The NPR Politics Podcast - Labor Day Is When Election Season Kicks Into High Gear. Here's Where Voters Are.

Episode Date: September 7, 2020

In this Labor Day episode of the podcast, we hear from voters in Wisconsin, Iowa, and Pennsylvania about how they're feeling about their options in November.This episode: campaign correspondent Asma Khalid, campaign correspondent Scott Detrow, political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson, Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Thank you. Monday, September 7th, which is Labor Day. And Labor Day is generally considered a day off for a lot of people. But in campaign world, every four years, Labor Day is a particularly important day because it's essentially the beginning of that final push before Election Day. It's the final push for normal elections. But this is not normal. But I still think you're going to see a lot of things now that you see all the time after Labor Day, which is more attention being given to the candidates, candidates moving around the country, being more public, and getting ready for the debates, which this year are going to loom larger than they ever have. And reporters on the road. And speaking of, I should point out that the campaigns did some travel, quite a bit of travel, I should say, by 2020 standards this last week. And so did some members of our team. I was in Wisconsin. Scott, you were in Pennsylvania. And Danielle, you were also recently in both Iowa

and Wisconsin. So I want to talk about what we've been hearing from voters in some of these key states. And Danielle, let's start with you. Was there anybody that you met that really stood out to you in terms of kind of representing what you feel like a lot of this campaign cycle has been about? Yeah, absolutely. I talked to a whole range of voters, you know, suburban women, black voters, old voters, young voters, all sorts of things. But the folks that stood out for me are the less enthusiastic people. We all, and I know you guys know this, spend a lot of time at events where, you know, the Biden diehards or the Trump diehards come out. I talked to a few people who are not at all

diehards. They are sort of unenthusiastic, yeah, I guess, voters, for lack of a better term. So let me introduce you to the first one. This is a woman named Frederica Poe. She is in her 30s. I met her at a, it wasn't quite a protest. It was more of a Black Lives Matter adjacent event. It was a bike ride in Milwaukee, but sort of connected to the Black Lives Matter movement. She told me, you know, listen, of course I'm going to vote. I'm going to vote for Biden, not because I'm pumped about Biden, but because I just can't reelect Trump. Honestly, I, and this is dramatic, but I feel hopeless in terms of, I don't have hope in any presidential candidate at this particular point, you know, to move the country forward.

And what I heard from her was what I heard from multiple other people at that protest, which was, you know, listen, I'll vote for Biden. It's not because I'm pumped about him. It's, yeah, it's to keep Trump out. But also what they said was, listen, I'm not even paying attention to this campaign. There are bigger things right now, like racial justice. So I'll vote for him. But I have other things to worry about. What I think about is that's certainly not the type of excitement level campaigns want. But voters like that are the coalition that gave Joe Biden the most overwhelming primary victory that we've seen in decades. Yeah, I think Biden will take him however he can get him. But one thing that has been striking about this campaign is that Trump voters are motivated

by enthusiasm to vote for Trump. Biden voters are motivated more for enthusiasm to vote against Trump instead of for Biden. Now, he's come up a little bit since the convention on that measurement. But the question is, is negative partisanship more powerful than positive partisanship? You know, is it more more motivating to want to go out there and vote against the other guy or for your guy? We don't know. It's a thing that I am wondering if there is a good way to quantify. Right. Because you because there are definitely Trump Biden people who really do like him, who love him. And I definitely talk to some of those and like there are definitely the Trump vote. But there are also Trump folks who, yeah, I'll vote for Trump, but he he's fine. I have other reasons to vote for him. And one of them is this guy. His name is William Gaich. He is a farmer from Cresco, or just outside Cresco, Iowa. And I talked to him,

it was a really hot summer day. You can hear a lot of insects in the background. Well, I don't particularly like him, but I like what he's for, let's say. So when you say you don't say you don't necessarily like... Just his personality I don't really care for. But his policies, I agree with pretty much all of them. Could you possibly be swayed by Joe Biden at all? No, I couldn't be. Just mostly because of the issue on abortion, that he's for abortion and I'm not. You know, of course, there are plenty of Trump voters who will tell who love the guy and who will tell you, you know, I don't like his tweets.

That is common. This guy seemed to fall more into, oh, he's tiring. I don't love him at all. But abortion. And that is a not uncommon thing, is for there to be one particular issue, and abortion is often it, that gets some people to say, yes, absolutely, I'll vote for him. I don't love him, but I'll do it. That's why white evangelicals are the core of the base. They're the backbone of the Trump base. And what's interesting to me is the entire Republican convention was aimed at people who like his policies on social issues or maybe taxes or judges and who find his behavior annoying but not disqualifying.

In other words, they're looking for a way to feel comfortable again voting for Trump, even though a lot of what he does on a day-to-day basis, the tweeting and the bullying, etc., really ticks them off. But it's not a deal breaker. Yeah. And on the flip side, it felt like much of the Democratic convention was really messaging towards voters who focus on character, right, and values, and they're looking for somebody whose moral behavior they can trust. And they really played up Joe Biden's character. And one thing I think that is interesting to me when I've been speaking with particularly young Democratic voters, there is, to me, a level of pragmatism that I'm hearing from them about the fact that

they don't necessarily love Joe Biden, but they feel that they need to vote for him this time. And I don't recall hearing that level of pragmatism amongst some Democratic voters in 2016. Obviously, dynamics are different now. Trump has been in office for a couple of years. Wasn't that the story of the Democratic primary, that Democratic voters en masse voted with their heads, not their hearts? They looked at Joe Biden, who up until that moment, they had thought, meh. Then they looked at Bernie Sanders and they looked at Donald Trump.

