Balance of Power: Eve of the Election

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With Dailey Whet. I can't ignore the fact that more than seventy five million Americans have already voted, raising a lot of questions about turn out tomorrow and how long it's going to take to call some of these races.

Keep in mind, less than one hundred and fifty five million voted in twenty twenty, so already about half of the electorates from the last cycle has cast a ballot, including in some of those critical battleground states. Georgia, North Carolina have already seen four million people or more vote, which is eighty percent of the total that voted in

We stand on the verge of the four greatest years in American history.

You watch, it's going to be so good. It's going to be so much fun.

It'll be nasty a little bit at times, and maybe at the beginning in particular, but it's going to be something and we will win.

Because here's what everyone here knows. When you know what you stand for, you know what to fight for. We have an opportunity in this election to finally turn the page on a decade of politics driven by fear and division.

So let's get in the field covering the Trump campaign for US. Now in West Palm Beach, Florida. Is Bloomberg's Tyler Kendall. What's happening on the ground there, Tyler, Yeah, Hey, Joe.

I'm here in front of the Palm Beach Convention Center. This is where former President Donald Trump will rally his supporters tomorrow night for a night watch party as those results start to pour in. But before he gets here, though, he today Chris crossing the nation, hitting some of those key battleground states that we've been closely covering. Currently, he's

It would be nice, it's obviously not necessary, but it would really be nice to have more votes than they do.

But we're going to.

Bring so many things back to Oka and their common sense, things like that you need to get out and vote. We're going to do things that are going to make you so proud and we just don't want to take a chance.

You know, now, we talk a lot about undecided voters today when we're talking about them, though it's not necessarily undecided between Trump or Harris, it's undecided on whether they will go to the polls at all. These are the voters that the campaigns need to mobilize. But it is important to note, as you noted at the top, we are seeing a surge in early voting, the latest count showing us that at least seventy six million Americans have

All right, Bloomberg's Tyler Kendall live in Florida for this election week. Thank you so much. Now, as Tyler mentioned, Donald Trump will be ending his day today in Michigan, and that's where we go. Next. Joining us from Detroit is Bloomberg's Romaine Bostic. So, Romain, give us a sense of how it's feeling in super tight Michigan, not just at the presidential level, but in the Senate race as well.

Yeah, this is probably one of the swingiest of the swinging states. Tyler was just saying that President Trump will be making another appearance here later tonight in Grand Rapids, Michigan. That will be at least his twenty second appearance here in the state of Michigan. Kamala Harris just leaving Michigan just a few minutes ago. She spent the last couple

Jill Stein a perfect framing of battleground Michigan.

Thank you, Bloomberg's Romaine Bostik.

As we throw the best of Bloomberg at this election, you'll be hearing a lot more about this as we make our way through the hour. He We want to bring you next to North Carolina, where Bloomberg's ana Edgerton is standing by with more Yet another swing state that is too close to call.

Anna, that's right.

I've just come from Trump's rally here in North Carolina. He was speaking just a short time ago, and I talked to voters outside, and everyone I talked to had already voted. Now, Trump's base in North Carolina is very loyal, very reliable, but the question is whether he can pull in those unaffiliated voters. They're nearly three million people in North Carolina who are not registered with either of the major political parties, and so those are really the voters

All right, Bloomberg's Anna Ederton in North Carolina, thank you so much, And as we spend our time looking at these seven battleground states that ultimately could decide this election and how everything will shake out, we want to add the voice now of Laura Brown, political scientist and author of the book Amateur Hour Presidential character in the Question

Well.

I do think that there is a last minute surge toward Harris, but I think that this is a surge that has actually been under report for much of this campaign because so much of what is happening is about the overturning of Roe versus Wade and the Dobbs decision that has forced many women to reconsider not only their presidential votes but also their partisanship. And this is where there are fascinating numbers when you look at both the Seltzer poll and the early vote data.

Well, interesting if we can add another poll to this conversation, Laura, and that's New York Times Siena College. They're out with their last blast of the cycle and it dropped this morning.

Really interesting here.

Not only are things tied up, we know that in the swing states, but the early vote is giving us a sense maybe of the direction that things are going in the late hours. Here signs that late deciders are breaking for Harris. Among the eight percent of voters who said they had only recently decided on their vote, she wins fifty five percent to try forty four percent. How seriously are you taking these numbers?

Well?

