A Pollster’s Guide to the Homestretch

hey y'all it's estad I'm coming to you before the show to let you know about something new here happening at the Times nyt is created an audio subscription and starting soon they're going to be asking people to subscribe if you do or if you're already an eligible time subscriber you'll get full access to every episode of our show and all the other New York Times shows on Apple podcast and Spotify if you don't subscribe don't worry you'll still be able to hear the latest runup episodes as they come out also to prepare for election day we're making a special feed we're keeping free for everyone the runup guide to 2024 so you can go back and listen to essential episodes to get you set for November 5th to find that search the run-up guide to 2024 wherever you get your podcast but please consider subscribing to continue hearing what we're up to along with our colleagues at Modern Love and hard fork and the daily to learn more you can go to NY times. com podcast and thanks for listening I'll see you on the road hello hi my name is ested hearnen I'm a reporter with the New York Times I was looking for Kate and you have found her how are you good how are you uh I'm doing good thank you so much earlier this week I hopped on the phone with one of our listeners Kate I worked for the California State Assembly for almost 30 years and I also was elected to the city council in Yukaya California in 1980 possibly before you were born so you've been someone who's been politically active for a long time both locally on the state level you got it yeah and I'm not like I'm not a player but I am a the participant Kate is a Democrat who lives in California she's retired I'm still very involved in community activism but clearly obsessed with a 24 presidential election and she wrode into the show because she like me is spending a lot of time these days thinking about what this election might come down to so I um I you know I have been listening to your podcast since my son told me about it and it seemed it seemed so much you were talking about you know National Trends and National demographics and subgroups and you know what it's not you but the whole the whole kind of political class appeared to be looking more at the big Nationwide picture and my concern is the the 35 to 100,000 votes that Comm needs to win the swing States you mentioned kind of when you wrote into us that you have been working on some models and you have been kind of trying to think through this yourself can you take me through some of that oh sure absolutely well just so you'll know I'm am not alone in this and I have what I would call some friends we all uh you know we share just to understand the psychology of it because we're all obsessed and very concerned about the election we have to control our access these things because if you do Doom scrolling then you don't have a life so so there's all kinds of different online simulations where you can kind of turn States blue and red and see who wins that's kind of what we're doing here is that we're you know looking looking to paths to a win my current feeling is Arizona has lost okay and Georgia probably lost North Carolina probably lost not sure not sure as I walk through it's like it it gets down to Pennsylvania of course Kate's right in the end this may all hinge on a handful of states and just a few thousand votes is there anything else that really comes up for you I I guess if I was uh Queen I would ask what is the the latest thinking of very smart people on the swing stage yeah I think that we definitely can can get some answers for you on what the what the state of play looks like in some of those swing States and what might be the things that uh puts one campaign over the top over another thank you oh that's so great so with one month to go until election day I wanted to have a conversation with someone who thinks about the landscape of the 2024 election more than anyone else I know my colleague Nate con General polling whiz and chief political for the times today 2024 by the Numbers who has the advantage between Harris and Trump what's the most important Battleground State and what are the chances that we actually know the result on Election night from The New York Times I'm estad hearnen this is the runup [Music] can you um introduce yourself and tell us who you are I'm Nate con I cover politics and elections and polling and I'm uh responsible for the methodology of the times Sienna survey in this period of an election considering we are just about one month out and every new time Sienna poll seems to have so much weight on it both from the campaigns and just general public following this do you feel like how do you feel in this election period does it make you more excited to have all of those eyeballs like on you and your work or does it stress you out any um wow I have no idea how to answer that question you know I at this stage of this of the campaign I'm trying not to think I'm sort of trying to become a machine that um produces the things I'm supposed to produce and tune out all of the conversation about it polling is rare and is different from much of what the times does and so far is it almost by definition is not um precise it's inherently uncertain and imprecise in all these various ways and there's also as I believe you once put it a scoreboard at the end um so if I thought too much about um all that is said about our polls I would go completely insane I think because you know in the end um the final result will tell the tale and we don't know what the final result will be and the although I you know think the polls can have good years and bad years they will not be perfect MH Nate n talked on Tuesday the day a new National poll was released from the New York Times and Sienna College that puts vice president Kam La Harris slightly ahead for the first time with 49% for Harris to 46% of the vote for former president Donald Trump I wanted to start with that poll and to understand what was driving those results for