WSJ What’s News - Harris and Trump Both See Paths to Victory

Episode Date: November 5, 2024

A.M. Edition for Nov. 5. WSJ senior political correspondent Molly Ball recaps the closing arguments made by Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, and the evidence giving both sides confidence they can win. Plus, the Harris campaign cautions the winner of the race may not be known for “several days.” And striking Boeing machinists agree to a new labor deal, ending a paralyzing work stoppage for the plane maker. Luke Vargas hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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The Kamala Harris campaign says their data shows undecided voters breaking in their direction. But there are encouraging signs for Republicans. Trump has never gone into an election in as strong a position as he is in now in the polling. Plus, the Harris campaign braces for a multi-day vote count in some key battlegrounds. And Boeing workers agree to end a strike that's paralyzed the plane maker for months. It's Tuesday, November 5th.

I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal, and here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. We are just hours away from polls opening across the country for a presidential election that's forecast to come down to the wire. Last night, both candidates predicted victory. Just one more day in the most consequential election of our lifetime, and the momentum is on our side. You know, they have an expression.

I hate the expression, actually, but it's ours to lose. Does that make sense to you? It's ours to lose. If we get everybody out and vote, there's not a thing they can do. But nobody knows better that elections are a zero-sum game than journal senior political correspondent Molly Ball, who joins me now with a last look at storylines heading into election day.

Molly, polls show a tied race. Are the campaigns, though, privately expecting this to be as close as the polls show? Molly Sussman They are. Both campaigns' internal data is also showing a very, very, very close race. I would say that we have started to hear more confidence from Democrats over the course of about the last week. And the Kamala Harris campaign says that their data shows undecided voters breaking in their direction by as much as a double-digit margin, in part based on some of the controversies that Donald Trump has been involved in over the past several days. He seems to be going out of his way to remind people of the more

controversial aspects of his persona. Democrats also feel very good about their ground game. Millions of door knocks and phone calls, hundreds of thousands of volunteer shifts across the different battleground states. Republicans have less visibility into the Trump ground game because it is largely being run by outside groups. But there's a lot of skepticism over whether groups like Elon Musk's America PAC are going to be effective in turning out the votes that Republicans need, particularly among low propensity voters who might not vote if they don't get a contact from a canvasser. Democrats also feel like they are hitting their targets in the early

vote. And the early vote is not a good predictor of anything because it changes a lot from election to election. Nonetheless, they're encouraged by things like strong turnout in the city of Detroit where Kamala Harris needs a large turnout of African American voters to win that state and others that are demographically similar. And, Molly, what about over on the Trump side? We should note he's also forecasting things are gonna go well for him in the end. It's absolutely not clear which candidate is going to win.

And there are encouraging signs for Republicans. We do see strong Republican turnout in the early vote in some states. And just the overall sort of big picture view is that Trump has never gone into an election in as strong a position as he is in now in the polling. We expect very high turnout in this election overall. And that could be a sign that Trump is, as he has done in the past, succeeding in galvanizing a lot of those sort of disaffected, non-traditional, not usually political types of people who again may not normally be interested

in voting or in the political process at all. But a candidate like Trump with his anti-establishment message is capable of bringing them off the sidelines in a way that other candidates and particularly other Republicans are not. Nat. Molly, our colleague Aaron Zittner has been reporting on some polling mysteries that could lead to a situation where the election outcome looks a bit different than the polls. Things like how much support does RFK Jr. get in some swing states or how many people show up and register for the first time today. I'm curious what else you're watching. One possibility is that there is a surge of turnout of women voters. We had the shocking

Iowa poll from the very respected pollster Anne Selzer over the weekend, and that posited an electorate that was radically different than what we're expecting because of a very high turnout among women and a lot of women who traditionally have voted Republican moving into the Harris column. And that is something that a lot of strategists on both sides are aware could be happening. We do see women disproportionately represented across all of the battleground states in the early vote thus far. We don't know if that's just because they prefer to vote early and men will vote disproportionately on election day or because we are actually going

to see a very lopsided turnout of women on election day. Conversely, if we do see a surge of non-traditional voters or third-party voters, that could reshape the electorate in the other direction. And finally, Molly, before we let you go, with everything coming down to the wire here, what did you make of the closing arguments that we've heard from both of these candidates as they try to make a final push? As someone who's been covering Trump since 2016, I am really struck by how little his fundamental message has changed over the course

of three presidential campaigns. It is still very much an argument based on us versus them, an argument about foreign forces threatening the nation, and a system that he says is rigged. And that's appealing to a lot of people who feel that the system isn't serving them and that they would like to see a dramatic departure from the status quo. Harris, for her part, has not been working as hard to win back some of those working class voters that the Democrats have lost over the past decade. Instead, she is really leaning into the educated suburban voters who have moved to the Democrats

in the Trump era. Ever since Trump was first elected in 2016, Democrats have been winning elections based on this new coalition of suburban, educated, and disproportionately women voters. And we've heard her make this argument that she is going to govern from the middle, that she's going to listen to Republicans and bring them into her decision-making. So the Harris Campaign's theory is that they can convert still more of those conservative-leaning independents or even former Republican voters who are put off by Trump and get them to vote for her instead.