I take them seriously because when you look at the overall early vote data, we don't know who is actually voting for whom. But what we do know is who is turning out, and who's turning out are white women who are older, and many of them in suburbs. Because when you look at that data, you do see that there is a gender gap. You do see that it's suburban voters, and you do see that it's more senior voters than not. And I think that this is going to be important as.

We play this forward.

It's also particularly interesting when you think about Iowa, which had a sort of reversal or a lockdown with regard to abortion in the immediate aftermath of the decision, and then you take a look at some of those southern states where Harris and the Democrats are even competing at the Senate level, those in some ways look not like as uncertain as what we're actually seen in Pennsylvania, where abortion has been protected.

Well, so as we consider that, Laura, and in the states in which there is abortion on the ballot in this cycle, along with the presidential or down ballot candidates, whatever it is, including states like Florida, for example, and I wonder if that's where you will be watching for surprises as areas where there are these other measures on the ballot aside from just the candidates themselves. I could add marijuana to that list or any number of others.

Yes, but I agree with you.

I do think that if there are surprises that happen, they're going to happen in states that have already placed in ordinate restrictions on abortion, and women are already faced with the healthcare consequences of those decisions.

I want to ask you a little bit more about the undecided voter, Lara Brown, because I'm not sure who this person is.

We still haven't met them.

We keep talking about them, and I know we're fighting over a very narrow slice of pie here, But that Siana pol I mentioned found eleven percent of voters remain undecided or persuadable. That numbers down from sixteen percent about a month ago. Who are these people? What is making up this rare breed?

Well, I would argue that many of these undeciders are people who actually were what we called the double haters, right.

They are people who likely.

Voted for Trump at one point in twenty twenty, maybe reverse themselves and voted for Biden, and now what they're uncomfortable with is they didn't like either choice they had. Harris has been able to turn the page and offer them a sense of change, but many of them are not yet sold because she is part of the current administration.

Perhaps pick another choice which may appear on the ballot in some of these states. Laura, we were just hearing from our very own remain bostic about the movement toward Jill Stein within some of the population in Michigan. But RFK Junior is also going to be on the ballot in Michigan. Court decided so, and I wonder what impact do you think that will have.

I think many of those voters are going to decide it may not be worth it to turn out because they know that in this election in particular, third party candidates are not generating a significant amount of support, and most voters on election day ask themselves if they are comfortable wasting their vote. So I do think we're going to see very little actual vote share at the end of the day for these third party candidates.

A lot of questions LEARA about tickets splitting, and I know I get some my roles when I ask experts about this, but the fact is all the Democratic candidates for Senate and the races that we're watching are outperforming Kamala Harris in those cycles echoed again today in that Siena poll. Will ticket splitting be a phenomenon in states beyond Arizona.

Well, I think we are going to see it in some states. I would be surprised if it was, you know, double ditch it, or that it was more than sort of four percent of voters doing that.

But there are some voters.

Who say to themselves they'd like to have their incumbent be re elected, but they may have a desire for change at the top of the ticket, and that could you know, reverse as well. So we will see some splitting because many voters say to themselves it's good to have divided government, even if all of our political science shows that that is a for deadlock.

Well, yeah, markets might prefer a divided government, as we consider our audience here on Bloomberg TV and radio, and that does seem to be at this time what they are betting on. Laura, We've had a long conversation for the last several weeks, frankly, of how the markets seem to have much more conviction than we were seeing in the polls, or than most political scientists like yourself were telling us about the odds of a Donald Trump victory.

Well, I think what is different is that this is the time when organization actually begins to show. So I think what we are seeing is that the Harris campaign has been organized, They've put substainedial resources, they've had thousands of volunteers, and they have been door knocking in all of the battleground states. Former President Trump mostly outsourced that work to Elon Musk and to Charlie Kirk, and there are reports that neither of those efforts have been as

All right, well, let's stick with this for a minute then, Laura, because you know I have to ask you not who's going to win the election, but when it might be called. There are a lot of concerns on Wall Street that we could go through several days of uncertainty, not unlike four years ago, and we know how much the markets love that.

What's your take on the days after this election.

I actually think this is going to be called fairly quickly. And the reason why is because because both Georgia and North Carolina are poised to count their ballots really before the end of the late night early morning on Wednesday.

Which really at the end of the day.

What that means is we'll be waiting for Pennsylvania. But when we have a sense of Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina, we're going to know about the rest of the states and we'll have a strong sense of the electoral college.

