America's Talking - Polling Mixed on Tight Harris-Trump Race

Episode Date: August 30, 2024

New polling on Thursday showed Kamala Harris with a widening margin over former President Donald Trump in Reuters/Ipsos poll published Thursday. It found Harris leaders Trump 45% to 41%. Among registered voters, the four-percentage point lead was more significant than the one-point lead Harris had over Trump in the outfit's last poll in July. The poll had a 2% margin of error. Over in polling guru Nate Sliver's latest models, Harris didn't fare as well. "Although we wouldn't advise worrying too much about the difference between a 52/48 race one way versus a 48/52 race the other way – it's not a big difference – this wasn't a good day for Kamala Harris in our model, as Donald Trump is the slight favorite for the first time since August 3," Silver wrote in the Silver Bulletin. "There's one big reason for that – Pennsylvania, which is the tipping-point state more than one-third of the time and where it's been quite a while since we've seen a poll showing Harris leading." 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 McAulb, Chief Content Officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. We are recording this on Friday, August 29th. Vice President Kamala Harris gave her first sit-down interview since entering the presidential race when she was joined by her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walls, for a taped interview on CNN. Harris has been criticized for refusing to grant interviews and for several. apparent flip-flops on her key policy issues. Joining me to discuss the race is Casey Harper, Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief for the Center Square. Casey, you watched the CNN interview. What are your

top takeaways? Yeah, I mean, so it's an interesting interview. It's an interesting question. The obvious question is, was this a good interview? Was it good for the Harris campaign or was it good for the Trump campaign? And I think it depends on what the goal was. You might assume, and you might wrongly assume that Harris wanted to make a big splash to get a lot of eyeballs on this interview and to put her policy out there as candidates are want to do to draw attention to their campaign and favorable attention, of course. But I don't think that the CNN interview really accomplished that. In an era of viral media and 24-hour news cycles, a taped CNN interview is kind of a relic of 20 years ago. I mean, it's just not what it used to be that,

You know, that would have been a major moment in a campaign, as I said, 20 years ago, but now it's just a blip on the radar. I thought, you know, the interview was pretty, there's a lot of kid gloves in the interview. I mean, there were some, you know, questions on tough issues for Harris, but it was hardly a tough interview. But you could say, Dan, that if Harris's goal, as it seems it may be in this campaign, is to largely avoid tough media moments and ride the momentum she has next. to election day while avoiding mistakes, then you could say that this interview accomplished that because I think, I suspect that one of her main goals was to silence critics who say she's not doing media interviews, but also she didn't want to do anything too risky because I think in her mind she is winning and ascending on the way up. And so if her, if her goal was,

don't make any mistakes and silence the critics who say, I'm not doing a month of media interviews, she succeeded. If her goal was to really change this race, race in a significant way, then she failed. Well, let's talk about some of the specific issues she was asked about and some of the apparent flip-flops she's had on various issues. She was asked about fracking, energy. Pennsylvania is a big fracking state. It helps the economy. In 2019, Harris said she would ban fracking. In recent weeks, since joining the race and And on this CNN interview, she says her values haven't changed.

She said that repeatedly over the past several weeks, but she says she would not ban fracking. That's apparent flip-blot? Yeah, of course it is. I mean, it's funny. I picked up on this theme of this campaign that it feels like it's being run with a strategy that would have worked 20 years ago. And right now it's working. But taking these major, you know, policy issues or differences and kind of, having a cutesy one liner to kind of dismiss the press on it is sort of something you would have

seen in the early 2000s. But yeah, that line about, well, my values haven't changed. So, okay, your values haven't changed. But these specific policies tied to those values definitely changed. So it feels like semantics. It's similar with, you know, when Tim Walls in the same interview was questioned about, you know, the basically lies that he's told. He's told a lot of lies over the years. I don't know if it's a lot. It's just little details. It feels similar to Biden, just kind of making things up. They weren't exactly true. Kind of hard to fact check some of them,

but this seems almost like compulsive lying possibly. But when Tim Wells was asked about it, for instance, you know, he said he carried weapons of war into war. He never saw combat, for instance. But he says,

he says something cute to you like, you know, yeah, my wife, the English teacher says my grammar's not too good all the time. I misspeat. And it's like, you lied about seeing combat,

but you, you know, kind of had this cutesy one liner about it. And so that's their strategy right now. So just be very prepared, kind of dismiss it. The press is not pushing them very hard at all. I think that we've talked about this before, Dan, but the press feels responsible for getting Joe Biden out of the race and Kamala Harris in his place.

And I think they feel a sort of moral obligation to cover for Harris. Because if Harris loses to Trump, it's sort of they feel like it's their fault. Similar to how they felt it was their fault that Trump won in 2016 because they're almost entirely not even Democrat, but far left the media is. So that's what's going on there. You know, the flip-flop thing is interesting. I think that though I think Republicans might be making a mistake by focusing so much on that. Because, again, not to hammer too much this 20 years ago point,

but John Kerry was hammered for being a flip-flopper against George Bush in that election. And it was a devastating attack thing. But I'm not sure that just in this current media environment, that it really is nearly as effective. I wonder how much it hurts her with the base and it hurts enthusiasm that she has really backed off of her fracking ban. I think supporting tighter border security is actually smarter politically. It really neutralizes one of Trump's strongest attacks. And so I think it's politically smart.

You could say she doesn't have values or something, which maybe is true. But I think most Americans now assume these politicians don't have values. So if you're not going to have values and you're going to flip-flop, at least flip-flop the way that Americans want you to. And we could talk to about her, about the border. When she was asked about the ongoing border crisis, she deflected, blamed President Trump for saying he was opposed to this Senate bill, the Senate bill that went nowhere in the Democrat-controlled Senate. She was also asked about Biden and whether she had any regrets, you know, saying right up until Biden. and exited the race that he was strong. He was a more than capable commander in chief, et cetera, et cetera. She said she had no regrets about that. Why don't we, in the brief moment

that we have left, Casey, let's just turn to the polling. Harris does appear to have a slight lead over former President Trump in national polling. However, former President Trump does maintain leads in some of these key swing states. Yeah, that's right. I mean, so if you remember, we saw with Biden and Trump that Trump was winning nationally and in key swing states. And it was basically set up to be a route. I mean, there was Biden was significantly getting hit. But the latest, you know, for instance, Harris is doing much better, leading by one or two, maybe, you know, for instance, the latest RCP polling average has Harris, 48% in Trump, 46.2% nationally. So, and that is actually grown in the recent weeks.

So that lead that she has nationally is actually growing, which is bad news for the Trump campaign, of course. In Pennsylvania, Harris is winning is a 0.8 in Wisconsin. It's 1.4. And even some of these gains she had are new. You know, she wasn't necessarily winning this well in these swing states. So she is gaining momentum. Trump is still winning in Arizona, for instance. But let's see, I can pull up these others.

In Georgia, they're dead tied. I'm exactly tied, according to RCP. Michigan, Harris, is up 1.7 percent. Nevada, Trump is up 0.3%. He's also at 0.3% in North Carolina. So he's still holding his own in these swing states, but his lead in these states has seemingly eroded as Harris builds national momentum over. Well, there's still, what, about 60 days?

until the presidential little over 60 days of the presidential election. Thank you for joining us today. Casey, listeners can keep up with everything presidential elected related at thecentersquare.com.