The NPR Politics Podcast - Nervous Democrats: Internal Polling, Senate Map Are Worries

Episode Date: August 26, 2024

Kamala Harris has a number of paths to the 270 electoral votes she needs to secure the presidency, a change from the Biden campaign. But political operatives tell NPR that their internal polling shows a very tight race with Donald Trump. And despite new optimism from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Democrats' path to holding the Senate after Sen. Joe Manchin's retirement is precarious at best.This episode: White House correspondent Deepa Shivaram, congressional correspondent Deirdre Walsh, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.The podcast is produced by Casey Morell and Kelli Wessinger. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at AutographCollection.com. This is Annabelle at Heathrow Airport, getting ready to board my flight home to Austin, Texas after an epic girls trip to Budapest, Prague, and Vienna. This podcast was recorded at 107 p.m. on Monday, August 26, 2024. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I will be happy to be at home in my bed and cuddling my dog.

Austin is where the best tacos are. Those are all destinations, including starting in Austin. It's a great city. Epic public transportation, if I can add that. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House. I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. Okay, so today on the show with the political conventions officially behind us, we're going to take a look at the map that the candidates need to put together to hit 270 electoral votes and win the presidency. NPR has put together a map of where things stand today. And the results at this point show Harris is continuing to build momentum.

Yeah, I mean, when you look at what's happened in the polls, Harris has gained on average about four to six points, not just nationally, but in the swing states when you look across the seven major swing states that people are paying the closest attention to. And what that's meant is that just looking strictly at the polling, and these are within the margin of error still, but in the big three blue wall states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, she's now out ahead of Trump when Trump had been up about three points over Biden when Biden was in the Sunbelt states, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, the lead has just been completely erased. And Trump had been up five to six points. And it's really shaken up the map and certainly given Harris a bunch of different paths potentially to get to 270 electoral votes. Yeah, more options here for the Harris campaign. But one thing you pointed out that I think is interesting to highlight here is that these polls are still within the margin of error, right? So

you're still hearing from Democrats and especially the Harris campaign, honestly, that are still worried about the state of the race. They don't want to give up any of this momentum because they know it's still really tight. Even with all of this big fundraising and all of this energy that's been inserted into the campaign, they're not in a super comfortable position here. No, I mean, if I were Democrats, I'd peek at this with one eye open and keep going to work, right? Because, I mean, this is not even where Joe Biden was in 2020. You know, he had much larger leads across most of the battleground states. He wound up winning them. But remember, he only won by 44,000 votes in three states that would have given Trump the edge to go over 270 electoral votes.

So these elections are all expected to be closed, these states. And remember, Democrats at the convention, including Michelle Obama, the former first lady, were warning that Democrats really need to win by bigger margins so that Donald Trump isn't able to cry fraud and create havoc after Election Day. We heard a lot of enthusiasm at the convention in Chicago. But on the stage and off the stage, there were a lot of Democrats constantly saying the race is still really close, the race is still really close. And we see all these public polls and battleground state polls. But the Democrats have a very well funded super PAC that is supporting the ticket future forward. And they did a rare on the record briefing, they usually don't talk to us about their data. And they talked about the big shift

they saw similar to what Domenico outlined in terms of like, the old path for Biden was what they called blue wall or bust. And now there's these other paths for the Harris-Walls ticket. But what they did state on the record is that their polls aren't as rosy as the public polls. Maybe they're trying to raise more money and sending that message out through reporters in Chicago. But I think that there is still a concern that while some of these states are coming back online as toss-ups, like Domenico mentioned, in terms of the Sunbelt states, there still is a lot of registration work to be doing, ballot chasing to be doing, making sure people are getting out the vote. And there's a real, real intense focus on field work right now. Yeah. and that's why we have actually two separate maps on our story today about this,

because, you know, based on conversations with the campaigns, with super PACs, and looking at the historical trends, I have all seven of these closely watched states as toss-ups, which is basically, by the way, drumroll, where we started the race. A lot happened in a month, and then we ended up back where we started. No, that's really interesting. I mean, look, you keep hearing it from Democrats and the folks you were talking to, Deirdre, at the convention. And, yeah, I mean, I was with Harris in some of these rooms where she was speaking to Democratic supporters after her big speech on Thursday night. And she told the folks in the room who were there to rally with her that it's OK to celebrate tonight, but tomorrow they had to get to work.

