The Journal. - For Kamala Harris, a Big Interview and a Narrow Lead

Episode Date: August 30, 2024

Kamala Harris is trying to step out of President Biden’s shadow without distancing herself from thier administration’s policies. Molly Ball breaks down a new WSJ poll that shows Harris has a narrow lead in the presidential election and unpacks the VP’s first big interview. She also takes your questions.   Further Reading: - Harris Has Taken Narrow Lead Over Trump, WSJ Poll Finds  - Race Is On To Reach the Rapidly Shrinking Pool of Undecided Voters  Further Listening: - Is the Trump Campaign Going Off Track?  - Kamala Harris, In Context   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Last night, Kamala Harris did her first interview as the Democratic presidential nominee. Our colleague Molly Ball sat down to watch it with our producer Rachel Humphries. Harris and her running mate were speaking to CNN's Dana Bash. Madam Vice President, Governor Walsh, thank you so much for sitting down with me and bringing the bus. Bash asked Harris about her plans if she wins, and why some of her policy positions seem to have changed since she last ran for president, like her stance on fracking. What made you change that position at the time? Well, let's be clear.

My values have not changed. What made you change that position at the time? Well, let's be clear. My values have not changed. I believe it is very important that we take seriously what we must do to guard against what is a clear crisis in terms of the climate. I don't think she's really answering the questions. It seems like a pretty conspicuous attempt to avoid explaining. And she knew she was going to have to explain these flip-flops. You have been vice president for three and a half years. The steps that you're talking about now, why haven't you done them already?

Well first of all, we had to recover as an economy, and we have done that. I'm very proud of the work that we have done that has brought inflation down to less than three percent. The work that we have done... Right, it's to less than 3%. The work that we have done... Right, it's tricky because she can't admit that she didn't have any juice in the administration, which is the real answer. Madam Vice President, Governor Walz, thank you so much for your time. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Thank you, Dana. Thank you. So, there was a lot of pressure on Kamala Harris to do an interview, and she's now done one. What did you think of it? At risk of totally embarrassing myself by attempting to use Gen Z slang, I thought it was mid. Is that, am I using that correctly? But I think you are, yeah it was like okay.

Yeah it was okay. It was sort of the Hippocratic Oath of interviews right, first do no harm. Yeah, it was okay. It was sort of the Hippocratic Oath of interviews, right? First do no harm. But I do think that for someone who is viewed as cautious and not particularly nimble, she didn't really dispel that perception with this interview. But isn't she going to have to do better than made or okay to win this race? Well, maybe, maybe not. I mean, if she is narrowly ahead, according to most of the swing state polls, she could still squeak through and win the election. But I do think that, you know, the gains she's made so far are the easy ones. The next percentage point is harder and the one after that is harder still. And it just gets harder and harder to continue

to make inroads with the electorate because the voters she's trying to reach are just more and more skeptical. She might have to stop answering some questions. She might have to start answering some questions. We'll see. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knudson. It's Friday August 30th. Coming up on the show, a big interview and a tight race. What is dedication? People ask, how your children learn how to ride a bike and you didn't.

I just created an environment where they taught themselves and all I had to do was be there. That's dedication. Visit fatherhood.gov to hear more. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. So let's talk about this interview that Kamala Harris did last night with CNN. First of all, why did it take her so long to do an interview? Well, she's been in this race for a little over a month and she's had a lot to do. That's what I think the campaign would tell you. She's been very busy.

First, she had to wrap up the nomination, which involved a lot of blocking and tackling and phone calls and that sort of thing. She's had to do a lot of fundraising. That's been very successful. She's had to pick a vice presidential nominee and she's had to plan a convention. That being said, those are excuses more than reasons, right? If she wanted to talk to the press, if that was something she felt like she was good at and comfortable doing and would help her, she would have made time for it by now. And clearly, it is not something they've made a priority. They haven't wanted to interrupt the momentum that they've had. She has been drawing big crowds and getting good marks for her scripted appearances in

the speeches and rallies and so on, the friendly settings that she's been in. So given that she can be somewhat unsteady in unscripted situations, the campaign hasn't seen a need to do that when they don't have to. One of the things that stood out to me was that the first question that CNN's Dana Bash asked her was, what would you do on day one? Which I feel like is a pretty common question that candidates get asked. And she seemed almost unprepared to answer that.

And she gave what felt like a pretty vague answer. If you are elected, what would you do on day one in the White House? Well, there are a number of things. I will tell you first and foremost, one of my highest priorities is to do what we can to support and strengthen the middle class. When I look at the aspirations, the goals, the ambitions of the American people, I think that— Now, in some cases, she wasn't directly answering the question, perhaps because there wasn't a good answer.

