The Journal. - Red, White and Who? The Undecided Voters Who Could Decide the Election

Episode Date: October 25, 2024

Five undecided voters in swing states speak to Rachel Humphreys about how they're feeling as election day looms. Ryan Knutson and Molly Ball unpack the stakes. Plus, will betting markets predict the winner? Further Listening: - Red, White and Who? Playlist  - Red, White and Who? The Desperation Stage  - How Betting on U.S. Politics Is Getting Big  Further Reading: - Trump Takes Narrow Lead Over Harris in Closing Weeks of Race  - Meet the Traders Making Money Off the Trump Shooting and Biden’s Stumbles  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So, Molly, this is our last episode before the big day. Oh, wow. The big day being... No, it's not, is it? Halloween. Oh, okay. I was going to say there is another. Ryan, we did this intro last week.

There's a lot of great holidays right now. Well, so what is your plan for Halloween? We're going to Sesame Street. Oh, you're doing a family costume. My wife is Cookie Monster. My two-year-old is going to be Elmo. And I'm going to be the trash can. And our two-month-old is going to be strapped to my chest,

and he'll be Oscar. That's great. Okay, so we have... I have a series of questions for you. Okay. The first of which is, are you a decisive person? I feel like if I were, I would just say yes. And the fact that I'm equivocating tells you that I'm not that decisive.

So, Pepsi or Coke? Coke. Burger King or McDonald's? Burger King. Would you rather have to swim across a 50 meter pool to escape a shark or run across a football field to escape an angry gorilla? My tolerance for hypotheticals is very low. I deal in facts, right?

But definitely the gorilla. And hypothetically, if there was an election coming up on say November 5th, would you vote for Kamala Harris or Donald Trump? Well there I definitely am not making any kind of decision or prediction. Which makes sense of course because you are a reporter. But the reason that I'm asking you about decisiveness is because there are still a lot of people who are indecisive about who to vote for. A Wall Street Journal poll out this week shows that 3% of the electorate still hasn't made up their mind. And in an election this close, that really could matter. This is the closest election I have ever covered, and it may be the closest election in history. And so that means that any tiny factor, you know, a weather event in Wisconsin, or a last

minute revelation or really anything could sway the outcome, which means that these undecided voters also could change the outcome, even though they are only 3% of the electorate, according to our poll. When some number of these undecided voters listen to our podcast,

because we got quite a few emails from listeners after we put that call out at the end of last week's episode for Undecided Voters and Swing States. And our senior producer, Rachel Humphries, talked to five of them. Yes, Ryan. I spent a lot of time on the phone this week talking to Undecided Voters. They're all in key swing states

where the polling is so close right now. And they're all really torn on who to vote for this year, and I have to say they're not feeling good about it. What is one word that you would use to describe how you're feeling about this election? Confused. One word, probably frustrated. Honestly, nervous. More so than I ever have for any other political event I've participated in. Nervous. Very indecisive. Yeah, indecisive. So why are they all undecided?

Well, I'm going to tell you, Ryan, but don't you have a little bit of housekeeping to do first? Yes. Let's do that. From the Journal, this is Red, White and Who. Our show about the road to the White House. I'm Ryan Knudsen. And I'm Molly Ball. It's Friday, October 25th. Coming up on the show, the undecided voters who could decide the election. And can betting markets predict the result?

You let him try violin because you love him. And if you love him that much, love him enough to make sure he's buckled up And in the back seat find out more at NHTSA.gov slash the right seat brought to you by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Ad Council All right, so Rachel Humphries, let's get into it. Tell us about these five voters that you talk to. Well, to start off, Ryan, I'm going to let them introduce themselves. Yeah, my name is Ryan Cox.

