The Decibel - Inside The Globe’s U.S. election night coverage

Episode Date: November 6, 2024

The United States have never seen an election like this before. It began as a rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, but after Biden’s debate performance back in June, he made the unprecedented move of withdrawing from the race. Vice President Kamala Harris stepped in to become the Democratic nominee, and the second debate in September looked a lot different.Results trickled in last night for this nail biter of an election, with the outcome hinging on seven swing states.The 2024 U.S. presidential election may be over, but as of 2 a.m. ET on November 6, the winner hadn’t been officially declared.On today’s show, The Decibel is hosting an election night watch party, featuring Globe journalists in the newsroom and on the ground in key swing states. We’ll hear from international correspondent Nathan VanderKlippe, calling in from Georgia, and reporter Andrea Woo, calling in from Arizona. Patrick Dell checks up on disinformation, and columnist Doug Saunders joins Menaka Raman-Wilms in the studio to watch the results roll in.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

All right. So let's see. We've got the TV set up currently on mute so we can at least see what's going on. We're watching the results here. We've got our notebooks and we've got some snacks here. Doug, what do you have over there? We've got some Oreos and some Skittles. I got some Miss Vickies.

This is an important part of election night in a newsroom. Yeah. Yeah. I think we're good here. Yep. All right, let's do this. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms. I'm Doug Saunders. And this is the Decibel U.S. Election Watch Party. So, Doug, you're a columnist here at The Globe. You actually used to live in the States, too.

You've covered the U.S. for us in the past. So we brought you into the studio tonight to watch the election results come in with us. Thanks so much for being here, Doug. It's a real pleasure. So we're going to talk about the context for the numbers here, Doug. You're going to give us some analysis of what we're actually seeing as the results come in. We're also going to talk to other Globe reporters tonight in the newsroom, as well as two of our correspondents in the state. So we've got Nathan Vanderklip and Andrea Wu, who are in the U.S. reporting live from battleground states. So we're going to get a whole bunch of context here for what's going on. But Doug, let's start with you here, because I want to just get your sense of where we are. It's early in the night. How would you sum up the importance of this election between Democratic nominee Kamala

Harris and Republican contender Donald Trump? What is at stake in this election? I mean, there are some people who have gone as far as saying that what's at stake is the future of democracy in the United States. kind of an election where it's not so much a choice between one candidate you may like and one candidate you may dislike, but between a fairly normal candidate and then this huge specter called Donald Trump, who would transform the entire country in some fairly dramatic and very chaotic ways, probably to a greater degree than we saw during his first term from 2017 to 2021. So a lot of this would have implications throughout the United States. But let's just

broaden this out, Doug. What are the implications of this election for countries like Canada and for the rest of the world? Canada in particular suffered badly during Trump's first term. He successfully cancelled the North American Free Trade Agreement, which governs 70% of Canada's economy by some measures. He has promised to essentially strike a deal with Vladimir Putin of Russia to end the war in Ukraine on Mr. Putin's terms. In other words, to formalize the invasion and occupation of parts of Ukraine. I will say, having had briefings in recent months from governments in Europe and elsewhere, that there's a lot of behind the

scenes preparation happening. It's something that has basically caused the whole world to grind to a halt until this decision happens tonight. Yeah. We've talked a lot about Trump. What about Harris? If she wins, what are the implications for Canada for the rest of the world? Well, then we get into the range that we normally have with the change of US presidents. Kamala Harris probably would continue the somewhat protectionist policies that Joe Biden has, but seems committed to the sort of international relations that are important to Canada. So even if it's just an incremental, subtle change from the Biden years, in material terms, it would be a good United States to have relations with, and it would be a normal United States.

So right now, Doug, it's around 845, really. Polls in about half the states have closed, but really only preliminary results at this point. So early on, Doug, but be taken with a grain of salt. I would say Georgia is doing a little more poorly at this point for Kamala Harris than you might have expected. I would say some of the northern states' early results are maybe a little bit better for Kamala Harris than we would have expected. It's too early to say anything for sure. And the polls were as 50-50 as you can get. Somebody pointed out today that the probability of a coin toss is more tilted one way or another than the actual polls right now, just because the head on a coin weighs slightly more than the tail. I think part of the question will be,

will we know for sure tonight who has won? Worst case scenario is if it's like 2000, where it was quite a few weeks later before we knew for sure. So we'll find out. We'll be watching this. Doug, thank you so much. Great to have you here. We're going to check back in with you very soon.