Really glad you could be with us on the eve of the election, political scientists, Lara Brown, We thank you as always for joining us here on Bloomberg TV and Radio.

It is on.

There's no turning back, and you're mobilized at World headquarters in New York until we have a race call. More and more people joining us in the last week or so, I'd say, Kayley, suggesting exactly what Lara Brown just said, that it's not going to be next weekend or weeks, It's going to be a couple of days.

Well, I think we're all holding out hope for that, keeping in mind that we are no longer in a pandemic as we were in twenty twenty, so voting may not be as prevalent as it once was, and some of these states have had important rules changes to make this thing go fast.

Seventy seven million Americans voting. Our signature panel is with us here in New York as well. Rick Davis and Genie Shanzano are on the way next. So the fastest show in politics this is Balance of Power on Bloomberg TV and radio.

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It is worth pointing out a lot of Americans have already made up their mind with more than half of the electorate that voted in twenty twenty having already cast their ballot in this twenty twenty four.

Let's remarkable number, more than seventy seven million. And by the way, records seen in states in the opening days, including North Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina, especially after the damage left by Hurricane Helen, really confounding the experts who thought this would be a different story that we would be telling.

Also confounding the experts. Anne Selzer.

Yeah, over the weekend, this poll out of Iowa is remarkable. As we listened to her conversation earlier today on Bloomberg Radio with Tom Keene, this of course is very important poll that we tracked.

We talked about it a lot in the early states. When we got to Iowa.

Of course, des Moines registered Mediacom. Iowa poll shows Kamala Harris leapfrogging Donald Trump forty seven to forty four percent in a state that nobody saw her winning.

Yeah, so it was fascinating to hear from an Seltzer herself on this earlier. Here's a bit of that conversation.

It was a shock, believe you me, when I went into the office after the first night of interviewing. No one would expect that Kamala Harris would have leapfrogged over Donald Trump into the lead.

We had seen her move in the September.

Poll from where we were measuring Joe Biden as the nominee back in June, and this is really just a continuation of that. She now leads by three points. I think I don't have that number right in front of me, and you'd think I would have it in delled in my brain exactly the point. Yeah, seventy seventy forty seven, forty four.

Right, who, So what's driving this strength for vice president?

And it's a continuation of what we saw in September, which is the difference between June and September. Were more people, dramatically more people saying that they were likely to vote. That measurement would be I'm going to definitely vote. If you just say probably, we don't count that, and that that increase accounted for Kamala Harris's bump. So less than one percent of people went for Donald Trump when thirteen percent went for Kamala Harris. And that was the difference

It's the incidents of voting.

If your age sixty four and over is like ninety four percent, that's a really big number. And she does very well with older Iowans. In fact, her she wins by twenty points with Iowa women and just fourteen vote for Trump.

The margin is fourteen for Trump.

If juring.

One thing crystal clear about the importance of older people is older women. Her ratio of win in women age sixty five and over.

Is two to one. Interesting, that's a huge part of her success.

Ann Selzer, driving the conversation today on Bloomberg and joining us now are signature of political pan Who else would you want to bore into the data? With Rick Davis, partner at Stone Court Capital, republican strategist, alongside Genie Shanzano, political science professor at Iona University, Democratic Strategists. They're both with US at World Headquarters in New York Rick Anzelzer said something important, older women more likely to vote, moving

I mean, she picked off Obama's win in two thousand and eight. She was the only one who predicted Jony Ernz was going to be a senator. I mean, like, she is used to sticking her neck out, and in this case, she's seen something that is really counterintuitive, because you know, basically the older you get, the more likely it is you're going to vote Republican. And the Harris margins with white women under thirty or like forty percent, it's huge, but they always diminish as you go up.

They're coming right out of the Trump.

Base, and if that continues, especially with non college educated white women, that could be a real foretelling.

But it's about the movement of those voters, not so much.

The ballot number doesn't necessarily mean Harris is gonna win Iowa, but she is making up ground quickly. With Donald Trump in that state.

So if it's about momentum, when we just spent the last several weeks talking about what felt like stalled momentum for Kamala Harrison, a race that was tightening, Genie, does this signal to you some kind of eleventh hour shift?

It does?

You know?

I think we forget that Iowa right next to Nebraska. It's one of the ten states Nebraska that has abortion.

On the ballot.

