3 Takeaways - President Obama’s Chief Pollster, Joel Benenson: On What He’s Watching Most Closely Now and What the Path Forward is for Republicans and Democrats (#14)

Episode Date: October 29, 2020

Find out the 3 keys to success for campaigns; who has the best polls (Fox News); what the biggest shifts in the electorate are; what he's watching most closely now; and the path forward for both parties.

Welcome to the Three Takeaways podcast, which features short, memorable conversations with the world's best thinkers, business leaders, writers, politicians, scientists, and other newsmakers. Each episode ends with the three key takeaways that person has learned over their lives and their careers. And now your host and board member of schools at Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia, Lynn Thoman. Hi, everyone. It's Lynn Thoman. Welcome to another episode. Today, I'm delighted to be here with Joel Benenson. Joel led the award-winning research and polling for President Obama's 2008 and 2012 campaigns. It's hard these days to get an objective perspective on the election as the media tends to be biased. They're either pro-Biden or

pro-Trump. Joel is going to provide an objective, clear-eyed, and expert perspective on the election, and he is also going to tell us who he thinks is going to win and why. Welcome, Joel, and thanks so much for being here today. Thanks for having me, Lynn. Joel, what is the state of the race in this home stretch? Yeah, I think the way I always think about these things is who would you rather be right now, Biden or Trump? And to me, there's no question that you'd rather be Biden than Trump. Trump's been struggling, I think, really badly since the first debate. He hasn't been able to regain his footing, in my view. And I think Biden is doing everything he has to do to keep

the focus on what is really the number one issue on people's minds, which is the coronavirus and the president's failure to deal with it properly, as we're seeing surges all across the country again. I think that's the main thing as you go into the final days here, you're talking about the closing phase of the campaign, which is when you really want to just keep driving your core message and your core contrast. I think Biden's got the upper hand right now. I think the polling indicates that as well. Up until the evening of Election Day in 2016, everyone thought Hillary was going to win. What makes this different from four years ago? Yeah, it's a great question. A couple of things. One is I think the Biden campaign has learned from some of the mistakes that the Hillary campaign made in terms of not ignoring certain

battleground states. But let me talk first about the national polls quickly. At this point in 2016, Hillary's lead nationally had shrunk to about 2.1%. We right now see Biden with a 7.5% lead in the national polls. This isn't a popular vote election, but contrary to what people believe, the polls were pretty accurate back then. Hillary won the popular vote by about 2.2 or 2.3 points. So if Biden holds that lead here over the last six days, I think we're down to five before it's election day, that's going to bring some states back to the Biden camp. The day, that's going to bring some states back to the Biden camp. The other piece that goes along with that, the Hillary campaign notoriously ignored three battleground states that were part of the big blue wall, Pennsylvania, Michigan,

and Wisconsin. And when we look at those three states right now, Biden has not ignored them. And he's going into this final period of five days with about a three and a half point lead in Pennsylvania, about a six point lead in Wisconsin, I believe, and in Michigan, it's as much as eight points. Those three states have been part of what we call the blue wall of electoral college states. If Biden puts those states back on the map for him, it's pretty hard for Trump to have a path there, even if he wins Florida. And in Florida is nip and tuck right now. Hard to say who will win that. But obviously, if Trump doesn't win Florida, almost every path he has disappears. in 2012 when the country was going through difficult economic times. That was a very successful reelection campaign. And President Obama was reelected with over 50 percent of the vote. What was the key strategy to winning that election? And are there any lessons that President

Trump could have taken from that campaign? Well, I think there are lessons he could have taken. I think it's a great question, Lynn, because it's something that I don't think gets talked about enough. But you're right. The country was in difficult circumstances. I think one of the keys to success, and I've always had this mantra, I've worked on four presidential campaigns now, that presidential campaigns are about big things, not small things. They're about the future, not the past. And they're about their lives, not your lives. It doesn't mean that your bio doesn't matter, but it means you've got to be in touch with where people are. And what we did in the Obama campaign is even though we were having a recovery, it was a slow recovery that people weren't feeling yet. And so sometimes to the

frustration of President Obama, we really kept calibrating the messaging very carefully, not to overstate the progress, because it wasn't being felt in the lives of people. And that's what I mean about their lives. I think that would have been an extraordinary lesson had the Trump campaign taken that to heart, but he's done the opposite. He downplayed the virus from the start. He's saying things that are contrary to lived experiences of people every day. You've got one out of four people over the age of 50 who know someone who has died from coronavirus. You cannot go out there and say,

we're rounding the corner, we're over the hump. We've got almost a quarter of a million people who've died from this disease. We lead the world in the number of cases we're having, and we're surging all over the place. So that makes him look more out of touch with the lives of everyday people every time he tries to overstate where we are over the place. So that makes him look more out of touch with the lives of everyday people every