Okay, so now we're going to call up Nathan Vanderclip, who's our correspondent in Georgia. Hello. Hey, Nathan, it's Maynika. How are you? Good. How are you? Pretty good. How's it going over there on election night? Oh, living the dream. Where are you exactly, actually? I know you're in Georgia, but where are you within the state? I am in Atlanta.

So Georgia, of course, is one of those swing states. It has 16 electoral college votes. Why did you want to be, I guess, in Atlanta specifically there, Nathan? Well, Atlanta is interesting because it has a fairly large Democratic vote in a state that has traditionally in the presidential election voted Republican before 2020 for six straight elections. And then, of course, Georgia also became really one of the most important centers for everything that came after the election. There were lawsuits that were filed here. There was that famous phone call from Donald Trump to the secretary of state here, asking him to find 11,780 votes. So this is kind of the trying to overturn the election, essentially, is what you're saying here. This is where action was happening.

That's right. Yeah. And not only that, but one of the key organizers of the January 6 rally was from Georgia as well. And that rally, of course, is what preceded the riot on the Capitol. But Georgia is also very interesting because it has a very, very large Black population. And one of the questions, the key questions for Kamala Harris is how much support she can win from the black community. Yeah. So what is the mood like in Atlanta, Nathan, when you're walking around and kind of seeing people today? What was what was the sense you were getting? Well, I had a few interviews that I thought kind of just illuminated

really some of the polls in this election. I was in Hancock County, which has the most predominantly black population in Georgia, and was actually a bit surprised when I ran into a young man there who described his refusal to vote for Kamala Harris, a young black man, saying that he would just outright refuse to vote for a woman and saying that for him, banning abortions, you know, being anti-abortion was much more important than other prerogatives. And on the other side, I actually spoke with two women who were voting for Kamala Harris without their partners or families knowing. Both of them had come from Republican households, had Republican partners. Both of them were voting for Kamala Harris, but would not tell

their partners who they were voting for. And those are the women that the Harris campaign, that Democrats hope they will see women coming from Republican households who vote Democrat. And I think somewhere between those, depending on who comes out in larger numbers, I suspect that's going to help tell the story of this election. Well, the polls close in eight minutes there, Nathan. Thank you so much for taking the time today to speak with us. And yeah, good luck tonight. Thank you. So, Doug, we're chatting again here. It is just after 10, kind of almost 10, 15 p.m. right now. Can you just kind of get us caught up? What is the state of the race at this moment? Yeah, sure thing, Monica. Well, of course,

it's a race not to get the most Americans to vote for you. It's a race to get 270 electoral college votes, which is 50 percent. For what's been called by analysts, Kamala Harris has 109 electoral college votes, more or less for sure. And Donald Trump has 198. We really need to hear from the small number of battleground states that are going to decide the election, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, Virginia, Wisconsin, especially Pennsylvania. That has 19 electoral college votes. So that's a big deal, Pennsylvania. Well, yeah, Pennsylvania is called the make or break state in some regards. There are paths to victory for both if they don't get Pennsylvania, but it's a big deal. And right now it's like on the edge of a coin, as is Wisconsin. Georgia is looking like it's going toward Donald Trump, which is not a guaranteed thing, but is reporting some technical problems counting its votes.

So, Doug, this is not your first election that you've covered. You've done this a few times. How does this situation compare, though, to previous elections? In many respects, it doesn't compare to any previous election. However, in terms of vibe, you could say it's starting to feel to me a little disturbingly like it did at about this time in the evening in 2016, because there were some signs that didn't look great, some feelings that didn't look great. And then around 11 o'clock at night or so, there was sort of a rock slide. And any hope for Hillary Clinton sort of disappeared. Now, I'm not saying that's going to happen. There could be a rock slide the other direction.