I currently live in Atlanta, Georgia, and I'm 27 years old. My name is Justin. I live in Pennsylvania, and I'm 34 years old. My name is Rachel Brody. I'm 30, and I live in southern Michigan. My name is Justin. I live in Pennsylvania and I'm 34 years old. My name is Rachel Brody. I'm 30 and I live in southern Michigan. My name is Nate. I'm 25 years old and I live in Wisconsin in the Milwaukee suburbs. My name is Kobe. I am from Arizona and I'm 24 years old. I have to say it's kind of amazing, Rachel, that you found five voters and one of them is named Ryan and one of them is named Rachel.

I know. I know. I don't know if this is just similar as a tract, but Ryan got in touch and said you have a great name. Great name. Probably the best name. After Molly. Molly, Ryan, Rachel.

I was going to say, alas, no Molly's. But Rachel, why just sort of at a high level are these voters undecided? I mean, quite simply, Ryan, they have really big reservations about both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump that they're finding hard to overcome. So let's start with Donald Trump. Here's Ryan Cox in Georgia. He voted for Trump in 2020, but he really feels like he can't support him this time around You know January 6th was obviously

Something that made me feel ashamed to be American that that's something like this would happen and to know that you know someone that I Voted for you know played a part in that happening was was disheartening to say the least I voted for, you know, played a part in that happening was disheartening to say the least. And I think it's a really dangerous place to be at, and it's really disheartening for me to feel that Trump will go to, and his supporters will go to any length to make, you know, whatever result work out in his favor. And so I think January 6th was kind of eye opening for that thought in my mind. I also spoke to Justin Hurst from Pennsylvania.

Justin voted third party basically out of protest in 2020. And he told me that he can see himself aligning with some of Trump's policies, but he also has issues with him as a person. You know, that Georgia phone call was a real problem for me. And that, of course, is that call Trump had with Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Look, all I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more that we have. Because we won the state and flipping the state. And you know, they can try to kind of squeeze out of it

by saying that he didn't specifically direct him to make up votes. He wanted them to quote unquote, fine votes. But you know, that doesn't pass the sniff test for me. It just, it seems like he was trying to get votes that were illegitimate. You know, so just stuff like that for respect to the rule of law, you know,

I think Trump loses out on that. So it seems like for these voters, their reservations about Trump really come down to his personality. When you think about the rhetoric that we're hearing on the campaign trail, it really reflects a lot of what these undecided voters are talking about. Kamala Harris in recent days has put a huge amount of emphasis on concerns about

Trump's temperament and fitness, calling him unhinged, saying in her CNN town hall this week that she believes he is a fascist. The comments by Trump's former chief of staff, John Kelly, and a number of others calling Trump a fascist and raising concerns about his conduct and his fitness for the presidency. You see a lot of emphasis on this by the Democrats, and a large part of that is likely aimed at reminding voters like these of the qualms that they have and seeking to persuade them that Trump is a unique threat to democracy, and that is the reason, according to Kamala Harris, that people have to vote against him, even if they are not in love with her.

So, Rachel, what do these voters say about why they were reluctant to vote for Harris? Yeah, when it comes to Harris, voters are still wanting to know more from her. They're kind of struggling to trust her, basically. And this came up in my conversation with Rachel Brody in Michigan. She told me that there are things she likes about Harris, but she has some big concerns as well.

I mean, I think the pros are she's, you know, for one, a woman, which I appreciate as a woman as well. But more so she's logical. She's a reasonable person. However, I'm really mostly concerned about how the rest of the world views her as a leader and whether that's going to cause America to kind of sit idly by and get passed by countries like China and India whose economies are really growing and they're really doing a lot of things to make sure they push themselves into a higher superpower status in the world. And you know, if that's the case, then where does that leave America?