Harris the source of strength for Harris in the poll are white voters with a college degree in most of the polls that we conduct Harris is doing better than Joe Biden did among white college graduates than four years ago and in most the polls we do she's doing worse among basically every other demographic group whites without a degree black and Latino voters and so on in this particular poll she actually doesn't do quite as poorly as she has in some of our other polls among white voters out degree and black and Latino voters but she's not doing as well as Biden still it's that extra strength among white college graduates that gives her the lead overall there are more signs of softness for Harris uh there are more voters who say she's a flip-flopper there are more voters who say that she's too far to the left on some of the character type questions where she does well um like honesty she still does fine but they're not they're's not quite as shiny and glowy as they were so the Harris plus4 is being driven by a growth among Democrats in a population they've been better and better in in the Trump years white voters with the college degree but it's not like the story of this Harris plus4 result is at odds with some of the things we've been seeing earlier about Democrats trailing off among other groups people without college degrees black and Latino voters it's just that she's done better among a different slice of the electorate that's right and there's another layer to add which is that compared to some of our previous polls Harris is benefiting more from narrowing to the group of likely voters compared to the broader group of registered voters you know when we conduct a survey we take a PLL of everyone who's registered to vote but as you know not everyone who's registered will turn out and so pollsters narrow the scope of their polling to the likely electorate who we think will show up in November and there are invariably differences between the likely electorate and the broader group of registered voters in this poll Harris does two points better um among the people who we believe are likely to vote than the broader group of registered voters that's her strength in this poll M well well taking this all in aggregate at this point would you say it's fair to say that the race is largely tied or with a slight haris Advantage um how would you describe just what the likelihood of wi comes to at this point I think it's close enough to a tossup that I don't really think it's worth squinting to see who you think might have the edge I do think that if you had to squint and say which candidate leads in the average by even 0. 1 percentage points in States worth 270 that answer is Harris and it's been Harris for well over a month because she has that tiny little Ed in Pennsylvania Michigan Wisconsin um I have to tell you that in the last two presidential elections advantages for Democrats in Pennsylvania Michigan and Wisconsin have not always materialized on Election Day I'm not predicting that will happen again but that memory is near enough in many of our minds that I think it's a mistake to read into a01 point lead in some of these states right so I think it's we may as well call it a tossup and that applies by the way to the states where Trump has a very narrow if consistently narrow lead North Carolina Georgia perhaps Arizona or Nevada you know these are states where um all the polling points toward a competitive race and polling is not good enough to give either candidate an overwhelming Advantage if it's one or two points here or there one thing that does seem that polling can tell us is that Donald Trump is not seen as inherently unelectable amongst the broader public in a way that some people thought that he might be you know he's been indicted he been convicted he's chosen an unpopular VP candidate per favorability ratings had a widely Pann debate you know like all of those like assumed factors of a presidential race they would be devastating any other candidate all those test consistently so what does that tell us about how the either the country views him or about the importance of those tests in general I think that for almost any other candidate and maybe every other candidate that has sought the president in recent years this stuff is disqualifying and game over I think it is different for Donald Trump and I think we could devote the rest of the episode we you probably devote a whole podcast to untangling the different sources of Trump's strength some of which maybe even predated his Run for the presidency even the elements of his ideology I think also deserve to be given some credit here you know I think for a compared to the Republican party of 12 years ago Donald Trump is on vastly better ground on the issues the series of positions that he took on immigration trade in China this this bundle of issues together is aimed square at the most persuadable kind of voter in American politics which is a voter without a college degree who doesn't have ideologically consistent left right views on the issues and wants a president who will sort of fight for them and against whatever it is out there that's out to get them and I think that's an extremely powerful appeal that he has and that other cand simply don't and to your point in this cycle rather than four years ago Democrats are kind of agreeing with him on the issue front are extremely telling they are acknowledging the importance of immigration they are kind of conceding the uh you know inflation argument just presenting themselves kind of better solutions for that argument they might they talk about abortion certainly more than Republicans do but it's not as if the range of issues Donald Trump is talking about are invalid for Democrats they're actually agreeing with the premise of the problem at these absolutely can I then ask the flip qu side of the question we know kind of his unique strengths but what are his unique weaknesses that have put him in a position to possibly lose to KL Harris yeah I mean I think it's