Okay, what is it you would do on day one? She started talking about legislation she would propose and, you know, Congress doesn't meet on the day of the presidential inauguration. This is not something she could accomplish on the first day. There are things presidents do on the first day. Generally, the last couple of administrations, they've signed a flurry of executive orders. Does she have stuff like that in her pocket? Do you feel like we learned anything new about Harris

from this interview? That's a good question. Yes, I think one important thing that we learned is she doesn't feel like she's at any pains to differentiate herself from Biden. She did not really separate herself from him. In fact, she praised his legacy and talked about how proud she was of it. She ran away from the Bidenomics label, but she gave a very strong endorsement of the Biden

administration's economic policies. There was some thought that she might try to distance herself or try to establish herself as a different type of candidate, she seems to feel that she's different enough just by being her, just by being younger and not Joe Biden. So she was very positive about the Biden legacy. And to another, I think, obvious question, which is if you have all these things you want to do, why haven't you done them in the three and a half years you've been in office?

She had an interesting answer to that too. She said we first we had to rescue the country from the pandemic and from the damage that Trump had done. All of that because of mismanagement by Donald Trump of that crisis. When we came in, our highest priority was to do what we could to rescue America. And today, we know that we have inflation at under 3%. A lot of our policies have led to the reality that America recovered faster than any wealthy nation

around the world. So she sort of said, we've just had so much to do so far, but there's more to do. And we'll see if that's persuasive to voters. I do think that's a significant source of skepticism for her candidacy. But again, as we saw in our poll, voters are really willing to see her as a fresh face, are really willing to see her as turning the page and as different from the current administration. So she very well may get away with that.

There was obviously a lot of pressure on Kamala Harris to do an interview, but it feels like Donald Trump has been doing a lot of them. He has. He's actually been doing a flurry of interviews. They haven't gotten that much attention, in part because he's been doing so many of them. But for example, he did an interview with NBC this week where he talked about having the federal government pay for IVF treatments.

And we're doing this because we just think it's great and we need great children, beautiful children in our country. We actually need them and we are going to be under the Trump administration. We are going to be paying for that treatment. So we are paying. He did an interview with Dr. Phil this week, where he said something about Jesus counting votes in California. If Jesus came down and was the vote counter, I would win California, okay? In other words, if we had an honest... So he's done a mix of interviews, but he's really trying to get the attention back on him in this race.

He has been campaigning pretty energetically almost every day and making himself very available to the media, I think in part because he wants to drive a contrast between himself and Harris. I think, you know, Trump has always benefited from the perception that he is quote unquote authentic, that he's unfiltered, that, you know, he may not tell the truth, but he is who he is. And voters don't feel like they're getting someone who's sort of putting on an act when he speaks. And so he thinks that's a significant advantage for him in this race. And he's been working to make that clear by making himself very accessible. All right. We're going to take a quick break.

And when we come back, we're going to talk about all this new polling data that just came out yesterday. What is dedication? People ask, how your children learn how to ride a bike and you didn't. I just created an environment where they taught themselves and all I had to do was be there. That's dedication. Visit fatherhood.gov to hear more.

Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. All right, so let's talk about this new polling data that just came out. The Wall Street Journal and several other organizations had some polling out yesterday. What were some of the things that stood out to you? Well, our Wall Street Journal poll has a statistical tie. Kamala Harris with 48%, Donald Trump with 47%. That is consistent with a lot of the other national polls that other media and polling organizations have been putting out recently.

This is a very, very close race. Of course, what matters is the electoral college. What matters is the swing states. We did not do the swing states in this poll. We have in some others. We do see momentum for Kamala Harris. We polled Harris versus Trump in late July, and it was still a margin of error race,

so it's possible that nothing has changed since then. This is all statistical noise. But she was two points behind, and now she's one point ahead. So we do see her gaining a little bit. One thing I found really interesting in looking at the polling is that it seems like Kamala Harris has been successful at reintroducing herself as like a new candidate that's separate from, you know, the vice president in the Biden administration.

For instance, on the question of who would handle the economy better, Joe Biden trailed Trump earlier this year in our poll by 20 percentage points. And now when you ask that question about who will handle the economy better, Trump or Kamala Harris, Trump only leads Kamala Harris by eight percentage points. So she's made a big improvement in this area. You're right. It is remarkable how Kamala Harris has reset people's perceptions of her since becoming the presidential candidate.

On the one hand, 52% in this poll do say that they see her more as a continuation of the prior administration, but they are clearly willing to give her the benefit of the doubt on all of these issues where they were really down on Biden and his leadership. She's closed the gap on the economy. She's even closed the gap on immigration and foreign policy, other issues where Trump still leads. She's got a wider lead than Biden did on being able to handle the abortion issue. And her approval rating has gained double digits since Biden was the candidate and she was merely the vice presidential nominee. So voters have really updated their perceptions of her and revised those perceptions upward.

And most of this is coming from Democrats, right? Most of this is coming from Democratic voters who were previously sort of down in the dumps. And that enthusiasm number has just surged. We see vast majority of respondents to this poll saying they are enthusiastic about their choice of candidate. Before Biden dropped out, that was below 50%. The broad electorate was really unenthusiastic about this election, and that has just done a 180. Polls, though, of course, are just like a snapshot, and we know a very imperfect one. I mean, Hillary Clinton had big leads in the polls.

