WSJ What’s News - Trump Slightly Ahead of Harris in WSJ Poll

Episode Date: October 24, 2024

A.M. Edition for Oct. 24. WSJ politics editor Ben Pershing says voters have adopted a more positive view of Donald Trump’s past performance and a more negative view of Kamala Harris, but cautions that the former president’s narrow lead is within the poll’s margin of error. Plus, private Medicare insurers got billions for questionable home diagnoses, a new inspector general’s report says. And the WSJ’s Stephen Wilmot says Tesla’s progress on costs and a bullish outlook for 2025 deliveries have boosted investor confidence. Luke Vargas hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

People are the lifeblood of every organization, but they're also the greatest source of risk. That's why Mimecast has pioneered the connected human risk management platform to help your business protect collaboration, educate employees, and detect insider risk. Learn more at mimecast.com. Journal polling finds Donald Trump taking a narrow lead over Kamala Harris in the closing weeks of the race. Plus, Boeing workers dig in their heels over contract talks and Tesla stock shifts into higher gear on news of falling EV production costs. It reinvigorates confidence in Tesla's wider growth story, which is all about taking costs

out of EVs, democratizing the technology, not just being a niche luxury EV maker. It's Thursday, October 24th. 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 begin today with a look at the deadlocked race for the White House. Donald Trump has opened up a two percentage point lead over Kamala Harris in a new nationwide poll by the Wall Street Journal. That is on a ballot that includes third party and independent candidates and marks a four percentage point swing from August

when Harris was slightly ahead of Trump. Our Anthony Bansi spoke to Journal Politics editor Ben Pershing about what's driving this shakeup of the race. I think there are two things that's driving it, one about Trump, one about Harris. One thing that really struck us is that voters are really growing more fond in their recollections of Trump when he was president. It's now 52% of them approve of the job he did back when he was president. And what's interesting about that is that his actual job approval ratings were never that good when he was in the White House. Their personal views of Harris have gotten more negative since our last poll. They've kind of ticked down steadily.

Early on when she first became a Democratic candidate, she was pretty popular on balance between favorability and unfavorability, and now her numbers have gotten more negative. Let's get into some of the issues where some of these candidates have been strong. In the poll, how is Trump faring on the economy? So he still has a real advantage over Harris on handling the economy by 12 points now. That's up from eight points in August. He's also doing much better than her on handling the economy by 12 points now. That's up from 8 points in August. He's also doing much better than her on handling immigration. That's a 15-point lead. And what's important there is that the economy and immigration were the top two issues people in our poll selected when we were asked what was most important to them.

And Harris, she's been strong on abortion. How does that look for her in this poll? She still does have the edge on abortion and she also has some advantages over him on temperament, like who would bring the right temperament to office, who is mentally up for the job. But it does seem like the economy and immigration are the most important things right now. Is there anything going on on the Trump side that may be driving this change in the polls? Trump and his campaign have been pushing really hard at the idea that Harris is too liberal and that she and Biden haven't done a good job running the economy and made it possible that the more the Trump campaign drives that message, whether it's in ads or in Trump's own campaign appearances, that it's helping to cement views of Harris and

the electorate in sort of a negative way, right when it matters most, right in the final weeks before the election. Okay, Ben, we have a couple of weeks to election day. What does a pathway to the White House look like for both of these candidates? So for Harris, I mean, there's still a real way that she could win.

Obviously, our poll's a national poll. What matters is who wins enough states to win the Electoral College. In particular, there are seven battleground states that will decide it. And our last poll just a few weeks ago of those states showed it essentially tied with Harris having slight leads in more states than Trump. And you're going to see both candidates really spend all their time in those two places in these final weeks. So the way that Harris wins is if she motivates base democratic voters to really turn out in particular women, likely over the abortion issue.

And if women turn out at bigger numbers than we foresee, or even bigger numbers than say upholster guesses, she can win. That's a clear path for her. For Trump, the path to victory is he is known for bringing out what's known as low propensity voters. People who don't vote most of the time. If he can bring those people out of the woodwork, like he did in 2016 in particular, to show up to vote, then he's going to win.

And it's possible he wins by even more than our polls suggesting because kind of by definition, people who don't vote often, polls don't always pick them up. So that's sort of his best case scenario for winning. And what about the poll itself? I mean, I know the numbers kind of come with a little bit of leeway. Is there anything about that that we should keep in mind? There is a margin of error of two and a half points and that can go either way, meaning Harris's total could go up or down two and a half points. Trump's could go up or down two and a half points. Our poll is clearly within that margin of error. That means it

shows a Trump plus two advantage, but it could also be Harris plus two and it wouldn't be outside the scope. So that's one thing to know. And the other thing to note that I said is this is a national poll of the whole country and what matters most is who turns out to vote in those seven swing states. So that's why the candidates will be there and that's why our reporting will be focused on those states in the final days. Ben Perciasepe That was Ben Pershing for The Wall Street Journal. Thank you so much, Ben. Ben Perciasepe Thank you.