worth flipping around for a second this whole idea what if he is still being really weighed down by all of these issues what if he would be cruising to a clear Victory if he hadn't been offending people what if he would be favored in all of the key States if it weren't for the fact that he tried to steal if he didn't do January he might be killing this thing there the same it's their votes you know the you know and I don't if he if in the end Donald Trump loses these key Battleground states by a hair how many of them were affected by Donald Trump sto the steel campaign often being aimed at taking their votes yeah and I think that if he could wave a magic wand you would be perfectly fine to undo uh the decision in dobs but that's another self-inflicted wound brought about by the uh conservatives that he appointed to the Supreme Court if it weren't for those things the self-inflicted wounds of abortion democracy and arguably the last decade of controversial remarks that alienated millions of Voters maybe he would be winning decisively M and maybe some of the what's going on in American politics nowadays is that um the two parties are both trying to inch towards a new Centrist kind of position that Donald Trump uncovered but cannot capitalize on himself yeah yeah I think that's an interesting question can I ask what is the most likely Tipping Point States you mentioned Battlegrounds which of course you know this thing will all come down to we know the states that feel familiar Pennsylvania Wisconsin Michigan are those the most likely Tipping Point States when it comes to the Electoral College come election night should we all just be waiting for Pennsylvania probably um I think that there's obviously a lot of uncertainty but the clearest path for Harris runs through Michigan Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and Trump has to break one of them I think you can make a case for all three of those States being the easiest one for Trump we know that there's a unique challenge for Democrats in Michigan because of um Arab and Muslim voters group that um represents not enough of the electorate to single-handedly decide the outcome but enough to quickly take a state that Biden won by nearly three points last time and move it to something much closer to a dead heat if everything else is held equal in Wisconsin is true that the polls show her doing well but this is the state where the polls have the greatest record of overestimating Democrats so although that may be the one where she has the most room to fall I don't know whether that necessarily makes it safe given just how many times this has proven to be sort of the best Republican state of the bunch and then there's Pennsylvania which almost doesn't need an introduction but it's the largest state of the bunch and it has been extremely close in all of the polling if Trump wins one of those three states which is certainly possible then we do care about the others we care about whether Harris can get a win in North Carolina or Georgia or um Arizona and Nevada and depending on which of the three states Trump won it would change which of the others would be sufficient to put Harris back over the top but if we were just making a simple decision tree you know part one is can Harris pull off this Rust Belt thing and then if not did she win anywhere else got it I see the flowchart and it starts with Pennsylvania Wisconsin Michigan that's that's right now one thing that makes this all very frustrating is that election night will work in more or less the opposite direction where we learn North Carolina Georgia pretty quickly and then may have to wait a long time before those Midwestern states come in yeah which may make the answer I'm providing now ultimately quite unsatisfying in four weeks on the other hand though by the time we know Pennsylvania we will have realized whether in fact it is as simple as we're laying it out here because we'll know probably by midnight whether Harris can win in Georgia or North Carolina even if the races hasn't been called yet more with Nate con after the break I want to do a little exercise that you might hate which is that like I want to lay out the four scenarios of this election and I I wondered if you could tell me the factors that would have to go into making that happen so if we were to wake up um after day after election day and it was a blowout Harris win what would you say were the factors that were most likely to have led to that result well I would tell you we should have seen it coming all along the the special elections were great for Democrats the midterms went well for Democrats the obvious sign of enthusiasm for Harris that didn't exist for Biden and Clinton was finally back it sort of was more like Obama 08 in a sense and in the end too many swing voters were not going to tolerate bringing Donald Trump back to the White House after what he did on January 6 and they were still furious at Republicans over the loss of abortion rights and many voters in the critical swing States took all of that very personally and so it was a landslide m a trump blowout way we should have seen it coming all along Donald Trump has defied every political expectation every turn of his career the polls show him doing better today than they ever showed him doing in 2016 or 2020 and he only already that's true now that's already true now the polls are going to air are going to underestimate him yet again and how of course we should have seen that coming poers never thought that they had an explanation for why they miss so badly and they haven't done nearly as much to fix it as they'll tell you so obviously he was going to win big given that the polls now are so close the party registration figures by the way have been fantastic for Republicans they're building leads in states where they didn't previously have a lead like Pennsylvania and Arizona where new registered voters are just coming in hard to the Republicans right now over the last few months even with Harris now in the race yeah those