And then en masse, there was a stampede to Biden. I'd say they voted with their guts and not their hearts. There was so much fear. Like, I don't even know if it was, I mean, rational is one way to look at it. The other way to look at it is. Well, who's best to beat Trump is a rational, you know, decision. Sure. It was just panic sprinting back and forth as far as my greed on it. All right. We're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, Scott, we're going to talk to you about what you heard from voters there in Pennsylvania. Some days reading a bunch of headlines just isn't enough. You need to let the news sink in.

On Consider This, NPR's new daily news podcast, we can help you do that. Each day in about 10 minutes, you can find out not just what happened, but why and what it means. Consider this. New episodes every weekday afternoon from NPR. And we're back.

And Scott, I know you were recently in Pennsylvania. Still there. I'm in La Trobe. Regular podcast listeners will recognize that I am deep in Sheets country. But yes, that was not the reason I traveled out here. So Scott, you traveled out there to talk to folks who have been strong supporters of the president.

And I'm curious, you know, how what we've been hearing from Danielle and some of the people Danielle talked to matches up with what you heard from supporters of the president. Yeah, I went to find a very specific kind of voter. And that is the full MAGA experience Trump fans waiting to get into one of his rallies yesterday that he held in Latrobe. And I wanted to talk to them because we've talked a lot about how President Trump's campaign repeatedly focuses on charging this core base up and trying to get them to turn out at levels even higher than 2016. And how risky that is, given the fact that so many other kinds of voters have really

turned away from the president who might have voted for him four years ago. So I spent some time out in the parking lot. This was one of those airport hangar rallies, but it really had the feel and the size surrounding it as one of the classic pre-coronavirus, tens of thousands of people type rallies. And it was just like a tailgate party atmosphere. And I walked up to Sarah and Mike Sever and they really reflected a lot of people

in the parking lot waiting to get in. They had a tent set up. They had lawn chairs. They had a cooler full of beers. They had flags. They were there to camp out and party. party well we have a nice little tent up and being patriotic as f and um you should translate that scott the very patriotic he had a he had a shirt with trump as the terminator on it um she had trump gear as well uh she had a q necklace we could talk about that in a little bit

they were one of many people there with q anon signs and paraphernalia it was like a really big presence there but the thing i asked them was do they feel like like they are more excited about donald trump more on board than donald trump than they were four years ago and their answer was an unqualified yes absolutely basically he Basically, he kept all his promises. Yeah, promises made, promises kept. Amongst so much resistance from the Democrats, which I firmly believe hate this country. They do. Well, that's the message of the president.

Democrats hate the country. They're un-American. They're going to destroy your way of life, your Second Amendment rights, your church, schools. And what I'm wondering from both Danielle and Scott is, did your travels on the ground talking to voters answer the big question of this election, which is, what do you think is the more powerful issue, the pandemic or law and order? I found, interestingly, talking to them and a lot of other people, that the pandemic was kind of powerful, but in a reverse way. There was so much

defensiveness and anger at how... You mean for Trump voters? Yeah, for the Trump voters, angry at how he's portrayed. They split into two different camps. Several people told me they felt like the president was doing a very good job doing the best he can with this pandemic. Interestingly, that included a lot of people who told me they have lost their jobs and are still unemployed because of the pandemic, people who were like aerobics instructors. And there were a whole bunch of people like the Severs who told me that they thought that the pandemic was something made in a lab, some sort of manmade effort targeted at undermining the president.

There were hardly anybody wearing masks. Sarah told me she absolutely refuses to wear masks at all times. Like, I'm not okay with that. I mean, I'm anti-mask totally. Like, I am not scared of a virus. So that jumped out to me and just kind of underscored the segmented off information loop that so many of his most hardcore supporters live in. So if the question is whether it's a pandemic or law and order that is driving voters more, I think my answer is no, because what I gathered was a lot of the people that I talked to, even some of the less enthusiastic on the fence, whatever ones, they had very, very set notions

about who they think Joe Biden and who they think Donald Trump are before any of this happened, before pandemic and protests. So, Danielle, to be clear, you're saying neither one of those issues is really motivating some of the voters you talked to. Right. There was a woman I talked to who had recently lost her job, not because of the pandemic, but, you know, now because of the pandemic, it's hard for her to find a new one. She said, but I'm definitely voting for Biden. And I said, is that driving your vote, your ability to find a job? She said, no, I just don't like Trump. Trump is awful. And there are multiple people who I talked to who said, you know, I don't like Trump's law and order messaging. And I would say, OK, is that why you don't like him? No, I disliked him before. I think a lot of this stuff for a lot of voters will play into a story they had in their heads

one way or the other, no matter what. Well, that goes a long way to explaining one of the big mysteries of this election, which is why is it so locked in and so stable? It seems like historically an incumbent's approval ratings were connected to events. They were connected to the economy, to safety, to national security. And what's amazing is that when the economy was really good, Trump didn't seem to be soaring to victory. He didn't seem to be getting the credit that an incumbent should get for a good economy. Now that the economy is terrible and we've had more than

185,000 deaths from COVID, his support is not collapsing. I mean, it almost as if we're so tribal that none of the things that voters used to base their decision on matter anymore. All right, well, we are going to leave it there for now. You can find ways to stay connected with us by following the links in the description of this episode. I'm Asma Khalid, I cover the presidential campaign. I'm Scott Detrow. I also cover the presidential campaign. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover politics. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And as always, thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

And a special thanks to our funder, The Little Market, for helping to support this podcast.