time he tries to overstate where we are with what people have seen is the number one issue that they're really voting on. And there are economic consequences to that. I'm a big fan of Fox News polls. I think they're the best public polling out there among the networks and media outlets. Not only have people said that the coronavirus is the number one issue that they're voting on, but they not only give Donald Trump failing grades on how he's handled it, but they've also given him failing grades on having the compassion and empathy that we need in a president right now. So it's hard to find anything that they've done right. And I think that really stems from the president and his basic psychological

approach and character, all of which helped him when he was an outsider in 2016 and could run about blowing up the system and taking on the establishment. But you're the president of the United States now and the leader of the free world. You are the establishment. And I think he's failed to internalize what that means and how to run a different kind of campaign suited to that role as opposed to your upstart candidacy in 2016. What are the key voter demographic groups that have shifted significantly since the last election? That's something I've talked a lot about. I realized back in about June or July, again, looking at a few different polls, that one of the biggest shifts that's happening is among suburban voters overall. And that's important because that group is roughly half the electorate. In 2016, exit polls pegged it at 49%. Donald Trump won that group nationally by four points. Right now, in most

polling I look at, Trump is trailing among suburban voters by somewhere between 12 and 16 points. That is a massive swing among a group that represents half the electorate. It's a lot has to do with suburban women, but it's also suburban men. His numbers have shrunk there. I don't think Trump helped his case when he referred to suburban housewives. Anybody who knows anything about the suburbs in America today knows that women in the suburbs are largely college educated, many of them work. It was a real anachronistic kind of comment that certainly isn't going to help him with that group. The other group that I'm really going to be curious about how it turns out on election day, Trump is still leading with this group, but white non-college voters, which have

been a big part of the Republican base for a long time. And Trump won that group by just over 30 points, which is kind of typical for Republicans back in 2016. I think it was even in the mid 30s, maybe about 35%. Right now, he's only leading that group by 14 points in national polls. So it looks like there's been both erosion in his base and erosion with those suburban voters who were really critical in giving Democrats back the House in 2018 in what was really a wave election for the House of Representatives. You've said that the number one issue for voters is COVID. Are there any other issues that matter, or is it just COVID-driven election? Oh, no, absolutely. I mean, I think the job loss that we're talking about, the Labor Department recently put out a number that I think estimated that there could be as

many 5 million permanent job losses as a result of coronavirus. So the worst thing you can be is out of touch as a candidate. And that's why I say when Trump keeps touting building the greatest economy in the history of the country, it rings false. It is not the lived experiences of people every day. We've had 5 million long-term joblessness created over the life of COVID here. You know, he can't keep touting it anymore. We've seen more job loss than any time since the Great Depression. You know, that's causing real pain in every one of those households across the country. Ancillary effects on the businesses that those people can't patronize anymore. So I think

the worst thing to be when you're an incumbent president is out of touch. We are a big country, we're a diverse country. But as I said, you have to be connecting with the lives of average people every day. And I think the more Trump tries to inflate his performance, the more he comes across as tone deaf. Just one other note from a Fox poll recently, either this month or last month, you know, you've got about two thirds of the people who rate the economy, certainly a majority, I might not quite touch two thirds, as only fair or poor on a four point scale of excellent, good, only fair or poor. So the more Trump does that, the more he reinforces his negative.

And that's been a problem for him. And I think it's gotten worse since he did that really on national television during the first debate with Vice President Biden. I think that turned the race in a way where they haven't been able to turn the elephant around after that. President Trump's style is obviously controversial. What impact do you think that has had on the election? I think a significant one. You know, I mentioned his comportment during the first debate. He was a little better in the second

debate. You know, he had the unprecedented moderators, had the ability to mute a microphone of a candidate. And he's not just any candidate. He's the president of the United States. I think Biden has tapped into a vein that people are really hungry for in reaction to President Trump. He's divided the nation in a way that it would be hard for me to think in my lifetime. And the first presidential race I paid attention to was John Kennedy in 1960. I was pretty young, but my mother was a big JFK fan. Hard to think of a president who's been more divisive, more alienating, more abrasive, more insulting. And when Joe Biden talks about bringing us together again and restoring decency and respect for each other to America, he's resonating with values that every person across

the country, every parent across the country instills in their children, talks to each other about in the workplace more and more. And yet we have a president who is the epitome of someone who has no respect for anyone who differs with him, who becomes venal, insulting, degrading to people who disagree with him. It's the antithesis of what you need when you're the leader of this country and the leader of the free world. What has been most surprising to you about the election thus far? I think probably the most surprising thing, given that campaigning is not normal because of COVID, Trump likes to tweak Joe Biden for campaigning from his basement. Talk about being tone deaf. Americans all over the country are working and living in their basements, in their living rooms, in their

kitchens every day. That's how they're doing their jobs. I think the thing that surprised me the most is how each candidate's campaign are trying to do the things that they want to do. And I think they're doing them reasonably well. I think Biden is not getting ruffled and knocked off his game by Trump's attacks. Sleepy Joe and in the basement. Sleepy Joe looks a hell of a lot more awake than the president of the United States right now, who's turned a deaf ear on the real and closed his eyes to the real problems and scope of the pandemic. Look, I think every president complains about the media. First presidential campaign I worked on was in 1996 for President Bill Clinton. I worked on him with President Obama when he was the incumbent running for re-election.

