America's Talking - Polling Guru, Expert Picker Reveal Who Will Win Presidential Election

Episode Date: October 25, 2024

One of America's top polling experts shared his "gut" prediction on who will win the 2024 presidential election, joining other notables who have shared different predictions for the tight race. With less than two weeks before voters decide between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, polling guru Nate Sliver said he thinks Trump will win, but with a caveat. "My gut says Donald Trump. And my guess is that it is true for many anxious Democrats," Silver wrote in a New York Times opinion piece. "But I don’t think you should put any value whatsoever on anyone's gut – including mine." Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings, everyone, and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulip, Chief Content Officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. We are recording this on Friday, October 25th. We are about just 10 days out from the November 5th general election, when voters will decide whether Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump will be the nation's next president. All indications that are that this remains the title. of races. Joining me to discuss this and other developments in the presidential race is Casey Harper, Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief for the Center Square.

Casey, just 10 days out, where do things stand? Yeah, things stand about as close together as they can, Dan. I mean, there are pretty interesting developments happening, you know, every week, multiple times a week in this race. But when you just look strictly at the polling, we can talk about those developments, but like Kamala Harris's recent CNN Town Hall and other things. But when you look at these swing states, which it really comes down to, Dan, is probably about seven swing states.

And when you look at them, they are all pretty much within the margin of error. Now, Trump, you know, the latest data showing Trump is slightly winning in these states and actually may be starting to move beyond the margin of error in some of them. But just to give you the data, in Michigan, Trump is 0.2, Pennsylvania. He's up 0.6. Wisconsin, he's up 0.2, Arizona. He's up 1.5. North Carolina, Trump is up 0.8. In Georgia, Trump is up 2.2 points. You know, in Nevada, another swing state. Trump is up 0.7. Now, there's other states that maybe used to be considered swing states, not so much anymore, like, in not least in this race. Minnesota, New Mexico and Virginia, Harris is way up in those, you know, up almost five points in Minnesota, almost eight points in New Mexico, and six and a half points in Virginia. Trump, you know, I remember when Ohio was a major swing state, but Trump is winning it by seven points now.

So those are kind of the states that are either swing in this election or in past elections. And right now, Trump does have that slight lead, which is, you know, of course, going to be encouraging to his campaign. but again, Dan, the polls and the recent presidential elections have been so off. And for both, you know, not just against Trump. I mean, the last time around the polling in Wisconsin said that Trump was going to dominate, and he did not. So it's been off on both sides.

And so at this point, it is the very definition of a toss-up. Yeah, and of course, you are quoting polling data. and most of the polls, there are a number of outlets around the country that do these polling. Most of the polls are within those, as you mentioned, the margin of error of the polls. But polls only matter so much if people don't go out and vote. This is going to come down to who is able to energize their voters, get to the polls. Now, millions of Americans have already early voted in 2020 during the COVID-year election, mail and balloting

expanded greatly across the country and it's continued into this election so millions of Americans have already voted but it's going to come down to who's able to mobilize their support base

to get, either get those early votes in on time or to get to the polls on November 5th. Yeah, I mean, the enthusiasm is huge is something Trump has been known to be good at. Harris,

By the way, all that date I was citing was from real clear politics. But Harris, you know, had a lot of enthusiasm when she took over the nomination from President Joe Biden. But that has really dwindled since then. She had a really good debate against Trump. You know, most people thought that Harris won that debate. It wasn't a blowout, but most people thought she won that debate. But since then, she's given several interviews that just kind of were fumbles. You know, she just couldn't answer her questions directly.

She was being accused repeatedly of sort of the word salad. It's sort of like when you, you know, you're a freshman and you're writing an English paper in college or in high school and you don't know what to say. So you just keep adding words in there to fill up to your 500 word or 1,000 word word count or whatever you have to do for this paper. That's kind of the feeling she's got. And that's pretty, that's not just my feedback. I mean, everyone is saying that even many Democrats, I believe a. actually that phrase was used by a long-time Democrat strategist David Axelrod saying, you know, talking about her words out. And I think that's begin to erode some of the confidence on her. Even in left-leaning outlets like CNN, you know, she did a town hall with them. And so many of her answers, I know you were able to see some of that town hall at the end. But yeah, yeah. Some of those answers were just she wouldn't answer it. And some of the questions that weren't that hard. I mean, She just was either unprepared or was trying to give a non-answer strategically, which I think you can get away with every once in a while as a politician.

They do it all the time. But she was doing it so frequently that it was, you know, are you going to answer a question? And so that feedback is really starting to haunt her. Of course, before this, she was being criticized for not doing interviews. So she started doing more interviews, but now she's getting this criticism. Well, let's go back to that CNN Town Hall. certainly a Biden-Harris administration-friendly media outlet CNN is. But you could even see Anderson Cooper getting frustrated with Vice President Harris's non-answer.

He pressed her on a number of things, but the one that stood out to me was the border wall. She now says apparently that she supports building, continuing to build a border wall. Of course, that was Donald Trump's signature campaign. promise back in 2016 when he was campaigning. When he got into office, he built part of a border wall. Kamala Harris, Vice President Harris, has been highly critical of that stance in the past. But now with the ongoing border crisis under the Biden-Harris administration, she now says she supports a Senate bill, which would continue to build the border wall. But she just wouldn't answer Anderson Cooper's questions about it, about why now does she? Now does she,

she supported versus not supporting it in the past. It just didn't, it doesn't come across as genuine. Yeah. Yeah. She's, and these are pretty, some of these interviews, you know, you mentioned Cooper, Anderson Cooper. They're, they're pretty favorable. I mean, I think they're wanting to give her the benefit of the doubt.

They're wanting to hear her out. They're not nearly as combative as someone like Brett Barrett Fox. So they're really giving her an opportunity. I mean, they don't want to lose their credibility. So they're going to ask her tough questions. But as long as she had a, you know, her and her eights got together and they had a good answer that kind of addressed the question and then pivoted to Trump, which is what the kind of standard playbook is, then she'd probably be fine. But I don't know if either it's strategic and she's

trying to not answer or if she's kind of just choking in the moment where she has an answer backstage, but then when she gets asked, she can't remember it. Maybe the campaign's, you know, schedule and it's too rigorous and she's just tired. Who knows? But yeah, she's fumbling the ball here with a couple of, just a couple of weeks out to the election. And of course, the race is very close. There's a lot more that goes into these races for people than just how well they do in interviews. But when a race is close, it really matters. But to your point in, so many people have already voted. It's just a different era politics. Last reminder to listeners, the election is November 5th. Please remember to vote.

Thank you for joining us today, Casey. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at the center square.com.