So arguably these citizens in Iowa are being inundated with that with those messages. Anne is also talking about in the congressional races out there where you see Democrats winning by double digits on the back of abortion. So I think part of this election is coming down to who do you fear most. Do you fear Kamala Harris controlling the economy or Donald Trump controlling reproductive health? And given his closing, which has arguably been undisciplined, is probably the

What do we think about the undecideds at this point? I mean, if you.

Haven't figured this out yet, I don't know where you're living. But the new Siena poll today, eleven percent of voters remain undecided at this time. Those who have been early voting are apparently breaking for Harris. The eight percent of voters who said they had only recently decided on their vote, she carries by fifty five percent the Trump's forty four percent.

What's happening behind the scenes right now?

Yeah?

Look, I mean you want momentum at the end of the campaign.

Is that the definition the half the.

Voting age population is going to cast their ballot on election day. Even though we've had this record voting, you've still got half as much to still go, and so you definitely want to be peaking at this point. The question is, because you've had such a large cohort already vote, how much of that does she have to chisel away create bigger margins on election day. Bigger margins then typically

I guess that's our question. And when we look at this early voting data coming in, and when we look at the early vote count in some of these states like North Carolina and Georgia, Joe and I've discussed this hour, more than four million people have already voted, eighty percent

Yeah, I will just tell you just in conversations with people, I am astonished by how many people I would say eight out of ten people I talked to have voted already. I myself include, and so you know, it is astonishing. That said, I'm hesitant to draw from the early vote numbers as astonishing as they are, because at this point, until tomorrow, we really don't know. Does that mean that there's more people who are going to be getting out or does that mean people are just getting out early.

That early vote down ballot.

This poll finds some interesting effects, but all the Democratic candidates for senator outperforming Kamala Harris right now, when you're going into an election with that kind of reverse coattails situation, Rick, who does that help?

Well? It rarely helps the top of the ticket.

You really see it more likely that if the top of the ticket is a runing strong, it can help. The coattails can help down ticket candidates. You rarely see the top of the ticket the presidential candidate getting the same level of support as legislative candidates or vice versa.

By tomorrow, well, Genie, we just have a minute left here. But when you consider this split ticket idea, is it more likely that all the states are going to go one way whoever whatever party wins the presidency also so gets the Senate, or that there will be some expectation defying results.

Yeah.

I mean, historically we say that the House and the White House moved together, and so I would normally say they will go together and that the Republicans will take the Senate because the map looks so much better for them. But every time I turn around, as we have here for a year and a half, this election has defied

All right, Jeanie Shanzano and Rick Davis, thank you so much, and we'll have more from our signature panel in the next hour of Balance of Power and of course throughout the week.

If you're listening to the Bloomberg Balance of Power podcast, catch Just Live weekdays at noon Eastern on Evocarplay.

And then Roud Otto with the Bloomberg Business app.

Man wherever you get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.

Joining us now from Massachusetts is a member of the House of Representatives. Democratic Congressman Jake Auchincloss is with us. Welcome back to Bloomberg TV and Radio. Congressman, Happy election eve. It does feel like almost no one is willing to say anything with conviction at this point. But how are you feeling about becoming a member of the majority.

Confident? I think Democrats are going to take back the House. I don't think it's.

Going to be a blowout.

Neither party would claim that at this point because of how polarized the country is right now. But I do think that Republicans dysfunction in the one hundred and eighteenth Congress, in which they had multiple rounds of infighting over their speaker choice, in which they brought the country to the verge of a debt default, in which they had to

What do you make of the conventional wisdom in Washington?

And we've been hearing this for months and months, Congressman, that the House turns Democratic and the Senate turns Republican. As we talked to the investment community here every day on Bloomberg, there's the old Wall Street saying gridlock is good, and there does seem to be a preference to have a split Congress regardless of who wins the White House.

How would you respond to those people?

I think those individuals are under indexing to how deranged a second term of Donald Trump would be. Too many individuals are assuming that the same antibodies and the buddy politic would be there and the second term as we're there in the first term.

But those antibodies have been depleted.

The Republican Party is full on MAGA and unfortunately, we have seen the Supreme Court with its official immunity ruling. We have seen the state parties all supplicate themselves to his whims. And those individuals who are in the w House in term one, people like Jim Mattis, people like John Kelly, even someone like John Bolton, they're not going to be invited back to term two.

It's going to be Trump and his two.

Sons making decisions that are in the interests of their own businesses and of their own family fiefdom, not in the interests of the rule of law or the American people. And I think too few on Wall Street are understanding how bad for their business the degradation of the rule of law will be.

