The Journal. - What We're Watching for Tonight

Episode Date: November 5, 2024

Election night is here, and the U.S.–and the world–is watching as the votes come in. WSJ's Politics Editor Ben Pershing walks us through what he's keeping a close eye on, and how long it might take before a winner is called. Further Reading: -Election Day 2024 Live: It's Kamala Harris vs. Donald Trump as America Votes  -A (Don’t Hold Us to It) Hour-by-Hour Guide to Election Night  Further Listening:  -Harris, Trump and the Inflation Election  -Red, White and Who? An Electoral College Blowout?  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Okay, it's about midday, late morning on election day, and I am in the Washington, DC, newsroom of the Wall Street Journal. It's actually pretty quiet right now. Seems like a lot of folks are still out and about reporting, heading to polling stations, probably talking to voters. But what we're gonna do is we're gonna go over to Ben Pershing's desk, he's the politics editor here at the journal, and kind of just see

how things are shaping up. But before we do that, I gotta bring him an offering. There's some snacks here. Let's do some Cheez-Its, a granola bar. We'll do that. Let's head over. And here's Ben. Hi Ben, how's it going? Good. How are you feeling today? Pretty good. Yeah, yeah. Not? Yeah. Not stressed yet? Rested, ready.

I haven't eaten too much yet. Well that's perfect because I brought you some snacks. Oh boy. So I love Cheez-Its. There you go. And that is my go-to, but usually more in the afternoon than morning. Okay, well I'm going to put it right here. In case you change your mind, it's almost the afternoon.

What's going through your mind right now? So there's this sort of hurry up and wait part now that we all sit around on and we watch, you know, feeds come in from voters and long lines and people saying anecdotal things about turnout but we also always have to remember that almost none of it means anything. Like you can't actually interpret what's going on in the morning and draw out some big conclusion about the night usually unless there's something really crazy. At this point, Ben, how many elections have you covered?

Let me see. So my first one I think was 1998. So it's like every two years since then. So it's probably 13 if you include like midterms. I don't know. Is it still exciting for you? It's fun. Well, since you are such a pro at this, I've been doing this for a long time. We're asking for your help to put together a kind of user's guide to election night, what listeners can expect,

what they should be watching for as results come in. Are you game to do that? Sure, yeah, happy to. From the Washington DC Bureau, welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza, it's Election Day, Tuesday, November 5th, 2024. Ben, do you want to tell folks what's coming up? Coming up on the show, a political veteran's guide to election night. How do airplanes fly? What's in this box? What does this thing do? Kids are curious about everything, including guns. Learn how to store your guns securely

and make your home safer at nfamilyfire.org. Brought to you by N Family Fire, Brady and the Ad Council. So Ben, as we've established, you've covered many election nights. What makes this one different? What makes this one special? Yes. It probably is the closest race we've ever covered. If you look at the polls, both nationally and in the states, I just don't think we've ever had a race this close in this many important places in the final days.

Usually it gets clearer by the end, which way it's going, and it just isn't right now. And how many states are in play? We think seven. There's really seven states that are really close and could go either way. It's Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, and North Carolina.

I love that you did that without looking at your notes at all. It did take me a minute. I've said them too many times. I mean, one way to think about it as we do it, there's the blue wall states, they call them, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. And then there's what's kind of loosely called the sunbelt. And that's North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada. There's a theory that if Harris is gonna win,

she's gonna win those blue wall states, whereas Trump has a better shot in those other four. But as I said, we're talking about a point either way, everywhere. And then another thing that sticks out to me about this election, right, it's super close as you said, but in terms of the issues, there are a lot of issues at play.

Yeah, it's a good point. I mean, there have been past elections where, famously in 1992, James Carville said it was the economy, stupid, and everybody remembers that, right? And then there have been other elections where it was maybe about post-September 11th in Iraq or one issue really being dominant, right? And what is interesting about this election is there are so many. So yeah, it's the economy, it's inflation, but it's also immigration and border security. It's also abortion rights and women's health.

It's also the wars in Israel and Ukraine. And you can kind of go on and on. And you could point to any one of those and if you told me that one issue was the difference, I wouldn't be surprised. So up to this point, we've been talking about the presidential race, but what about the House and the Senate? How close are we talking in those races? If it's possible to be just as close.

