, you know, making sure that Medicare covers home care so that older people can get care in their home and not have to go to a nursing home.

Speaker 4 I mean, there's a list of things. She's now talking about her to-do list.
But what voters need to know when they cast that ballot on election day is that Kamala Harris will be fighting for them.

Speaker 5 Right. That's the core contrast, right? Kama Harris is for them, Trump's for himself.
Is that right?

Speaker 4 That's right.

Speaker 5 Well, David Binder, this is a great place to end it. It is great to talk to you.
It's great to see you, my old friends. Good luck in this final stretch here.
I'll be thinking about you.

Speaker 4 Thank you, Dan. Always good to be with you.

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Speaker 5 He's the senior editor at the Atlantic and a senior political announcement at CNN. Run Brownstein.
Welcome to Pod Save America.

Speaker 4 Dan, good to be back with you.

Speaker 5 We are recording this about 10 days from the election. Where do you think things stand right now?

Speaker 4 Well, I think, you know, pretty unequivocally, the polling shows that there has been some movement toward Trump in October,

Speaker 4 but more, at least in the public polls, among non-white than white voters. And as a result, I feel like we've kind of wound our way back to where we started the year.

Speaker 4 You know, before Biden got out of the race, his erosion with both black and Latino voters meant that he was in a very difficult position across the Sun Belt battlegrounds.

Speaker 4 But the fact that his support was largely holding from what he won in 2020 meant that paradoxically, he was in a relatively better position in the states that were more white, less diverse, and older in the Rust Belt.

Speaker 4 right? The three states that fell out of what I once called the blue wall, which we'll talk about in a bit.

Speaker 4 Harris comes in the race and Harris regains a lot of the ground that Biden lost with black and Latino voters.

Speaker 4 But I think it's pretty clear in the final weeks that she hasn't regained all of it and is not likely to regain all of it.

Speaker 4 It's almost an impossible mission to regain all of it, given how many voters in those communities do live paycheck to paycheck, kind of by the economic margin, and feel like they were better off under Trump.

Speaker 4 I remember thinking, writing way back that if every Latino voter voter who said they were better off under Trump voted for him, it would be really difficult for Democrats in states where there are a lot of those voters.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 Harris is, as I said, much more competitive than Biden in the Sunbelt swing states, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, and Nevada.

Speaker 4 But it's not 100% clear that she can be competitive enough to actually tip any of them back in her direction, which means that her most plausible pathway, and it is still a plausible pathway to winning is to sweep Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Speaker 4 I mean, I kind of feel like we're ending up back in a place where we started the year,

Speaker 4 where it is essentially her ability to knit together just enough, hold enough of the

Speaker 4 large urban centers that are heavily minority, Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee,

Speaker 4 hold down her losses in the mid-sized cities, the Eries and Scrantons, and Green Bays and

Speaker 4 Racines, you know, Saginaw, and then blow off the doors in the white-collar, well-educated inner suburbs, Oakland,

Speaker 4 Chester, Montgomery, Delaware, Bucks, Madison, which is Dane County, and then the WoW counties outside of Milwaukee. I feel like her formula is very similar in all of these states.

Speaker 4 The national polls do not, I think, at all suggest that that path is closed to her, but they do show movement toward Trump and a need for her to kind of reset and regain, I think, some of the control of the dialogue in the final days.

Speaker 4 But that's kind of where I view it.

Speaker 4 I mean, you know, that she is, she is like Biden, largely holding what Democrats won in 2020 among white voters, maybe down a little among non-college whites and up a little among college whites, but netting out.

Speaker 4 to a very close place, clearly suffering some erosion among non-white voters. And that creates more problems for her in the Sun Belt than in the Rust Belt.

Speaker 4 Paradoxically, the Rust Belt states are better because they're less diverse.

Speaker 5 Which is the opposite of what we would have thought through all the years that I was working in politics and you were writing in politics.

Speaker 4 How many times did I write that?

Speaker 4 You know, like I remember in 2012 writing the story even before Trump that Democrats had to break through in the Sun Belt because their eroding position among blue-collar whites meant that they could not rely on the Rust Belt to the same extent that they used to.