I'm starting to have a feeling it could be a late night. Or a very early morning. Or, you know, another one like 2000 when it went on for weeks and weeks. So we've talked a lot about numbers tonight, Doug. That's usually what election night ends up being about. But can we just go back to some of the defining issues of this campaign and this election? I guess when we look back on it, what do you think really stood out as the issues that people cared about that people probably voted on? The two things that US voters said they voted on were the economy and immigration, by which they meant the inflation that they experienced in the years immediately

after the pandemic, caused by, of course, the return of consumer demand after the pandemic. And that inflation had ended by the beginning of 2024. And by immigration, they meant some of the large numbers of people making illegal crossings on the Mexico-US border, tiny percentage of American immigration, but very visible and controversial, which itself also had ended by, let's say, early spring of 2024. Doug, thank you so much. We're going to come back to you in a little bit. We'll keep watching this and see how it goes. My pleasure.

I'm Adrian Shung, senior producer of The Decibel. I'm here with Matt French, head of visuals at The Globe. And laid out in Matt French, Head of Visuals at The Globe. And laid out in front of us are a few different A1 covers. That's the front page. So, Matt, can you just take us through the different plans that we have prepared? Yeah, so, I mean, you're seeing sort of the top of the pile here, but under each one of these, there's probably another, you know, half dozen more. So, for the event that there's no clear winner, which we'll probably see for the first deadline,

it'll be a news-based photo. And then we also have multiple options for both Harris and Trump in the event that we have a winner declared tonight. We will have to adapt through the night as things change. Does it feel not satisfying to put an addition to bed if we don't have a winner later tonight? It does. It does. In 2020, that was the case. There was no winner declared by the end of the evening, so the final deadline came and went, and that was it. And yeah, it feels a little anticlimactic. But in 2016, it was the opposite.

We had a winner declared right at deadline. I think it was probably 1.30 by the time the election was actually called. So it was a bit of a scramble right at the last minute to get the final front page pulled together and get it off to the plant. These are the nights that I think for most of the people here, there's a bit of a buzz in the newsroom. This is the reason why a lot of us, you know, fell in love with journalism. And, you know, five years from now, ten years from now,

I'll remember where I was tonight and, you know, how we pulled together the paper. We're taking the first cut at history here. This is why we do it, is to help document these moments and capture them. And I have no doubt that no matter the outcome of tonight's election, you know, this will be one of those moments. You sometimes wonder whether people come for election night because of the pizza. That's the Globe's editor-in-chief, David Walmsley. So for anyone who hasn't worked in a newsroom, election night pizza is a tradition really like no other. There's lots of candy lying around and chips and snacks too.

All of it is fuel for the very long night ahead. What's your go-to? Ham and pineapple. I know it's a controversial choice. We're coming around as a society on Hawaiian, I think. Yeah. On the bright side of history. Bright side of history, yes. I tell you, it's going to smell really different here around midnight,

when it's been sitting out here for six, seven years. Blood, sweat, and tears. Regardless of the decision, as long as there's enough pizza, people won't be crying too much, I hope. We'll be right back. So right now I've got the Globe's Patrick Dell in the studio here. Patrick, welcome to the Decibel and to our U.S. Election Watch Party here. Hi, I wouldn't be anywhere else.

You've been reporting on misinformation and disinformation in the last leg of the election, including tonight. We're talking just around 11.30pm and you've been monitoring what's online. So what are some of the examples of the misinformation that you've seen spreading tonight? I'm seeing two broad trends. And the first is any small inconsistency or problem at a polling place gets shared and amplified to cast doubt about the entire voting process. And also statements attributed to people like the FBI that have been debunked by the FBI when there've been false claims about an elevated terror threat and an urge for people to vote remotely, which was completely false and debunked by the FBI. Okay. Can you give me an example of the first one? So you say that things that are happening at polling stations, what exactly did you see out there? A good example is a video that was posted to TikTok and made its way to X of a person