Really the House is the one that's especially close because Republicans have a narrow majority. They're defending a lot of seats. The smartest election analysts really aren't picking a side. They're saying they could see Republicans ending up with a five seat majority. They could see Democrats ending up with a five seat majority or even a 10 seat majority. Kind of frustratingly for us, a lot of the seats that are really competitive are in California and New York, where it takes them a really long time to count. And so if we're all waiting around and we want to know the answer, and here's California

saying, it'll be days before we count all these ballots, I think there'll be some frustration. So that's the House. The Senate is a little different. Republicans do have the edge in the Senate. And it's just because of the map. This year, Democrats happen to be in the position of defending a whole bunch of tough seats and Republicans aren't. So all Republicans need to do to capture the majority is win a couple seats and they've got it. So that's what we know heading into tonight. Tight races all around, but especially the presidential race. Who wins will come down to just a handful of battleground states.

But tonight, Ben and his team won't just be watching states like Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. They're also going to be keeping a close eye on a handful of specific counties. Counties that could give us early clues about how certain groups might be voting. What we wanted to do was pick counties that represented particular demographics. Younger people, older people, large black populations, white working class populations. The idea being if we look at these counties really closely, they might be a sign of how other counties with similar populations are going to vote.

So in other words, and I tell this story a lot, back in 2016, early in the night, some of our colleagues were looking at the Florida numbers coming in, including counties that Trump was supposed to win. And they're like, wow, he was supposed to win this county by 10 or 20 points. He's winning by 40. Like what's going on here? Something's going on here. Trump was winning in these Florida counties,

which was no surprise, but he was winning by a much bigger margin than analysts had expected. And it turned out that those big margins were an early hint of the election's final result. These are the kinds of clues Ben and his team will be looking for tonight. The margins everywhere matter. an early hint of the election's final result. These are the kinds of clues Ben and his team will be looking for tonight.

The margins everywhere matter. So we tried to pick counties that would report pretty early in the evening, but would give us clues about what's gonna happen later in the night. Ben says, if you wanna know how the night's going for Trump or Harris, you could keep an eye on Travis County, Texas, Hernando County, Florida,

and Macomb County, Michigan. Let's start with Travis County, Texas. Can you describe Travis County? What kind of place is it? Sure. So this is where Austin is, the University of Texas, which has more than 50,000 students. Obviously it's a blue-leaning place,

but it's the kind of place we're gonna look at to see what democratic turnout looks like, democratic energy. It won't be surprising if Harris wins Travis County. But Ben says if she's winning it by a lot, it could be a sign of democratic strength. It might be a clue that other blue places, other college towns, other young places, places where Dems should rack up votes, are going to do really well. How much does Harris have to win Travis County by to say that she's having a good night?

So in 2020, Biden won this county by almost 50%. So, I mean, that's a lot, right? Dems have a big margin here. But in every place, the thing to think about is, is Harris outperforming Biden? Whatever it is, if it's a 10 point for whatever, it's a good sign for Democrats. Let's go to another Sunbelt state. What about Hernando County, Florida? Tell us what you're looking at there. Sure. It's on the Gulf Coast of Florida.

It's got a lot of senior communities there. So that's where more than a quarter of this population is older, over 65. So needless to say, it's the kind of place that might be indicative of how older voters are going. This is a case where Trump did really well in previous cycles, you know, winning by big double-digit margins. But we have been looking at the older vote carefully to see if Trump can keep those people or whether some of them might be shifting over to Harris a little bit.

And so, again, this is a place where Trump's going to win, no question, but can he win by as much as he won in 2020? And then let's look at one more county. This one is in Michigan, Macomb County. Why Macomb? So this is just north of Detroit, and it's a kind of suburban and exurban county that we spend a lot of time thinking about, right?

All over the country, suburbs and exurbs seem to be where it's at. And this is one that has leaned toward Trump. For example, in 2016, he won by 12 points. In 2020, he won by 8 points. And if you think about the difference there, 2016, Trump won Michigan. Right. 2020, he lost Michigan.

Huh. I don't want to say that Macomb was the difference, but it certainly made a difference. And this is a state that could be decided by less than a point overall. And this is a particularly key state for Harris to being one of the blue wall states. I mean, obviously all seven battleground states are in play, but to lose Michigan would be a big loss for the Harris campaign. It definitely would. If she lost any of these three blue wall states, Michigan, Wisconsin, or Pennsylvania, it just

makes her job much harder. She really has to make it up elsewhere. So their strategy is to win these three states. Coming up, Ben attempts to answer the pressing election night question. When will I be able to go to bed? That's next. Okay. Now for the question that's on everyone's mind. How long will it take to have a winner? I wish I could say we would know quickly. I'm not sure. It could take days again. If