Speaker 4 I mean, I wrote that story multiple times, especially after 2016.

Speaker 4 But, you know, I think if you're looking in fairness, I think it is very reasonable to conclude that the counter mobilization against Trump in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin since 16 has been greater than the mobilization that he was able to execute.

Speaker 4 I mean, if you look at what's happened in those states, Democrats won the governorship in 18 and won it by more in 22. They now have five of the six Senate seats.

Speaker 4 Trump won them by a combined 80,000 votes in 2016. Biden then won them by a combined 250,000, 260,000 votes.

Speaker 4 In 2020, they flipped, was it three state houses out of the six and have a shot at another one in Wisconsin?

Speaker 4 I mean, basically, you know, in those states, the magnitude of the backlash against Trumpism in the growing inner suburbs, and we can talk about the demographic changes in these states, but, you know, if you look at the four suburban counties outside of Philly, Biden won them by 115,000 votes more than Clinton did.

Speaker 4 I mean, that is a big difference. And, you know, he did better than her in Dane County and he did better than her in Oakland County twice as well.

Speaker 4 I mean, he won Oakland County, which is the big white-collar suburb outside of Detroit by twice as much as Clinton did in 2016 or even as much as Obama did in 2012.

Speaker 4 So, you know, Trump has clearly energized a lot of non-habitual blue collar, non-urban voters in these states, but he has moved these white-collar suburbs further toward the Democrats.

Speaker 4 And I would not be surprised surprised if Harris wins most, if not all of them, by even more than Biden did.

Speaker 4 I mean, based on my reporting from being out in Oakland County last weekend, I mean, the issue is this pincer movement that she faces in these states.

Speaker 4 On the one hand, she is a woman of color who they have successfully painted as a cultural liberal.

Speaker 4 with all these attacks on transgender issues and elsewhere.

Speaker 4 So it wouldn't be shocking to me that if Trump ran even better in the small town, exurban rural parts of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin than he did in 2020.

Speaker 4 And we'll have to see how much, but it looks like there could be some cracking in those central cities of Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Detroit.

Speaker 4 Maybe not as much as we're seeing in national polls, but probably something,

Speaker 4 given the frustration about the economy, particularly among black men. And so where does that leave you?

Speaker 4 That leaves you that she probably has to run even better than Biden did in the white-collar inner suburbs, but that is totally within her reach to do. I mean, that is totally possible for her to do.

Speaker 4 She probably has to do it, but she can do it. No guarantee, but it's there.
There's still that path. Seems to me very viable for her to win those states, which would take her exactly to 270.

Speaker 5 I mean, it is interesting that Trump has changed the makeup of the parties, but what he's done is he has, for the Republicans, he has swapped high-propensity people who vote in every single election, midterm special elections, for lower propensity voters who have not turned out other than the two times Trump was on the ballot.

Speaker 4 Totally correct. Absolutely.
And, you know, look, we know from 2016 and 2020 that Trump's superpower politically is his ability to turn out low propensity, non-college white voters, right?

Speaker 4 He's done that very well twice.

Speaker 4 We don't know yet whether that's going to translate into the same ability to turn out low propensity, non-college, non-white voters, Because in polling consistently, his strength, I think this is less true in the Latino community, but certainly in the black community, his

Speaker 4 incremental gains from 2020 are primarily among low propensity voters, young men, right, who, you know, who really don't vote.

Speaker 4 By the way, you know, every demographic group you can think of, turnout rates are higher for women than for men.

Speaker 4 Like, you know, we're talking about Latinos or black voters or young voters, especially young voters. Young voters, the turnout gap is wider along lines of gender than it is for older voters.

Speaker 5 So,

Speaker 4 you know, you know, obviously Democrats are nervous about what they are seeing in the national polls and they should be.

Speaker 4 I mean, you know, by historic standards, if she wins by a point or two, traditionally,

Speaker 4 that would not be enough to overcome the fact that the swing states are generally slightly to the right of the country.