Rachel told me that she selected interviews from both candidates and she's going to sit and watch them and make her mind up that way. And Justin in Pennsylvania talked about that too. He said that he was willing to be persuaded by a Harris interview that aired last week. You know, I think, I will say this, I think Harris really had a chance to win me over when she decided to go on Fox News and do a, you know, combative interview. And it kind of just felt like she filibustered and kind of dropped the opportunity to win

over people in the middle. So you know, that could have convinced me. Do you do feel that she wasn't answering the questions in the Bret Bear interview? I mean, I just kind of want her to actually go down a list of, these are my policies specifically, these are what they will do. And, you know, she talks about the opportunity economy, and that's a great idea. But then she doesn't actually go on to list what the opportunity economy means. Molly, it's kind of amazing that an individual interview

that a candidate does can be so important. Yeah, well, these voters all feel like they know what they're getting with Trump. They've heard a lot from Trump. But Harris, they're still looking for information about her and they want to see her not give a speech at a rally or speak in a commercial. There's a feeling that, you know, that's sort of phony,

that's all staged. They want to see her in these unscripted settings. They want to get a sense of her capability to handle tough questions and to really speak for herself and speak for her vision. The other thing, Molly, that came through when talking to these undecided voters is how much their decision is really weighing on them.

You heard Rachel from Michigan say earlier that she's more nervous about this election than any other she's voted in. Honestly, I think there's really more at stake for my family, but also just the country in general. I think a lot of the rhetoric around the candidates is focused on the potential negative outcomes of either one winning and- less so on the positive outcomes and that's just the- a product of. Where we're out

with the economy and the world and it's just. There's a lot more at stake than there used to be. There really is a feeling that the stakes are are really high in this election. The first election I really covered as a national reporter was 2012, when Barack Obama was running for reelection against Mitt Romney. And certainly both of them probably said many times, this is the most important election you have to get out there and vote. but the stakes felt a lot lower. It felt like both of these were basically normal candidates offering a basically normal sort of policy divergence. And while there are certainly consequences

for the policy decisions that presidents make, no matter what, you didn't have this feeling that we were in the sort of twilight of American democracy, the potential end times. So this election, I think people are really, really, really on edge for that reason. Yes, and you could hear that in undecided voter Nate Zarin's voice when I asked him how he's planning to make a decision. He lives in Wisconsin. How do you plan to make up your mind? He lives in Wisconsin. How do you plan to make up your mind?

Oh, I need to do it fast. That's a big groan. Yeah, it's a big groan. It's a tough challenge for me. I think at the end of the day, I'm just going to have to decide which is the better of the two and have to live with that going forward. I don't have an easy answer for how I'm going to decide yet, but just that it needs to be this week.

Yeah, I'm mailing in my ballot, which is why I need to do it soon. And where is your ballot right now? Well, it's just kind of sitting, not filled out. I just opened mine recently. My wife's is still unopened. We just have kind of had them sitting for a few weeks, dreading voting. Nate isn't the only person I spoke to who's trying to avoid his ballot right now. Here's Kobe Brown in Arizona.

I've got my ballot sitting on my table and I'm just waiting to send it in. So... Have you looked at it yet? No, it's still in the envelope. Ha ha ha. Just sitting there. You know, you're actually the second person today

I've spoken to who's told me that. Just sitting there, like, weighing on you. Yeah, yeah, it's just, it's just on my mind, you know? It's like a piece of paper that weighs a thousand pounds. Yeah. I just say it's the elephant in the room, but that's actually not a sort of- It's the elephant and donkey. Elephant and donkey in the room.

Exactly. Just two huge animals sat there looking at them. And Kobe, like most of the voters actually that I spoke to, he told me that he would love to have a third option to vote for, but he says that right now that just doesn't feel viable. Yes, I have considered voting for a third party candidate. I mean, I've even talked with friends and family, and we've all come to the same consensus that we feel like doing that is throwing away our vote. And but that also makes me wonder like how many, how many of the people who are voting for the candidates

feel that way? And if there was another option, how many people would vote for that third option? Molly, why do you think there haven't really been any viable third party candidates? So there's a lot of people who see both of these candidates negatively and would prefer something else. The problem you always get with third parties is the idea of a third option is