special elections all good for Democrat but like those were just really highly engaged liberals turning out of course they weren't representative of the broader electorate and the broader electorate cared about the fact that their grocery prices went up 50% and Donald Trump was someone who established himself as someone who they could trust on the economy and the whole basis for the Democratic party among working-class voters for the last 100 years has been that they would be the party that helped them and right now they think that Donald Trump is the one that would help them and so he wanted a blowout mhm and if we flipped it to a close Victory are there groups or states that you think will lead to either a close Harris Victory or a close Trump Victory I think that if we were to break down this scenario I think that there are like kind of two one is the one that really feels just like a 2020 repeat where Harris narrowly wins across these states maybe she does better among Black and Hispanic voters in the polls currently show or alternately those young Trump Black and Latino supporters in the polls they're just not voting and as a consequence she does a little better in North Carolina Georgia Arizona Nevada than the PS suggest maybe she does even better than Biden by squeaking out that North Carolina win which has been one of the bright spots for her in the polling and at the same time you know she narrowly squeaks out these Midwestern states just like Joe Biden did um so maybe a trump signs a victory elsewhere but Battleground States like they moved in the midterms and four years ago getting closer towards Democrats and then I think the other version of this is the the midwestern scenario that we were talking about earlier where you know what these losses for Democrats among Black and Latino voters and young men that's real and the and Harris can't win Georgia Arizona Nevada North Carolina um if she's down to 86% of the black vote instead of 92 and so on and then it's a very late night where we're waiting to see whether she squeaks out the Michigan Pennsylvania and Wisconsin group and those states are much whiter white voters will represent um nearly 90% of the vote in Wisconsin and 80% in Pennsylvania and well over 70 in Michigan and in the scenario that's just enough MH it never stops being interesting to me to hear you lay out how the democrat's path is chiefly through white and more affluent elector yeah it's it's interesting on both points I mean I suppose that of the two the affluent one is the one that really sort of strikes me because it's the biggest change in recent memory Democrats have it's interes you Democrats haven't won the vote since yeah 1964 post rights but they've actually often done pretty well among white Northerners and as a consequence they've often won a lot of relatively white States like they've been winning Michigan pennslvania Wisconsin for decades right even though they're really white so to me in itself that the Democratic path depends on predominantly white States is sort of been true the whole time even though it's a little counterintuitive because you have to remember that Democrats lose white voters because they get trounced among white Southerners and that just for the same sort of electoral math reason we were talking about earlier doesn't doesn't hurt them as long as they squeak out these narrow northern states the shift among college graduates though I think that's something that few people could have anticipated I mean I remember in like 2004 there was that book what's the matter with can just talking about how strange it was that workingclass people would vote for a republican given that the Democrats the party of the working class and now here we are with the Democrats very clearly being the party of college graduates and the affluent you know that was a factor I wanted to isolate and you've already really done that CU it seems to me like a huge thing for people to know um is the educational polarization that we see in the data but also the gender gap that feels important um I hear Republicans talking so much about how they need to get young men out and that men need to vote at the same rates of women and that frankly they seem pretty open and resigned to the fact that they're really not trying to claw back some of those votes from the proverbial Suburban women we're talking about more so that they're trying to round it out with an electorate that has more men in it in the numbers does that track as what seems like the Trump strategy and how hard will it be for Republicans Too Close That gender gap so talking about I mean we've already said polls are imperfect pulling a subgroup like young voters or black voters Or Hispanic voters and stuff we're going down even further to like young men or young women that's getting really hard right most polls don't even release that that said all of the data at our disposal suggests that Trump is doing very well on young men and you could easily talk me into the idea that he leads among young men maybe even comfortably um even as Harris has a 3040 point lead among young women um so you have to take the opportunities where you have them if you're the Trump campaign and this is a group of Voters that traditionally has not been um inclined to support Republican candidates but there's a lot of evidence including in like hard party registration data that they've swung to the right and I think this relates to what I was mentioning earlier about the effective turn out in this election if you were to like say hey what's the group that would be hardest to try and mobilize it for the first time in this election and be like maybe young hispanic men it's like well that's one of the best groups for Trump compared to 2020 so you definitely can see why that's a great opportunity for them if you can get those people to the polls then you're in a great spot but if not then maybe a lot of the lead that you've seen in some of the polls in a state like Arizona or something maybe that maybe that becomes