Speaker 4 But, you know, that's a little scramble this year because the swing states she has to win are 80 to 90 percent white, you know,

Speaker 4 and her vote, like Biden's, is holding up more among white voters than among non-white voters.

Speaker 4 So, you know, I can see how Georgia and North Carolina can get more complicated if Trump really improves five, six, seven points among black men.

Speaker 4 But black men are 5% or less of the electorate in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. I mean, college white women are three to four times as much of the vote in those states as black men.

Speaker 4 So if we're talking about,

Speaker 4 you know, college white women were somewhere between 15 to 18 percent of the vote in each of them in 2020.

Speaker 4 You know, if we're talking about, you know, trading a three or four point decline among black men in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin for a four or five point gain among college white women,

Speaker 4 that would, you know, that would be a survivable trade for her, I think.

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Speaker 5 Let's talk a little bit about the demographic changes in the states. Every, like, every, I do, I'm guilty of this all the time.

Speaker 5 We sort of developed this framework because we were, for a year, we were operating under a rematch of Trump versus Biden.

Speaker 5 So it's like, what numbers did Biden have to hit in these states to meet his 2020 margins? And then we expand that out to the others, right? So, you know, she's got to get to 60% with Latino voters.

Speaker 5 She's got to win under 29 by 24 points because that's what Biden did or whatever it is. But what that analysis ignores is any sort of changes in the electorate since then.

Speaker 5 So you did some reporting for CNN with some new data. Tell us what you found.

Speaker 4 Yeah, so Bill Fry, the great demographer at Brookings, ran all this stuff for me. So all credit to Bill.
I just, you know, I'm just the messenger.

Speaker 4 But historically, going back to the 1970s, we've had a very consistent evolution of the electorate over every four-year cycle.

Speaker 4 As a

Speaker 4 almost clockwork, we're talking about non-college whites, whites without a college degree, the cornerstone of the modern Republican coalition.

Speaker 4 have declined about two to three points every four years as a share of eligible voters. And

Speaker 4 people of color and college-educated whites have made up the difference, right? And that's been

Speaker 4 the story. You know, if you go back to Ronald Reagan's first

Speaker 4 election in 1980, non-college whites were two-thirds of the voters. College whites were one-fifth of the voters.

Speaker 4 And people of color were only a little bit about 12 or 13 percent of the voters, right?

Speaker 4 And you kind of, you know, you kind of, this is using census data.

Speaker 4 You know, and you kind of fast forward to 2020. And again, there are different data sources about the electorate, but they all show the same general movement.

Speaker 4 If you use the census as kind of a common barometer, you know, we went from the non-college whites being two-thirds of the voters to a little under 40%, a little under two-fifths.

Speaker 4 They dropped from two-thirds to two-fifths. The college whites went from roughly 20% to roughly 30%.

Speaker 4 And the people of color went from 12% or 13%,

Speaker 4 also to roughly 30%.

Speaker 4 So Bill Fry looked at the very latest data from the census September of this year, so like brand new, and found that essentially these trends are continuing.

Speaker 4 That if you look at the eligible voter population, which is all we can do at this point, we don't know who the actual voters are going to be.

Speaker 4 The eligible voter population, non-college whites, are down another two points since 2020.

Speaker 4 And the difference is made up by roughly equal one point increases in the share of eligible voters that are college whites and

Speaker 4 people of color. Now,

Speaker 4 what's really important for the conversation that we're having is that this change, he found, was more severe in Michigan and Wisconsin than almost anywhere else.

Speaker 4 So, I mean, he has, in the data that he analyzed, the working class whites who are the core of the Trump coalition are down

Speaker 4 3.2 points,

Speaker 4 a little over 3.3 percentage points in Wisconsin and almost exactly 3 percentage points in Michigan.

Speaker 4 Very little increase in people of color. The gain is almost entirely, the offset is almost entirely college-educated white voters.

Speaker 4 And then in Pennsylvania, The change isn't as big, but it's not immaterial either.

Speaker 4 The blue-collar whites are down about a point and a half as a share of eligible voters since 2020. By By the way, he sent me some more data, which I haven't written up yet.