recounting issues in Mississippi. What they themselves said was secondhand information shared with them. The person making the video didn't give any evidence or any context to what was being said, which makes it very hard to analyze and cover from a news perspective when there isn't anything really to latch onto. And it's quite easy for someone to make a claim about something happening in a polling place that may or may not have anything to it, but it gets latched onto by the people on certain social media platforms, particularly X, who see that as evidence of widespread problems with voting systems, which is not the case. And where are you seeing these false narratives pop up? You said social media, especially X, is that kind of the main culprit here? X seems to be a place where this

kind of information can coalesce, but it comes from somewhere else, like Telegram, TikTok, Facebook, and then it can find a larger audience on X where there are people who are very enthusiastic about claims that may or may not have any validity to them and then amplify them. It's clear from evidence of recent weeks that Elon Musk himself is a prime amplifier of election information that supports his candidate. And he called himself a dark Gothic MAGA. And when he amplifies something, it goes to millions of people. And so before I let you go here, Patrick, what's your advice for listeners

if they stumble upon falsehoods in their social feeds? As strange as it seems, often the best thing to do is just to ignore it. Social media platforms use algorithmic feeds to influence what is shown to their users, and those algorithms are fed by engagement. If you engage with something, whether positively or negatively, it doesn't matter. It still counts as engagement, so it's more likely to be seen by someone else. So even by replying to a post or sharing it to say it's wrong, it still counts as engagement. So often, the best thing to do is just to take a breath.

Even if it's made you furious or made you laugh, set that emotional reaction aside. Think about it a bit more critically. And if it's something that you are unsure about, head to a reliable source to investigate it a little bit more closely yourself, and then share that with their personal networks instead of trying to blast it back out into a large social network. Patrick, thanks so much for stopping by tonight. Happy to be here. Thank you. My name is Ian Bokoff, and I'm the head of editing. And so I oversee the editing desk that stick handles all the staff copy that we have coming in from across the newsroom.

So as we record this, no decision has actually been made at this point. What is the team working on at this hour? So we're working on two things simultaneously. We've been working on our digital files through the night, so we have a live blog going, which we are editing. And basically right now we're converting those live stories to print. Lots of phone calls are going on with reporters out in the field. We're getting dispatches from Georgia and Michigan and other swing states,

and those are coming in fast and furious for the live blog mainly. Those reporters are also filing kind of shorter stories for both digital and print, and they're looking at stories that they're going to write for tomorrow. You know, we're trying to get everything together to have that, you know, poster front A1 that's like a movie poster while also having, you know, a very live website and making sure readers are getting that most updated information as possible. one that's like a movie poster while also having, you know, a very live website and making sure readers are getting that most updated information as possible. And so it's kind of like watching like an orchestra kind of play and try and get all

in sync without knowing what the music is going to be like at the end of the night. All right, it's time to call our reporter, Andrea Wu, who's in Arizona. Hello. Hi, Andrea. How's it going? I am well. How are you? I'm doing pretty good here. We've got the news on. We're watching as the results come in. So you're in Arizona. Arizona has 11 electoral votes. Where exactly are you within that state? So I am in Maricopa County right now, which is where Phoenix is. Arizona has traditionally been

a Republican stronghold, but it's become a battleground state after recent Democratic gains. Maricopa is home to about 4.6 million registered voters. So that's 60% of Arizona's voters. And it's become known as one of the biggest swing counties in the country. Maricopa, it was also the target of attacks by Donald Trump and his supporters after the last election in 2020, after he said that he won the state when in fact he had lost it to Joe Biden by about 10,500 votes. His supporters, some of them armed, protested outside the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center here for days because they believed that the election was being stolen. OK, so since you've been there, Andrea, what have you been seeing? Where have you been going? link? So for election day today, I spent the morning and the afternoon driving around to that tabulation center and various voting centers. And they were all relatively calm and quiet.