Look, presidents don't get used to taking criticism easily. You're the leader of the free world. Everybody's very respectful of you. But one of the strengths of President Obama, by the way, was he encouraged the critique. He encouraged the criticism. He encouraged the conversation. Donald Trump's biggest character flaw here, if I can get to that, and I know I'm being a little long here, Lynn, but I believe that his narcissism inhibits him from having any reparative skills. You're the president of the United States running for

reelection. You've been in that job for three, three and a half years when you start your campaign. You've made some mistakes. Some may have been small, some may have been whoppers, but you've got to be able to own your mistakes and you've got to have the reparative skills to repair the damage that you may have caused with some voting blocks during the course of your presidency. No one ever gets 100% of the vote of this country. Very few even get over 50% when they run for president. Once or twice, Trump didn't get it the first time, but you've got to be able to repair the damage you've done to your own administration, your own image during a campaign. And we were very cognizant of that, not reinforcing mistakes, not overstating progress. And that's been a big mistake on the part of Trump's campaign. But I don't think the campaign can control Trump,

and he can't control himself. He has to be grandiose. He has to be the greatest. He has to be the best. Does President Trump have a chance or is it too late? Look, I think after 2016, people are going to say, well, you know, this could be just like 2016. The truth here is the Electoral College is the variable that we had to deal with in 2016, where President Trump lost the popular vote by the biggest margin of any president who won the Electoral College in history. So the question is, could he replicate that? Yeah, I think a couple of upsets in a couple of large states could turn the balance or shift the balance of what looks like an Electoral College win for Vice President Biden

now. I would say that if the numbers look very good in the battleground states for President Biden, better than they did for Hillary at this point, five days out, and they were already shrinking badly in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. If Vice President Biden takes those three states, the map gets really hard for Donald Trump to get 270 electoral votes. And that's without throwing in a couple of states where Biden has the potential to expand the map, like Arizona. It's very close there. Biden has a low single-digit lead.

The Democratic candidate for Senate there, Mark Kelly, looks like he's on a path to victory there. So there may be a Democratic trend taking place in some states like that. I can't think of any state that Donald Trump lost in 2016 that he could win. I do see states where he won that he could lose. And I think that's why it's an uphill climb in the last five days for Trump. I think the one variable we're going to have here is going to be vote counting. We may not know on election day because of all the mail-in ballots that are coming in and there are court decisions happening every day that's going to impact the counts.

What will you be watching for most closely between now and election day? Well, given what happened in 2016, Lynn, it's a great question. First person who's asked me that in the last 10 days or so, and I've been answering a lot of questions. I really think I would look for some sharp tightening in those three states I mentioned, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. I think those are key blocks in what we used to call the blue wall. And then I would also watch some other states like Georgia, like Arizona, like North Carolina. You've got a very competitive Senate race in North Carolina where the Democrat seems to be holding on to his lead there against an incumbent Republican. That's a state that has been tighter and tighter in presidential campaigns going forward. President

Obama carried it one time. Those will be the kind of states that I'm looking at, the states that aren't the dyed-in-the-wool blue or red, if you will, but have been turning a little more purple in either from either party and see who's doing well in those states, that will be an early indication. The other thing I'll be watching a lot on election night will really be in the exit polls, whether this big lead with suburban voters that Biden has is holding up across the states in the country. Do you think that the Senate will flip from Republican to Democratic? You know, it's going to be very tight. Democrats, this time, we have one very difficult seat to hold, and that's the Alabama seat

where Doug Jones won in a special election. So control of the Senate may also depend on who's president, you know, the number of seats you need to win. I think right now there are several seats that are encouraging for Democrats. I mentioned Arizona. I mentioned North Carolina. But just to get to 50-50, if Biden wins the presidency at 50-50, Democrats would control the Senate. You've got to think about winning four seats because you're going to probably lose that Alabama seat. So you need the strongest ones right now are Mark Kelly in Arizona.