an abstraction. And once you get into the weeds of what that person would stand for, the many people who have misgivings about the two major candidates don't really have anything else in common. Some of them are disaffected Republicans. Some of them are disaffected Republicans, some of them are disaffected Democrats, some of them may be libertarians or socialists or have some other philosophy

that is not represented by either of the two parties. But to try to actually have a candidate speak for this sort of motley array of protest voters turns out to be quite a challenge in practice. And so in practice the third-party vote does end up being mostly a protest vote. So Rachel, what are your takeaways after talking to these undecided voters? They're in a pretty tough spot, right? I don't envy them right now.

All of them told me that, you know, they're all in swing states, so they're being inundated right now with ads, political ads, whenever they switch on the TV, go online, it's everywhere. And so they really feel the pressure, right? They know how important this is. And all of them said that it is more important

to vote than to not. So they all say they're definitely going to vote. They just don't have a sense of how to do it. And some of them said they might just take the plunge. But the last thing I want to say is all of them talked about how they hope the future for a politics that is a bit kinder and is less divided. They don't like the divisive rhetoric

that we're hearing at this election. And they want to feel that they have something in common with their fellow Americans. And that's something that came through from every single person that I spoke to. All right. Well, thanks, Rachel, for bringing us these voices. It's all super interesting. We're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, can a betting market predict the election? Stay with us.

So we've been talking a bit about this new Wall Street Journal poll that came out this week that shows that Donald Trump has opened up a two percentage point lead, which is still, of course, within the margin of error, but it is a meaningful improvement from where he was in prior polls. And yet, our colleague Erin Zittner had a really interesting piece the other day about how pollsters blew it in 2020. Are they going to blow it again in 2024? Well, I think the polls are probably right when they tell us that the race is really, really close and is really, really close in all of the swing states. And that's about as close as a poll can get.

Once you get to a race that's potentially going to be decided by a point or less in a lot of these states, by a few thousand votes out of millions of votes being cast, there's just no way for a poll to be precise enough that it tells you exactly how people are going to vote. But the polls seem to underestimate Trump's support in 2016, underestimate him again in 2020. And then some polls predicted a red wave in 2022 that didn't happen.

Do you think there's a possibility that there could be some overcorrection in one direction or another in 2024? It's definitely possible, but we don't know in what direction. And in 2012, for example, the polls underestimated Barack Obama. So it can go in either direction. We do see this trend where Trump in particular tends to outperform his polls, but the pollsters want to get it right. So they have tried to correct for that in the past four years.

And it's possible that they've overcorrected for it and are now overestimating Trump's support. And again, we're just not going to know until we get the election result, whether the pollsters were overcounting or undercounting Trump supporters, in what direction that error goes. All right, so a couple of listeners got in touch this week asking about other ways to evaluate the state in this race. One of them is Ariel Asayagi. He wants to know more about this new feature of this election season, which are

these online betting markets, these websites where people can place bets on the outcome of real world events, kind of like betting on sports. Hi, Molly. My name is Ariel and I am from Fortaleza, Ceará, here in Brazil. My question for you is, how reliable are betting markets compared to polling data when it comes to predicting election outcomes? Muito obrigado and thank you. Ariel, thanks so much for this. This is a really great question.

I'm just looking at Polymarket right now, one of the popular betting sites, which we did an episode of the Journal about a little while ago, and it shows that most people in that market are betting that Trump will win. He's got a roughly 20 percentage point lead right now. I'm very skeptical of these betting markets. I don't think they should be taken particularly seriously, particularly as any kind of indicator of how the election is going to turn out. But before I uncork that rant,

I will say why people do look at them and take them seriously. And there is an argument for it. The idea is that when people are putting money on the line, say why people do look at them and take them seriously. And there is an argument for it. The idea is that when people are putting money on the line, that is more serious than just saying who they think is gonna win. So people who are placing these bets are invested in the outcome.