Speaker 4 But if you look at it, I mean, the population trends in these states kind of follow this. I mean, in Pennsylvania, the two counties that are gaining the most population are in the Philly suburbs.

Speaker 4 Dane County, which is Madison, is gaining the most population in

Speaker 4 Wisconsin. The suburbs of Grand Rapids are gaining the most population since 2020 in Michigan.

Speaker 4 Normally, you know, these effects, you know, changing the electorate by a point or two, the composition of the electorate doesn't matter that much from election to election because it gets swamped by any changes in preference, right?

Speaker 4 I mean, the size of the group can be, the changes in the size of the group can be overwhelmed by changes in the margins among the group.

Speaker 4 But in a year that is this close and which, you know, these states were decided by 80,000 votes for Trump in 2016, 250 to 260,000 votes for Biden in 2020.

Speaker 4 This time they'll probably be decided by somewhere in the middle.

Speaker 4 Even this small little thumb on the scale could matter.

Speaker 4 And by the way, I think it also reflects the reality of, you know, Harris's strategy that is aimed so clearly at those white-collar suburbs, including voters who previously had voted mostly Republican.

Speaker 5 Yeah, let's talk about that because she has spent the

Speaker 5 much, she spent much of last week campaigning with Liz Cheney. She has ads up with featuring Trump former advisors who are attacking Trump.
She made a big deal about

Speaker 5 Trump's fascism comments. I assume you see all of that seems to be directly targeted at this group of voters.
Is that right? Yeah, totally.

Speaker 4 To button up the point,

Speaker 4 the blue-collar white share of the vote is going down in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, as it is everywhere else, but it is still higher than it is nationally, considerably higher, right?

Speaker 4 So, you know,

Speaker 4 as a share of eligible voters, the blue-collar whites are now down to about 50%,

Speaker 4 just over 50% in Michigan and Pennsylvania. And they've fallen under 60 now in Wisconsin.

Speaker 4 And they will probably be slightly less a share of the actual vote than they are of the eligible vote because college whites turn out higher, way higher than anybody else.

Speaker 4 Like their turnout rate is, you know, we're probably going to see 90% of eligible college whites vote.

Speaker 4 So, you know, if you use the census data, like for example, Michigan in 2020 was 51% blue-collar whites, 29% college whites, 20% non-whites.

Speaker 4 You know, basically, it'll probably be something like 49, 30, 21 this time. I mean,

Speaker 4 the actual tends to follow the,

Speaker 4 so, you know, you can't ignore working class whites in these states. You have to remain competitive among them.

Speaker 4 And certainly it is critical for Harris to do everything she can to gain a little with the working class white women

Speaker 4 to offset what will probably be at least some decline among the working class white men.

Speaker 5 And this is, I mean, I think this is one of the things we lose to in these countries.

Speaker 5 It's not just that you're going to get some people in these suburbs who voted for Trump last time to vote for Harris this time. It's that more people live there now, right?

Speaker 5 You have people who have moved from the cities, people who have moved from the suburbs in

Speaker 5 to these places. You have in-migration.
Some of it's pandemic-driven, right?

Speaker 5 People who don't have to commute to work anymore or people who maybe lived somewhere like we live in California who moved away because of remote work.

Speaker 5 Like there's more people in these places to help drive those numbers up.

Speaker 4 Similar, Waukesha outside of Milwaukee. Now,

Speaker 4 the suburbs of Milwaukee are still the most Republican-leaning white-collar suburbs north of the Mason-Dixon line, but they are moving too, right? Waukeshaw is the biggest one.

Speaker 4 The mayor of the town of Waukesha, the Republican mayor of the town of Waukesha, which is in the county of Waukesha, like Waukesha Squared, he just endorsed Harris, right?

Speaker 4 And this is the kind of the movement the Democrats need. Hillary only won 33% of the vote in Waukesha.
Biden won 39% of the vote. Evers kept it at 39%

Speaker 4 of the vote. The state Supreme Court election, Democrats got up to 42% of the vote.
This is the biggest block of votes for Republicans in the state of Wisconsin. So does Harris cross 40% in Waukesha?