people remember from 2020, they may have blocked it out of their minds. It wasn't until Saturday that the election was called. For Joe Biden, that was the day Pennsylvania was called. And you remember, that's four days after the election. What happened last time was that pretty much everything was called by Tuesday and Wednesday. And then we sat around waiting on Thursday and Friday. And then it wasn't until Saturday again,

where we knew the winner. Now, the twist here is that Trump declared victory days earlier, right? And honestly, I think he will do that tonight. Most likely in either scenario, he'll say that he won or is going to win, even if the races haven't been called. And we did learn a lot in 2020 about how to think about that, how to process it, how to cover it as a news organization. If Trump says he won, but these states haven't been called and they're still close, we and

most of the news media will make clear that even though Trump's saying it, it doesn't mean it's true. Where do you see potential holdups? In the count? Yes. I think Pennsylvania is always a bet to hold up. There's a lot of fighting there about voting rules, counting rules, when to open ballots. There's always lawsuits in Pennsylvania.

So I think they say that they've modified their procedures to speed things up a bit. But again, it took till Saturday last time. The other states that have a real history of voting problems and controversies are Arizona and Wisconsin. And I think you'll see a lot of attention on both of those places as they count too.

Would you be down to do a little pop quiz? You kind of answered this first one already, but just. Of course. Okay. So when approximately was the 2020 race called? It was the Saturday early afternoon, I believe. 11, 26 a.m. ET. That was close.

Not bad. Okay. 2016? 2016. That was the morning after, Wednesday morning. 2 30 a.m. Eastern. Good memory. I was around. 2012? 2012 I think was like 11 p.m. Tuesday. Oh my gosh! Ding ding ding! Was I right? 11 40 p.m. Tuesday. Whole sections of my brain are devoted to this that should be devoted to other things. So I'm going to put you on the spot. What is your prediction for this year? So I don't want to get pinned down too much on one particular time.

There's a world where we actually know by Wednesday. Last time, you know, 40-something states had been called by Wednesday. If that doesn't work, I could see it being Thursday. Last time was Saturday. Most experts I know don't think it'll take that long this time, I could see it being Thursday. Last time was Saturday. Most experts I know don't think it'll take that long this time, so let's all cross our fingers. So when you watch the results come in tonight, what will you, politics editor of the Wall Street Journal, actually be looking at?

So we do look at all the results as they come in, but even before that, we're luckily enough to subscribe to something called AP Votecast. Basically, AP has been polling thousands and thousands of people for days heading into this election, and then they supplement it with more interviews on election day. And they really try to get a sense of how people are voting, who they're voting for. They also ask a whole bunch of questions about issues. And we get all that data in the evening, usually before we actually start hearing calls. So even before calls, we can say, wow, look at the suburbs. Look at how women turned out. Look at how Latino men shifted

to the Republicans. There's all these patterns we've been writing about for four years, and we're now going to find out what actually happened. It's like Christmas. You've been looking at these presents that have been wrapped for a while and you're shaking the box and trying to see what's in them and you finally get to open them. Yeah, Christmas is all good and fun though. I can just say that election night is not always quite that good and fun. Fair enough. But it's still a good comparison.

And then we're kind of in a holding pattern until the polls start to really close. And you know, 7 and 7.30 p.m. are really the times we're watching when important states start to close. And that's when people should start turning their TVs on if they want to keep track basically. Exactly and you know Georgia closing at 7 and North Carolina closing at 7 30 they both had this big early vote that gets reported early so in other words we don't have to wait till the end of the night to see people who voted by mail or voted early they should get dumped in pretty quick and so we'll actually have a big chunk of votes to look at.

But what's challenging there and confusing sometimes is the early vote still tends to lean Democratic. So it's possible big chunks of early votes come in in Georgia and you're like, oh wow, Harris is ahead. But you have to wait for that election day vote to catch up, which is going to be more Republican. So it feels like patience is key for anybody who's trying to keep track of this over this evening and the next few days.

Yeah, I would say patience and most importantly not jumping to conclusions. That's something to keep in mind for sure. Well, Ben, I know it's going to be a long night for you, so I'm going to let you go and just say best of luck. Thank you for the work you and your team do, and we'll see where it takes us. Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it. [♪ music playing.

[♪ music playing. [♪ music playing. [♪ music playing. That's all for today, Tuesday, November 5th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. We'll be back in your feed tomorrow morning with a new episode of our election series, Red, White and Who. Our hosts Ryan Knudsen and Molly Ball will be debriefing election night.

Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.