And in other campaign news, the Department of Justice has warned Elon Musk's America PAC that giving cash payments to registered voters who sign the pro-Trump group's petition might violate federal law against knowingly or willfully paying people to register to vote in elections with federal candidates. A spokesman for America PAC declined to comment, but earlier this week the group said its cash awards were lawful. Legal experts are divided over the legality of its daily $1 million lottery, with prosecutions of registration

buying unusual but not unprecedented. Coming up, another setback for Boeing as machinists reject its latest contract offer, and Tesla shares surge after the carmaker strikes an upbeat tone about 2025 deliveries. We've got those stories and more after the break. People are the lifeblood of every organization, but they're also the greatest source of risk. That's why Mimecast has pioneered the connected human risk management platform to help your business protect collaboration,

educate employees, and detect insider risk. Learn more at mimecast.com. and detect insider risk. Learn more at Mimecast.com. A new Inspector General's report has found that private Medicare insurers got more than $4 billion in extra federal payments last year for questionable home diagnoses that led to no treatment, with each visit worth nearly $1,900 on average for insurers. Those findings from the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services are similar to those of a journal investigation published in August. The OIS is for the first time recommending that Medicare restrict or even cut off payments

for diagnoses from home visits made by private Medicare insurers. Though the agency disagrees with that, telling the journal it's committed to ensuring that diagnoses including from home visits are accurate. Letting insurers offer private plans under Medicare, known as Medicare Advantage, was meant to lower costs and improve care for seniors and disabled people. However, researchers and a nonpartisan watchdog known as MedPak have found its wound up costing more than traditional Medicare,

in part because insurers have found ways to draw ever greater payments from a pay-for-diagnosis system. And to read more, we've left a link to the journal's exclusive reporting in our show notes. Boeing's largest union has rejected a new labor deal, extending a six-week strike that's plunged the jetmaker into increasing financial peril. According to leaders of the Machinists Union, members last night voted 64 percent against an offer that would have delivered a 35 percent wage increase over four years. Local union chapter president John Holden says members are angry about years of concessions made under the threat of losing jobs and want to see pensions restored or an alternative

beyond the company's offer of increased 401k payments. There's much more work to do. We will push to get back to the table. We will push for the members' demands as quickly as we can. And we remain on strike. The rejection of the deal came hours after Boeing's earnings, in which the plane maker warned it would keep burning through cash into next year. The continuation of the strike means factories that build its best selling

jets will remain idled. Boeing declined to comment. And Tesla shares are soaring in off-hours trading after the EV maker's third quarter results came in surprisingly strong after yesterday's closing bell. Journal Auto's reporter Stephen Wilmot says that if investors were left a bit disappointed by the lack of details at the launch of Tesla's fully autonomous CyberCab earlier this month, they're excited about the growth story CEO Elon Musk is selling now. So the cost performance was about a very clear reduction in the unit cost of making a Tesla.

The average Tesla costs just over $35,000 to make in the quarter, and that was like the best performance, the least it's ever cost to make a Tesla, and more of a reduction than analysts were expecting and quite a big step down from last quarter. That's the key reason why investors were excited about these numbers. The other thing is that Elon Musk in the earnings call that happens after every release was quite bullish in terms of the outlook for deliveries next year. So he said that he thought that 20 to 30 percent growth in deliveries might be possible, which is much higher than current consensus expectations and is underpinned by the promise of a new, more affordable Tesla,

which he says will cost less than $30,000. And in other market news today, shares of Unilever are rising after the consumer goods giant beat sales forecasts for the third quarter, with shoppers seeming to welcome the easing of price hikes. The company has been trying to win back those who had traded down to cheaper products in recent years. French competitor Denon also saw sales growth beat expectations this morning. And on deck, it's a busy earnings day yet again with the likes of KKR, Southwest Airlines, and American Airlines reporting this morning.

Weekly jobless claims figures are due at 8.30am Eastern, with new home sales data for September coming at 10. And that's it for What's News for Thursday morning. Today's show was produced by Kate Boulevant and Daniel Bach with supervising producer Christina Rocca. And I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with a new show. Until then, thanks for listening. People are the lifeblood of every organization, but they're also the greatest source of risk. That's why MIMECAS has pioneered the connected human risk management platform to help your business protect collaboration, educate employees, and detect insider risk. Learn more at MIMECAS.com.