harder to to maintain when people actually show up on Election Day yeah I mean it seems as if what is we're consistently hearing is that we have to unlearn the political story that was so core and I think Obama era the Democrats have really held on to the ob eats equals winning that Coalition being one that's driven by young people driven by people of color and you know I remember that Coalition talking about college graduates but it wasn't chiefly only or there there was almost no gap between people with and without a college degree in 2018 2012 almost none I think that education has become one of the major dividing lines and maybe just as importantly by becoming a major dividing line that's been like the major shift the major change over the last decade is this loss for Democrats among College people without a degree and gains for Democrats among people with a college degree so is it true to say the more people who come out in this election the evidence points out to being better for Donald Trump I think that there there are some like wrinkles that we can add to that but like yeah basically mhm and we can see that in these special election results that you know they tracked like 7% of the electr and the Democrats dominate them yeah um it's just a it's an uncomfortable pill for them to swallow but the true one it's and it's it is extraordinary you know the Obama Coalition is it's gone um I want to ask some specific questions based on things we have learned in previous episodes of ours we were just in El Paso at the border specifically thinking about how Latinos think about immigration and I know one of the things you've been writing about is the data that um you know talks about what we would consider attitudes uh among immigration or the relationship between Trump and Latino voters now we know that that is a block that doesn't necessarily see itself in tandem that came up a bunch in Texas folks saying they don't really see connected to other groups of Latino voters but I know that like when we think about them in polling or if we think about them in some of the data sets they're sometimes combined what do we know about the specific views about immigration among this group and their relationship with Donald Trump and how has that shifted from 2020 I think one of the big surprises of that night was a lot of the Border communities who end up moving in Trump Direction yeah it's it's funny because as it's often been noted and correctly noted that Hispanic voters are not a monolith that there are dozens of different communities with different levels of assimilation and different experiences in the United States and yet despite that in 2020 they did all basically move towards the right more or less the same amount regardless of whether they were Cuban refugees people from Spanish settlers hundreds of years ago here in New York in the Bronx I mean we can keep go we can list every community and give an example of trump making big gains um there are signs those gains are poised to continue to some extent or another um this fall though I do think that because his strength is so concentrated among lower turnout groups I think that's going to mitigate um just how much of that materializes in on Election Day but our polling absolutely speaks to the phenomenon you just talked about which is that many Hispanic voters don't see themselves as as the sort of person who's targeted by Trump's policies um and even beyond that many of the claims that Democrats would usually say are racist dog whistles aren't just simply not being heard as racist dog whistles by Latino voters but they agree with many of them they are much more sympathetic to a border wall than you might think they're much more sympathetic to deporting undocumented IM yeah I mean we were a group of Democrats who even said you know this group of people coming feels really distinct from me we waited our turn they didn't wait there's like language that you know you hear from an in group that I think sometimes would surprise folks but I don't know why because you know like of course those attitudes against among that group sorry and you know they they um also sympathize with Trump's claims about crime and would agree if he said that this crime in our cities is out of control you know they'd be like yeah it is that doesn't mean that they like Donald Trump or if you ask them they'd say he's a racist too that's not a question that we ask in polls but I think that's what our result would be based on the other pollsters who have done it over the years yeah in the end our polling suggests that it's Trump's strength on the economy that's ultimately driving decisive here that we're talking about a group of workingclass Voters who you know if you're a college educated Democrat and this goes back to a recurring theme about the education divide but if you're a college educated Democrat you might assume that Hispanic voters mostly support Democrats out of like racial solidarity yeah um and that's not what it's about it's because the Democrats were the party of the working class that would help people like them and in general the Assumption of someone supporting people out of racial solidarity feels wrong like even with black voters I mean there's a slice of that folks too but you hear even the economic concern come up all the time of course and um you know if you view the world through the lens of like a liberal arts class on you know race gender and systems of power and domination in American life then that's you would think these these groups are voting um but every piece of evidence that we have suggests that the economy is at least co-equal and in all likelihood a more important factor and that this is Donald Trump's major advantage in not only in this election but in previous ones as well um what about Gaza we hear so much about foreign conflicts abroad of course that has been increasingly inflamed with the escalations in the last couple weeks uh what do we know about the places where that might most matter because I remember you