She lost. Joe Biden had big leads in the polls, and he barely squeaked out a victory in 2020. So what's your sort of take on how we should be interpreting these results this week? The best way to interpret these results is as a tied race, with neither candidate clearly ahead. And as we love to say in politics,

the only poll that matters is on election day. You know, because our modern elections are so close, it's not the case that polls don't tell you anything. The polls do tell you it's a close race. But it's very hard for a poll to be so precise that it actually tells you who's going to win when a race is within, you know, a few tens of thousands or a few hundred thousand votes. It's just so close that, you know, last minute decisions voters make, last minute incidents, even logistical or changes in the weather, can change the way a race goes when it is that close. So we know this is a really close race. We know it's going to hinge on those swing states, right? – Do you have a sense at this point about what the most important swing states will be and like where the candidates

feel like this race is going to be won or lost? The conventional wisdom now is that there are two really key states in part because they're a stand in for other states. So it's all going to come down to Pennsylvania and Georgia. If Trump doesn't win Georgia, it's very difficult for him to win this election. And if Harris doesn't win Georgia, it's very difficult for him to win this election. And if Harris doesn't win Pennsylvania, it's very difficult for her to win this election.

All right, so we got a question from a listener about polling. This one comes from Melissa Walsh in Maryland. My question is, how do election polls account for sampling bias? I imagine that certain responders are inclined to engage with polls from organizations that more closely align with their political leanings. Do polls account for this potential bias and if yes, how so? Thank you, Melissa. That is a great question. And you've hit on a number of important things about the science of polling and what makes it so difficult. So first of all, sampling bias, What you are talking about where voters might respond to who's conducting a poll is not really what we mean

when we talk about sampling bias. We've been talking about the Wall Street Journal poll, for example, but our poll is conducted by a pair of independent polling firms. So if you were to get a phone call as part of our poll, it wouldn't say, hello, this is the Wall Street Journal, would you like to tell us what you think about politics? And that's true of all media organizations.

So people aren't responding to, oh, do I like the Wall Street Journal or not? Do I like the New York Times or not? Do I like the associations that I have with this media brand? Usually it's gonna be a polling firm that they've never heard of. But sampling bias is a thing,

and that's a statistical term that refers to a bias in the sample. The fact that some people may be more likely to end up in the sample than others based on certain characteristics. So to cite a very obvious example, if you're taking a written survey you're obviously going to get mostly or entirely people who know how to read and write. And if you're trying to get a comprehensive sample that includes people who don't know how to read and write, you're going to have to find some other way to reach those. We saw this play out in 2016 with regard to education levels. Previously, education, before Trump came along, wasn't really a dividing line in the electorate. So pollsters were not

adjusting their sample to make sure they had the right proportions of college educated versus non-college educated voters. It turns out college educated voters are dramatically more likely to take a poll. And so in the white vote in particular, pollsters had about the right percentages of white people who were going to vote, but it was heavily weighted

toward college educated white people. And it turned out that non-college educated white people who were going to vote, but it was heavily weighted toward college educated white people and it turned out that Non-college educated white people were dramatically more likely to go for Trump So that was a big reason that those polls in 2016 did not capture Trump's support and ever since 2016 pollsters have been waiting their samples to account for Education levels in whatever geography they're trying to sample for education levels in whatever geography they're trying to sample. All right, so what are you going to be watching for over the next week? Oh, gosh. Well, the debate is the week after next.

So I do think the candidates may spend a lot of next week getting ready for the debate. Well, you know, the most exciting thing that I think is happening next week? What's that? Is that we're going to make this official. We're going to launch our little, you know, weekly fireside chats and make it into our own special spin-off show. That's right. I am so excited about this. And thank you to everyone who has been listening to our weekly election chats.

We're going to make it a thing. We're going to commit. It's going to be called Red, White and Who and starting next week. You can find it right here in the journal feed. Amazing. All right. Well, I'm looking forward to talking again next week. Me too.

Thanks, Ryan. All right. Thanks, Molly. Before we go, remember, if you want to ask Molly a question about the election, send us an email or voice message to thejournal at wsj.com. That's thejournal at wsj.com. That's all for today, Friday, August 30th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. The show is made by Catherine Brewer, Maria Byrne, Jonathan Davis, Pia Gadkari, Rachel

Humphreys, Matt Kwong, Kate Linebaugh, Jessica Mendoza, Annie Minoff, Laura Morris, Enrique Perez de la Rosa, Sarah Platt, Alan Rodriguez Espinosa, Heather Rogers, Pier Singie, Laying Tong, Jeevika Verma, Lisa Wang, Catherine Whalen, Tatiana Zamis, and me, Ryan Knudson. With help from Trina Menino. Our engineers are Griffin Tanner, Nathan Singapok, and Peter Leonard.

Our theme music is by So Wiley. Additional music this week from Peter Leonard, Bobby Lord, Emma Munger, Griffin Tanner, Nathan Singapok, So Wiley, and Blu Dot Sessions. Fact-checking by Kate Gallagher, Najwa Jamal, and Mary Mathis. Thanks for listening. We're off for Labor Day. See you on Tuesday.