Speaker 4 Can she get to 41, 42 like Janet Protosewitz did

Speaker 4 last time? Ozaki, Washington, the other WoW counties are not as big, but it's generally the same story.

Speaker 4 You know, Biden did six points better in Ozaki than Hillary did, and Evers did one point better than Biden did. Same kind of thing in Washington.

Speaker 4 Like, so can you shave the margins down there, blow out the doors in Dane, avoid a collapse in Milwaukee?

Speaker 4 If you can do all of those things, there are not enough people everywhere else, you know, for Trump to overcome that.

Speaker 4 Now, the other thing, the other thing that we should say is that, is that, you know, and I have, I have to say, you know, we've been talking almost entirely about these three states because it seems to me that there is a big falloff.

Speaker 4 Maybe Georgia is still within reach for her, but I think these three states are much more plausible than any of the Sunbelt states, with the possible exception of Georgia staying close. But

Speaker 4 the other thing that's characteristic about

Speaker 4 Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin

Speaker 4 is that they do have a lot of mid-sized cities, like smaller cities, you know, the Erie, Scranton, Eau Claire, et cetera.

Speaker 5 That's sort of like

Speaker 5 these demographic changes, the way the coalitions have shifted, that explains Harris's strategy. It also sort of explains Trump's, because he's not trying to get those votes.

Speaker 5 He's not trying to increase his or lose by less among college-educated suburban voters, where he's trying to find voters to make up the gap for whatever gain she makes is obviously jacking up turnout among his base.

Speaker 5 But he may, you know, who knows how close to the ceiling he is there, because that's not a population that's growing, as you point out, shrinking, is with

Speaker 5 voters of color. and then low propensity younger male voters.

Speaker 4 Is that right? Right, absolutely. And look, I mean, you know,

Speaker 4 I don't know the exact number, but I'm guessing black men are triple the share of the electorate in Georgia that they are in Michigan or Pennsylvania, much less Wisconsin.

Speaker 4 I mean, Wisconsin, only, you know, less than 10% of the vote are people of color.

Speaker 4 So, you know, if Trump is successful in peeling off, you know, four or five points of black men, mostly on economic discontent, but also to some extent on these issues, or if he's successful at peeling off, you know, more, really, more like 10 points of Latino men.

Speaker 4 And there it is both economics and culture. Well, you know, they are a big share of the vote in Arizona and Nevada, and the black men are a big share of the vote in Georgia.

Speaker 4 And that is a problem that is hard to overcome. You know,

Speaker 4 that's like a real hole in the hull of the ship.

Speaker 4 Whereas In Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, it ain't great, but it's not nearly as threatening given how small a share of the vote they are.

Speaker 4 And, you know, it doesn't seem likely there's going to be significant erosion among black women. I mean, that doesn't seem likely.

Speaker 4 And, you know, I think it is possible that Harris will even match what Biden did among Latinas.

Speaker 4 Maybe a little erosion there.

Speaker 4 But, you know,

Speaker 4 the erosion among in the minority communities is preponderantly, I mean, maybe all among men.

Speaker 4 And again,

Speaker 4 that is a problem in the Sunbelt states.

Speaker 5 Interestingly enough, I talked to David Binder before this, and he did, he acknowledged there would be some erosion, although he thought she, he did think it was quite possible that she would get to Biden's numbers among black voters overall.

Speaker 5 So maybe you're swapping out. So you're losing some black men, but you're getting some more black women.

Speaker 4 Biden was already over 90% among black women. So if they can match his totals among black.
voters overall, even if just in these three states.

Speaker 4 Yeah, and presumably he thinks they can run better among college whites in those states than Biden did, right?

Speaker 4 And if you can avoid the non-college white women running for the exits, then you're really just talking about can you survive decline among non-college white men, maybe closer back to Hillary levels?

Speaker 4 I don't think she could survive it going all the way back to Hillary levels, but we're not seeing that in polling. I mean,

Speaker 4 we are not seeing a big change from 2020 among either non-college whites or college whites.