telling me before um foreign policy doesn't often rise to the top of people's list including young people I think we have every indication that Donald Trump is going to do much better among Muslim and Arab voters in this election than he did four years ago um I think he'll do better among young people as well but I would not rate foreign policy as being a driver on that while I think it is the factor that will explain the gains that he makes in dearb Michigan or Hamra Michigan or wherever it may be and um you know this is an extremely small group even in Michigan we're talking 2% of the electorate if you do a poll of Michigan with a thousand people that means you had 20 respondents who were Muslim or Arab like we cannot measure this group reliably um as a result of its small size but we do a lot of polling and if you aggregate all of our polls together and look at the still pretty darn small group of Muslim and Arab voters who we've spoken to they have swung really hard to Trump by their own account and and it's worth thinking about on Election night when we think about Michigan it it's a real possibility that that type of factor could could help bring the state closer to at least 50/50 absolutely I mean Biden want to B 2.

7 points and we're talking about a group that's 2% of the vote so if that group hypothetically I don't think this is going to happen suppose it swung 50% that's half of Biden's lead gone right there um you know the flip side of course is that Biden didn't need a single vote from dear borne to in Michigan so if Harris loses you can't I mean it may it will not only be because of this but if there was a race that otherwise Harris was going to win by a point or would otherwise win by a half point which would not at all be a strong result for Democrats in Michigan but if that's what it was then then yeah this could be it could it could be decisive yeah uh and the last thing I want to do is focus on a couple questions about what's coming in the next several weeks both things that we're looking at and things that you can help us point to to look for in the home stretch if you were Trump and Harris campaigns respectively both where and what would you talk to who would you talk to like what does the number say are the most important groups for them and where do those voters Live Well the persuadable voters are are different than we imagined them to be in the past you know the stereotypical swing voter was the soccer mom the security mom the we the a a white Suburban mom yeah we used a lot of different words but that's basically what we always meant that's all we mean white Suburban mom and I don't think that's who the persuadable voters necessarily are they're not necessarily white I think that if you told me after the election that the people who swung like switch their votes were majority nonwhite that wouldn't shock me um they'll be disproportionately young they'll be disportionately without degrees though our I mean our polling does show her's doing very well among college graduates so clearly she's making gains there as well the reason the soccer mom analogy was relevant she was too busy dealing with her kids to have well formed opinions on politics and to already know who's going to vote for and stuff and that's who you needed to be reaching down the stretch I think we're still talking about people who are less engaged less political who are going to learn things about the candidates that we take for granted for the first time over the next three weeks reaching those people is way harder than it used to be you know they're not all watching the network television like you know I and so this reaching those voters is going to be hard and do you think that's a joint interest to both of those campaigns you for for to you know to speak to the question about like where would you target you think both of them are going to be focused on those more lower propensity voters yeah and that's not what I would have guessed four years ago but I think that is what I think that's that's the game that's who the swing voter is turning out to be we've talked so many times throughout the scope of this race and we've been following this you know before any normal person was interested um what if you could sum it up like what do you think has been your biggest surprise over the last year and a half like what has jumped out to you as something you did not expect and what is something you got completely right if you had asked me at the beginning of this campaign what I sort of expected I I would have told you Trump and Biden were going to run again Biden and Trump would basically redraw the electorate as it was um two years earlier that Biden probably do given how the midterms went that Biden was probably going to do a little bit better than he did in 2020 because um of abortion and um The Fallout from January 6 and I don't think that's what's happening right now I think that instead even though all the events that I think really mattered probably had already happened by January 2023 or whenever we would have had this hypothetical conversation I think that the huge like I've used the word upheaval already I'll use it again though the the upheaval that happened after the pandemic in terms of the economy culture the direction of social media um had already sent the electorate on a different course by January 2023 than I had recognized one that would mean that this was not a simple repeat the election result will look more like 2020 than not just CU our country is very polarized um and it takes a lot to move it off of that um but I think a lot of things that were already playing out in early 2023 I did not recognize um had the potential to break up what seemed like such a um stable political Arrangement like I think that's a part of a national story that's affecting everyone in our own ways um would have never guessed that the midterm result we saw in Florida was like possibly real like that the shift the state really did I mean we'll we'll find out in a month whether this is true