I'm curious where she's getting these gains from. You know, her bigger block of supporters have been young people and voters of color. Are they are the ones who are boosting her at this point? Basically, everybody who's not middle aged to older white. We've seen, you know, Biden was doing particularly well among white voters and suburban voters. Harris has not done as well in polling with some of those groups as Biden was, but she's way overperforming where Biden was with black voters, with younger voters, especially younger black voters, Latinos, which is what's helping her out West. I think that this is a big reason why we're seeing, especially the Sunbelt states come back online as toss-ups because they are diversifying, they're younger. And because of that, because of what she's been able to do so far in

firing up these other groups is that North Carolina has now come off the board for Trump as a state that they were definitely counting on as being in their camp. And if that was the case, they had to then win Georgia and Pennsylvania to put the pieces together to get to 270. It wouldn't have to win any of the other states. Now with North Carolina back into a toss-up category, the Trump folks are scrambling, frankly, to find a path where they can get there. Because even if he wins Pennsylvania, for example, where they've spent almost $100 million between both campaigns on ads, just in the past month, he can't get to 270 if Harris takes North Carolina off the board, Arizona, and Nevada. So it's really scrambled the picture at the convention in Chicago among a lot of the delegates and political figures there was a push to get black men out to vote and a real sort of concentrated effort on the need to times in Georgia because of all the special elections. And so he has had sort of his own brand of outreach effort to black men. And he said he had already called the campaign and talked to them about basically partnering with them

and sort of trying to use some of the best practices he used in his last race to sort of charge up a vote among Black men. Yeah, absolutely. We're going to take a quick break there and we'll be back in a moment. And we're back. One of the few elements for Democrats when President Biden was still at the top of the ticket was that down-ballot candidates were outperforming the president. And that said, operatives were quietly conceding that the Senate was probably out of reach for Democrats. Deirdre, that could still be the case, right? I mean, it's hard to overstate here how close and tight some of these races are for candidates like Montana's Jon Tester, Ohio's Sherrod Brown, for example.

Right. I mean, it was always going to be a close race for the Senate. The Democrats hold a very, very narrow majority, and the map is much, much tougher for them in November than it is for Republicans. They're defending 23 seats. A lot of them are in red states, like the ones you mentioned, Montana and Ohio. And then a lot of them are in purple states, places like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona. You know, Democrats have to really kind of run the table to keep their majority. West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin's retiring, and even Chuck Schumer admitted in a roundtable with reporters in Chicago, they're not going to win that seat. So if they lose one of their other incumbent seats in Montana or Ohio,

Republicans could pick up the Senate if nothing else changes in terms of the rest of the seats on the map. So I have to say there seemed to be some sort of like major boost in enthusiasm. I mean, Chuck Schumer was singing to reporters, literally singing. He was in such a great mood. He said he had never been to a convention as enthusiastic as the one in Chicago. And he's been to every convention since 1984. He talked about saying confidently that he believes they will hold the Senate and even pick up a seat or two. Let's talk about if picking up a seat or two means Democrats would have to win in places like Texas or Florida. The Senate's campaign committee is not spending any money

in those races. And Schumer noted that but said, you know, I don't talk to the super PAC, maybe they would want to invest some money there. And he sort of made the case that other issues could help boost Democrats in those states. You talked about Montana, there's an abortion ballot measure on the ballot in Montana, also in Florida and in Arizona. But in places like Florida, they think maybe that could help boost the Democratic challenger, Demi-Marie Carsten Powell, against the incumbent Rick Scott. But I think the map is different, very different than the map we just talked about a few months ago in terms of the path to 270. I mean, we are looking at a very narrow map for control of the Senate and the House,