You've got John Hickenlooper in Colorado. Those are two pickups. You've got very close races in North Carolina. You've got a very close race in Montana where former Governor Steve Bullock is neck and neck with his opponent there. And the other one that's gotten very close is in Iowa, where Joni Ernst, the incumbent senator during a debate there, couldn't get close to the right price of soybeans, which has kind of been a litmus test for politicians in Iowa forever. They are the soybean leaders in the world, obviously. The farmers there grow more than anywhere else. So those are the states I'll be watching. And then you've got Georgia, which again,

Stacey Abrams almost won her race there, very close race. And you've got two elections going on, and one of them is kind of this open primary. It's a very odd format. I don't think it happens in any other state. And it is possible there is a seat there. But I think Democrats really pretty much have to run the table of the winnable states from where we sit now five days out to be assured of controlling the Senate. So we've talked about the presidential election. You've just talked now about the Senate. We haven't yet talked about the political parties. What does all this say about where each of the political parties stands today? And what are the implications looking ahead?

Well, great. You've just taken one of my takeaways. You know, the Republican, let's, I'll do the Republican Party first and then the Democratic Party. The Republican Party conducted an autopsy after the 2012 election and said, okay, we really have to take a look at ourselves here. We've got to figure out why we're losing certain blocks of voters and we've got to correct for it. Nothing that's happened since suggests that they've done an adequate job of that. And the election of Donald Trump, if anything, reinforced how much they have narrowed, not just their base is not what's narrowing, but their appeal with swing

voters, which you really need long term to sustain a viable party at the national level and in many states. So I think the Republican Party is going to have to call the mortician back for another autopsy if Trump loses. And in particular, if he loses by any significant amount, or if they lose the Senate, they're not likely to take back the House. That's the burden on them. I think for the Democratic Party, and I'll probably get a lot of flack from my own party for this, but I think people in the Democratic Party, and particularly on the left wing of the Democratic Party, have to come to terms with the fact that our party has always been a left of center party or a center left party, however you want to say it. We are not an extremely liberal party. We have not succeeded when we nominated the most liberal candidate in our party. And in fact, we rarely have. The last time Democrats nominated the more left wing candidate coming out of the Democratic presidential primaries was George McGovern in 1972. We are a party that has a very progressive backbone,

but we're progressive. Mario Cuomo, former governor of New York, father of the current governor, first politician I worked for when I left journalism, he used to call himself a progressive pragmatist. We shouldn't view that as such a negative. We shouldn't view it as toxic. We are a country that is built around the principle of being able to compromise and being able to find solutions that work with the vast majority of the people in this country, not just the base of your party. And in this case, even I would say the base of the Democratic Party is more moderate and center left than it is strongly liberal. And I think people in the Democratic Party, candidates and strategists, have to really come to terms with that and stop thinking it's

otherwise. Otherwise, it will harm us long term in building a broader coalition that we need to really enact the policies that we want. And that includes things like climate change. We're in the mainstream on that. The Republican Party isn't. You can scream all you want about AOC and the left, but for heaven's sakes, the three biggest producers of wind energy in this country are Oklahoma, Texas, and Iowa. Not one of them is a blue state. They all see the future, just like CEOs and business leaders see the future. We can run strongly on these issues and smartly on these issues and bring allies into the tent instead of alienating them. Joel, is there anything you'd like to add that you haven't already touched upon before I ask you for your three key takeaways?

I don't think so. And now I think I probably have given you all my takeaways. No, I think I've covered everything. Okay. So what are your three key takeaways or the three insights that you'd like to leave the audience with today? I think the first one is that the

truth is in presidential campaigns that positive campaigns and positive messages will always beat dystopic or extremely negative messages. Doesn't mean you don't contrast with your opponent, but you have to have a positive message that's grounded in reality, grounded in the lives of people that you have to drive. That's one of them. The second one is you can never forget that presidential elections are about being able to win over those voters in the middle, the people who are not dyed-in-the-wool Democrats or dyed-in-the-wool Republicans. And if you can't speak to those people in a way that connects with them, that shows you're listening to them, that you're not just dug in on your partisan heels.

Then you're going to come up short on election day. I think my third takeaway is I talked about both parties taking a good look at themselves. Both parties have to start really thinking their job is to win elections, but they really have to start thinking about what they need to do and get things done for the majority of Americans in order to win elections. You earn the right to win elections. You don't win elections because you get 30% of people wearing the badge of your party on their sleeve. You have to earn their vote. And I think the more both parties, and this can apply equally to both because it's very general, but the more you

remember that the people you serve are the people you have to win, and you start working with each other to help those people, instead of quibbling over things you think serve your political interests, the stronger you'll be, not just in strengthening the country, but the stronger you'll be on election day. Joel, this has been fascinating. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me, Lynn. at 3takeaways.com is with the number three. Three is not spelled out. For all social media and podcast links, go to 3takeaways.com.