or not and you know what in retrospect it makes sense these were really personal things the like fights and everyone had a different version of it depending on your experience but whether it was um a fight over vaccines or masks or crime or prices um or abortion rights or or January 6 and if you're in a swing state your own vote trying to be taken by um a sitting president like those are all really personal things that left a mark on all of us in one way or another and it was maybe naive to assume that the way that people respond to that would map neatly onto their prior political allegiances I think that there are people as you know as polarized as we are there are people out there whose whose political views were upended in some way by all of those events I just mentioned it's different for everybody but yeah I think it I think it's added up to something a little different the Biden Trump rematch created a expectation of a of a political alignment that's closer to 2020 than we might have and some of the forces that you think have driven that shift were already being put in Motion in January 2023 when we would have had that conversation when we would and they were happening underneath the kind of Biden Trump of it all in fact many of them have subsided in some since then and I think that's one of the reasons why maybe in the end some of them will D that and well switching to Harris is also a relevant Factor here I think um but I think that if they had stuck with Biden and um if the election had been held earlier I I think it could have been completely different than 2020 and nothing like what I would have guessed in January 2023 MH what's something you got right you're very good so let's let's hear The Brat you know I I don't know um not much see the thing is I can't take credit for anything until the results actually come in you know I can say things I'm wrong about but I don't know that I'm right about anything at this point yeah thank you Nate we really appreciate your time and thank you so much for being our guide through polling and through the data all for the last year and a half happy to chat thanks for having me Good Luck down the final stretch thanks we'll need it yeah me too yeah like you're like oh I just feel too I feel to embrace machine I was like oh you should do that just Embrace machine hearing from Nate helps inform the things I want to focus on in the home stretch of this presidential race how the campaigns are targeting low propensity voters the gender gap and just what is happening in Pennsylvania Nate also reminds me that for all the time some people put into trying to predict who's going to win that's mostly A coping mechanism in this moment of great uncertainty because this race is basically side and even if you ask the experts and come through all the data there's basically nothing that looks like it can change [Music] that if you're interested in hearing more from Nate and me on the state of the race and what the campaigns are doing in the home stretch we joined our colleagues Maggie Haber and Michael Barbaro on The Daily today so check that out [Music] too that's the runner for Thursday October 10th 2024 and now the rundown please welcome back to the Late Show vice president kamla Harris this week vice president kamla Harris was on a media blitz I'm here on a special day I was supposed to have a day off I'd only come in for the vice president of the United States the next president of the United States we met the 59-year-old vice president this past week on the campaign trailer daddy gang I went to Washington DC to interview vice president kamla Harris it took her from podcasts like call her daddy to cbs's 60 minutes and while she was largely on friendly BR would you like to have a beer with me so I can tell people what that's like she also faced questions on 60 Minutes about the administration's record on the border was it a mistake to loosen the immigration policies as much as you did it's a longstanding problem and solutions are at hand and from day one literally we have been offering Solutions what I was asking was was it a mistake to kind of allow that flood to happen in the first place I think the policies that we have been proposing are about fixing a problem not promoting a problem also this week Senator Mitt Romney spoke at the University of Utah and took a question about Harris what's stopping you from getting to the point where you'll say you'll vote for kamla Harris and you know endorse her the way that Liz Cheney has yeah I I made it very clear that that I don't want Donald Trump to be the next president of the United States and you're going to have to do the very difficult calculation of what that would mean all right uh and um I my own my own view is that uh uh uh I want to continue to have a voice in the Republican Party following this election because I think there's a good shot that the Republican party is going to need to be rebuilt and reoriented either after this election or Donald Trump is reelected after he's the president uh and and believe I will have more influence in the Party by virtue of saying it as I've said it he did not say he would be voting for Harris taking a different path than other prominent anti-trump Republicans like Liz Cheney and her father former Vice President Dick Cheney we are 26 days away from the 20124 presidential election see you next [Music] week the runup is is reported by me estad hearen and produced by Alisa Gutierrez Caitlyn O'Keefe and Anna Foley it's edited by Rachel dry and Lisa Tobin with original music by Dan pal Marian Lozano Pat mccusker Diane Wong Sophia landman and aliciaa IU it was mixed by Sophia landman and fact checked by Ena Alvarado special thanks to Paula Schuman Sam dolnick Lissa Anderson David hinger Maddie masello mahima chablani Jeffrey Miranda and Elizabeth Bristo do you have questions about the 20124 election email us at the runup NY times. com or better yet record your question using the voice memo app in your phone that email again is the runup and NY times.