I should add. In the House, Democrats have to pick up four seats to flip control. Republicans currently control the House. And those races are sort of all over the country, but in a lot of blue places, places like New York, places like California. And that's not the place that the Harris-Walls campaign has really spent a lot of time or money. Yeah, but having the enthusiasm kind of come up a little bit, considering the types of voters that would be needed in some of these more democratic areas like New York State, for example, if there's a wave that sort of comes up that floats among Democrats rather than just sitting at home saying, you know, I'm not in a swing state, I don't really care, which was possible. And certainly looking that way, previously,

if that were to happen, certainly the candidates in those places for Democrats feel like they at least have a fighting chance now to be able to, you know, do well or pick up the House. The Senate, obviously, Schumer saying that they could pick up a seat is spin. You know, as we keep our pulse on reality here, I mean, there's also some chances for Republicans to pick up as we were talking about New York and California for the House. But, you know, in the Senate, these races are really close and we can't count that out. Yeah. And just to give you a couple of numbers, Montana and Ohio, we've had almost $300 million spent in those two places just on the Senate races.

And Montana, anybody, $100 million in Montana goes a long way. And right now you've got $114 million spent in Montana. Democrats by about $20 million spending more than Republicans. Ohio is a little bit different story, $177 million spent in Ohio on ads since the beginning of the campaign, and Republicans actually outspending there by $8 million. What's interesting, in places like Arizona and Texas, you have a bit of a lopsided spending comparison because Democrats are way outspending in both places. Arizona, $36 million total spent, with Democrats spending $29 of that. And in Texas, Colin Allred, you know, not a lot of people giving him much of a chance, but he spent about $30 million so far of the 34

million that have been spent so far in that Texas race, not likely to win, but something to keep an eye on. I think the other thing that's interesting with the congressional races is that, you know, a few months ago, when we were talking to top officials at the Senate and House campaign committees, there was a lot of focus from Democrats on the issue of reproductive rights, and Republicans worried about playing defense on that issue. I think talking to people in Chicago, I think most Democrats admit that is a big issue. And it was talked about a lot from candidates on the stage, obviously, all the leading candidates, but most said it's really all going to come down to the economy and that the pocketbook issues are emerging as the top

tier issue in all of the big races across the map. Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. Perceptions of the economy, even if they improve slightly, that certainly is seen as a help to Harris. Early polling that we saw from us and from others when Harris got in the race, she was doing slightly better than Biden was doing on who you trust more on the economy. Trump still had the advantage, but shaving off those margins is really important. And that can make its way all the way down the ballot. As we've seen, the congressional ballot for Democrats since Harris has gotten in has actually gone up. And that's the question when you ask people in polls generically, who would you rather have in charge of Congress,

Democrats or Republicans? Democrats had a very slight advantage, certainly not high enough for what they would need to take over the House. And that's expanded a little bit. Yeah. And we should point out here, I mean, I think the way that Kamala Harris has been talking about the economy on the trail, I was talking to a former Bill Clinton advisor who was saying that the way Harris talks about the economy is markedly different than the way that President Biden talks about it, right? And she kind of comes at it with a little bit of, you know, more of that real person experience of like, I know you're going to the grocery store and the costs are still too high versus the like inflation is coming down and people don't really have a grasp on what that means. So definitely something to keep an eye on.

And we should point out that because it's almost September, the timeline here of talking about these issues is very short. Voting is about to begin in a lot of areas. We talk about Election Day as a singular day most of the time, but absentee ballot voting, early voting will start very soon in a lot of states. Yeah, I was really struck during Harris's economic speech at the different tone that she took on the economy than Biden did. Because Harris was actually saying, I know that prices are too high for some of you. And here's what I'm going to do to try to address it. Whether or not those things would actually address those things is a different situation. But when you would ask Biden those questions, as you very well know, Deepa, he would get kind of defensive about it and point to what the economists were

saying. All right, we're going to leave it there for today. I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House. I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House. I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. And I'm Domenico Montanaro.

I don't know what I do anymore. Sorry. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.