The tabulation center had put a chain link fence up around the building. There's a drone flying around overhead. And the sheriff's office said that it had spent millions of dollars on security there since 2020. And just a few minutes ago, there was a report of a bomb threat at the Maricopa County Superior Court, which is consistent with what we're hearing in several other states as well. Wow. OK. Yeah, there's it seems like there's some pretty tense situations there, too. I guess I wonder what is the mood like from people you've talked to? How are people feeling? Yeah, in terms of talking to voters, the divide here is very stark as it is across the country. One thing that did stand out to me being in Arizona specifically is that many men and women cited reproductive rights as their number one issue. Abortion is literally on the ballot here. Arizona is one of 21 states to introduce abortion restrictions after the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022.

And it's one of 10 states that has it as a ballot measure in this election. So Proposition 139 would enshrine the right to abortion in the state's constitution and increase access to the point of viability. So that would be about 24 weeks up from what it is currently, which is 15 weeks with no exceptions for rape or incest. And for some Arizonans that I spoke with, that issue alone is enough to inform their votes. Well, Andrea, really appreciate you taking the time to be here. Hope it goes well tonight. Thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you for chatting. Okay, Doug, we're back in the studio here. It is almost 1 a.m. There's been a lot going on. Where do things stand right now?

Well, no network has called the election for a candidate, but it doesn't look very good for Kamala Harris. Right now, Donald Trump has 230 of the needed 270 electoral college votes and Kamala Harris has 210. And some of the key swing states have been called North Carolina and Georgia for Trump, Virginia for Kamala Harris, but the all-important Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Arizona are still up in the air, but they are all leaning toward Donald Trump. Michigan by six percentage points now with 60% of its vote counted. Pennsylvania by three percentage points with 90% of its vote counted. One reason why there hasn't been a call perhaps and why Kamalaala harris's staff said she will not be speaking tonight and will address the american public tomorrow instead is because there is a very slim

mathematical possibility of a return people are remembering what happened in 2020 when things were looking pretty trump oriented uh until fairly late in the night. And then overnight, a lot of Biden votes came in so that on the Wednesday after, things had swung toward Biden quite dramatically. This isn't exactly the same. I think Kamala Harris's odds are pretty low at this point, even if they're not completely out of the picture. We've been talking a lot about the race for president tonight, Doug. But of course, there's also race for the Senate and the House. Where do things stand on those fronts?

It seems 100% clear that the Republican Party has retaken control of the Senate. It has firmly won enough races that that can be said definitely, and that people are saying that. But the House of Representatives is still up in the air, and there is a possibility that the Democrats, so there'll be a double flip. The Democrats who do not currently have a majority in the House of Representatives may end up with one, which would prevent Mr. Trump, if he became president, from having an instant rubber stamp on whatever legislation he wanted to pass.

Another thing I want to ask you quickly is about other down-ballot measures that dealt with abortion. A number of states were voting on this. What are some of the standouts from that, Doug? Well, the one in Florida failed, although something like 59% of Floridians voted in favor of that one. It had a 60% threshold established by its very Republican governor, Ron DeSantis. past, which means that I think we're going to see more of this type of politics if there ends up being a Trump presidency where states use ballot measures and things like that to essentially wall themselves off from the things happening at the federal level. The United States, like Canada, has a lot of its political power at the state level or the provincial level.

And it is possible to have a type of politics that allows states to have very different politics than the federal level. I think we may be seeing more of that. Just lastly here, Doug, before I let you go, before we call it a night, any final thoughts from what you saw here tonight? I think something very dark is happening in the United States. I mean, even if it isn't the outcome that it looks like it's going to be, you do have to ask what has happened psychologically with American voters. And it makes you wonder about other countries as well now. Is this just a moment of great pessimism among voters? Is this because of the sort of information ecology?

Is it because of lingering trauma from the pandemic? Will this be remembered as a dark moment in history or as the beginning of a trend that pushes the United States and other countries in a new direction? And we can't say completely for certain what the outcome was, but there's good reason to think that things are going to be very different starting in 2025 than they were in previous years. Doug, really appreciate you staying so late here with us in studio and providing us with your thoughts tonight. Thank you for being here. Thank you. That's it for today. I'm Mainika Raman-Wellms. Our producers are Madeline White, Michal Stein, and Allie Graham. David Crosby edits the show.

Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Matt Frainer is our managing editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.