I've been speaking to Wall Street Journal senior political correspondent Molly Ball. Molly, thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Coming up, the Harris campaign sketches out which election results they expect to know when. In short, be patient. Plus, the rest of the news, including a big day for Boeing as striking workers agree to a new labor deal. We re-imagined exterior features compelling proportions

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Learn more at LandRover.ca. Enjoy the journey. Learn more at LandRover.ca. The Harris Walls campaign is expecting near-complete election results from swing states Georgia, North Carolina, and Michigan by the end of tonight, but only partial results from Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Arizona. That's according to Chair Jen O'Malley-Dillon, who's predicting that results from Arizona and Nevada would trickle in throughout the week and that, quote, we may not know the results of this election for several days.

Pentagon officials say National Guard personnel, many of whom are cybersecurity experts, have been activated or are on standby in 20 states and the District of Columbia in order to aid local authorities should they need support. National Guard forces have been activated in previous elections, though defense officials have privately expressed heightened concern this year because of the threat of election-related violence. A Pennsylvania judge has ruled that Elon Musk's $1 million voter giveaway can continue, dealing a blow to Philadelphia's district attorney who had argued it was an unlawful lottery under state law.

Musk's lawyers argued the suit was a publicity stunt and that the giveaway was legal. And Musk's backing of Donald Trump appears to have been the deciding factor in podcaster Joe Rogan's 11th hour endorsement of the former president, a potential boost as Republicans seek to motivate young men to vote. In a post on X promoting an interview with Musk last night, Rogan credited the billionaire for making what he called the most compelling case for Trump you'll hear. And as polls close this evening, our journalists and editors will be just warming up. Check out Washington coverage chief Damian Paletta's hour-to-hour election day guide over on wsj.com, where we'll also have live vote count totals as well as an updating visual

guide for each candidate's possible paths to victory. And our Elections Live blog will continue to run around the clock, with our reporters on the ground and in the newsroom filing videos on the state of the race every hour based on the latest vote count, starting at 7.30 p.m. Eastern. Machinists for plane maker Boeing have voted to end a paralyzing nearly eight-week strike, backing a labor deal that includes a 38 percent wage increase over four years, as well as a promise that the company's next jet will be built in the Pacific Northwest. Journal aerospace reporter Sharon Turlip told me that tomorrow's return to work for tens

of thousands of machinists couldn't come fast enough for Boeing. Boeing was losing about a billion dollars a month before the strike. They were having production issues, issues with their defense program, with their space program. And this deal allows them to start working on the problems in their commercial airline programs to work on quality, to work on morale, to work on the problems in their commercial airline programs, to work on quality, to work on morale, to work on the culture change that leaders have said they need, and to work on getting production speeds back up.

One of the things that's yet to be seen is how much or little damage did this strike cause to the supply chain. So it's difficult on a supply chain when production stops and starts. And it's yet to be seen what it looks like. It should take many weeks for plants to get up and running fully. The end of the strike is expected to be welcome news to select airlines that are reliant on Boeing's 737 jets, including Ryanair and Southwest, some of which have had to limit flights or cut financial targets as they wait for delayed planes. Boeing shares are moderately higher in off-hours trading. Saudi Arabia's national oil company Aramco is reporting a decline in its third-quarter

profit this morning, citing lower crude oil prices and weakening refining margins. The update comes as just this weekend, eight countries from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, including Saudi Arabia, decided to extend voluntary production restrictions until the end of December to help prop up weak oil prices. And in markets news today, a private gauge of China's services sector is pointing to a solid start to the fourth quarter, adding to signs that Beijing's pivot to more aggressive economic stimulus may be paying off. The October Kaixin Services Purchasing Manager's Index rose in line with an official non-manufacturing

gauge, while measures of the manufacturing sector also pointed to activity expansion last month. Chinese equities rallied after the data release, with finance and software stocks leading the gains. And that's it for What's News for Tuesday morning. Today's show was produced by Daniel Bach and Kate Bullivant with supervising producer Christina Rocca. And I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal.

We will be back tonight with a brand new show. Until then, thanks for listening.