There's a few problems with that when it comes to elections. First of all, there's nothing to suggest that these betting markets are more accurate than polls. In fact, there's a lot of reason to suspect that the type of people who are betting on elections are not necessarily in touch with the electorate as it actually exists.

There's also some evidence that these betting markets can be manipulated. And I think because people some evidence that these betting markets can be manipulated. And I think because people are looking at the betting markets as an indicator, some people have an interest in trying to make them reflect a certain outcome in order to make that outcome seem inevitable. And the Wall Street Journal also reported last week about how it looks like there was a small number of very large bets on Polymarket totaling $30 million that could be skewing the results in Trump's direction. Exactly. There's a there's actually a study now by a professor at the Yale

School of Management, Jeff Sonnenfeld and some colleagues. They looked into a lot of these prediction markets and found that there are actually very few participants in a lot of them. There's actually not very much money going into a lot of these markets markets and found that there are actually very few participants in a lot of them. There's actually not very much money going into a lot of these markets and not a lot of people going into these markets, which suggests that that aggregation effect, that wisdom of crowds effect isn't really happening when you only have a few people

or a few thousand dollars being placed on these beds. Okay. All right. Well, this was really interesting. And next week is actually our last episode before the really big day, which is election day, November 5th. We're almost to the finish line. What are you going to be looking for in this final stretch? Well, it's a political reporting cliche, but it's closing argument time. Kamala Harris is going to give a big speech where she makes her final case for her candidacy. This is going to be, I think, a big moment that gets a lot of attention. Donald Trump is holding a big rally on Sunday at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Also not in a swing state,

but a way to sort of make a big splash, get a lot of attention. So both of these candidates are really trying to put a lot of juice behind their big closing argument, make their best case to those last voters who are still trying to make up their minds, people like the ones that we all heard from in this episode. Great. Rachel, do you think that our undecided voters are going to be able to make up their minds before November 5th? They all told me they would, so we're going to get back in touch with them. And maybe next week we'll find out who they voted for.

Great. Alright. Looking forward to that. That's so exciting. Well, thanks, Molly. Always a pleasure. You too, Ryan. Good luck with Halloween. Good luck with your trashcan. Thanks, you too. Thanks to Nate, Ryan, Rachel, Koby and Justin and all the other undecided voters who spoke to us for this episode. Good luck in coming to your decision. Red, White and Who is part of The Journal, which is a co-production of Spotify and

The Wall Street Journal. Our senior producer is Rachel Humphries. Our producer is Pierce Singie. Our editor is Catherine Whalen. I'm Ryan Knudson. This episode was engineered by Peter Leonard. Our theme music is by So Wiley and remixed by Peter Leonard. Additional music this week by, you guessed it, Peter Leonard.

Fact-checking by Najwa Jamal. Artwork by James Walton. Special thanks to Kate Limbaugh, Sarah Platt, Ben Pershing, and the whole journal team. Thanks for listening. Red, White and Who will be back next Friday morning. See you then.

Okay, we're rolling, Molly. Tell us. Okay, well, so I spent most of the day yesterday stuck on a dirt road in remote rural Georgia, having managed to both get my rental car stuck in a ditch and also lock myself out of it with the keys and my phone still inside while it was still running. Oh no. And so I spent several hours watching traffic go by, waiting for the roadside assistance that was supposed to be on its way and never came.

Finally went and knocked on some doors in this again, extremely rural part of the state, Zebulon, Georgia, and found some kindly strangers who were able to get the car, pull the car out and pry it open and get me back on the road late at night. So big shout out to Gary and Mona Norton of Zebulon, Georgia, who are the heroes of my existence, may have saved me from being eaten by a coyote and never seen again. And there are two boys who pulled the car out.

Just wonderful, incredibly lovely people. And really, and... Wow. So, but yeah, that was my day yesterday. It was quite an adventure.