Speaker 4 I mean, a little better among college whites, probably a little worse among non-college whites, but nothing as big as what we are seeing among black and Latino men in polling.

Speaker 4 The changes are pretty small. Now, you know, it is offsetting to some extent, all right?

Speaker 4 I mean, you know, she's gaining among the college white women, she's losing among the non-college white men, but it doesn't feel

Speaker 4 and

Speaker 4 it doesn't feel like it's a, it's a, you know, a rupture or a fundamental fracture.

Speaker 4 And at least as we talk today,

Speaker 4 the pollsters that I talk to in those states, including Republicans, say, you know, we're not seeing like, it's not like there's a rolling ball down the hill among white voters.

Speaker 4 The vote among white voters in these states might be a point better for Trump than it was two weeks ago.

Speaker 5 Right. That's the sort of, that's sort of where we are.
Last question.

Speaker 5 Is there anything you're going to be watching for over the next 10 days here to hopefully maybe give you a sense of how this is going to turn out?

Speaker 4 As a pollster said to me today, it's kind of vain to have too much confidence when we're talking about margins like this. Now, obviously, if there continues to be movement toward Trump,

Speaker 4 you'd say, well,

Speaker 4 historically,

Speaker 4 elections, there's a little swell at the end and all the dominoes fall the same way.

Speaker 4 And that's a risk for Harris, but I'm not sure that's going to happen. I think the question is, what are we talking about at the end?

Speaker 4 I'm persuaded by the argument by Mike Pothoser, the former political director of the AFL-CIO, who has used data from Catalyst, whose folks you've probably had on here as well, to point out that there are 91 million separate human beings, not separate individuals, who have come out to vote against Trump or Trumpism in the election since 2016, which is considerably larger than the 83 million who've come out to vote for him

Speaker 4 or his Republican candidates. And, you know, the

Speaker 4 part of that coalition, what they call the anti-magna majority, what him and Simon Rosenberg both call the anti-magna majority,

Speaker 4 you know, are also irregular voters, low propensity voters.

Speaker 4 And the question is, is the final stage of the campaign unfolding in a way that says to those voters that there's enough at risk that they have to come out?

Speaker 4 And that is what would allow her to survive any kind of mobilization on the on the Trump side.

Speaker 4 Like I said, I mean, I think at least in those three states, I can't say for sure in Georgia or Arizona, but there's certainly evidence even there, at least in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, the evidence is that the counter mobilization of Trump was bigger than his affirmative mobilization, but based on on the results of the last eight years.

Speaker 4 And there are cracks in that counter mobilization, mostly because of inflation and frustration, you know, for people who are living paycheck to paycheck, but it is still available.

Speaker 4 That path is still open to her. So I guess I'm, I,

Speaker 4 for me, the question is, what's the question? Like, what's the question we're asking in the final days of the campaign? Is it, were you better off under Trump? than Biden?

Speaker 4 Or is Harris too much of a continuation of the Biden presidency?

Speaker 4 Or is it whatever else you think about the economy or Biden's performance or what he did on the border, is Donald Trump a risk the country can't afford?

Speaker 4 And I don't think we know for sure which way that's going. Kelly kind of pushed it one way, but

Speaker 4 it would probably matter if other people who believe that, like Mark Milley, you know,

Speaker 4 Jim Mattis came out and said, this is a risk we cannot take.

Speaker 4 So, yeah, I think we're just right on the knife's edge. But that, like the Lord of the Rings, you know, what was it? The way is shut.
Like the way is not shut.

Speaker 4 You know, they're going through the mountain. The way is not shut for her through the former blue wall states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin.

Speaker 5 Well, that's as good a place as there is to end it. Ron Brownstein, thank you so much for joining us.
Talk to you soon.

Speaker 4 Thanks for having me, Dan.

Speaker 5 That'll wrap up today's episode. Thank you to David Binder and Ron Brownstein.
I'll be back in your feeds next Sunday with a very special guest for the last of these episodes.

Speaker 5 And if you're a Friends of the Pod subscriber, I'll be in your feet again this week for a new episode of Polar Coaster. Thanks, everyone.

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