But has Kamala Harris Congressman made enough of an argument that she wouldn't be bad for business, that she might actually be good for it, Because the prevailing thinking on Wall Street is Trump means lower taxes and higher profits.

Yeah, So, first of all, that's not true, because Donald Trump wants to put in place tariffs that would cost the average American family at least four thousand dollars a year and would radically increase the cost of inputs for most American businesses. Tariff is an anti growth economic agenda in the way that he is describing it. Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party wants to be driving towards an economy that works like legos, not monopoly.

We want an economy that builds things.

I'd like this to put forward an audacious agenda for ten million units of housing, a thousand nuclear power plants, building more ships in the entire Chinese Navy, starting more small businesses than the rest of the world combined. We want to be an economy that builds things and does things, not an.

Economy of middlemen.

And I think Wall Street, I think Main Street can get behind that vision. Where Donald Trump is there to cross off names on his enemies.

List, Congressman, more than seventy seven million Americans have already voted.

How do you read into that number? What does it mean for tomorrow night?

I don't read into that number at all.

Actually, I think any prognostication based on the early voting is very subject to confirmation bias. The only takeaway I have from that is that thankfully most Americans have ignored Donald Trump's lies about early voting from twenty twenty, and they have readied that our election system, when it's not being interfered with by MAGA election deniers, is robust, is free, and is fair.

Congressman, I'd like to ask you as well about what we've heard from the current Speaker of the House within the last week two suggestions about repealing legislation, at first the Affordable Care Act Obamacare, and then just days ago, a suggestion that the Chips Act passed during this administration would be repealed. He then clarified that he didn't understand the question he was asked. Instead, what he wants to

I think digging into specific policy details is missing the forest for the trees, because the core agenda of the House Republican Party is not actually any specific policy outcome and healthcare and semiconductor manufacturing and education.

It's nihilistic.

Unfortunately, Speaker Johnson is subject to the win of about a dozen members of his conference who simply don't want to govern at all. He's got a conference like the Joker from the Dark Knight. They just want to watch the world burn. And again, I think too many in Wall Street are thinking, Oh, that means gridlock, and that means that there won't be any threats to our short.

Term business interests.

It's just a very myopic way of looking at Washington. What they should be seeking are guardrails to protect the rule of law and a positive governing philosophy that actually wants to build out the productive capability of our economy rather than bringing us to the edge of a debt default every single cycle.

Haley mentioned taxes, and of course we're going to have, no matter who wins, a grand debate about what to do with the expiration of the Trump era tax cuts, the twenty seventeen tax cuts. If it is Donald Trump. What would a Democratic led House.

Do on that front?

Would to get out of the Ways and Means Committee? How do you see that playing out? Because a decision will need to be next year.

I'm not going to speak for Richie and Neal other Ways and Means Committee. I will say that the first order of business, should the worst happen and Donald Trump be elected, is going to be to protect the constitution of the United States, because he will not. Speaker Johnson will not, Republicans in general will not. So before we even talk about taxes, we're going to be talking about the institutions of our democracy and how we safeguard them.

But in general, we have.

Seen some indications of where there is bipartisan consensus on taxes. I'll give you two examples. One is the child tax credit. You know Mitt Romney has put forward ideas. Obviously Democrats are galvanized behind making fully refundable and expanding the child tax credit that puts money directly in the pockets of

At least, that's a pro growth policy.

I think both parties can get behind it, especially if pair with the child tax credit.

Harm's been Thank you for the time Jake Aukinkluss joining us from his state of Massachusetts. It's good to see you and welcome back to Bloomberg TV and Radio Kaylee less than well, a little over, I should say. It's twenty four hours from now, polls will be closing.

We're going to be looking at results here.

This preamble that has been a year and a half long is about to end.

Yeah, which is wild to consider. In some ways, this election feels like it has lasted for way longer than a year and a half, given everything that has changed over the course of the cycle, including the candidate at the top of the Democratic ticket. What was Joe Biden just months ago? Now, of course Kamala Harris, who is

Of this election.

Yeah.

Of course, we've spent about a year with our own poll in consultation and partnership with Morning consult This is in October two October exercise. We just had our last drop and we're going to talk about the ground that we have covered the longest campaign of our lives, followed by the shortest campaign of our lives in the case

Yeah, I'm sure he will. And of course we'll also check in with our Bloomberg team that has scattered about the swing states, including what's going on on the ground in Georgia as well as Texas, where we're watching one of those critical Senate races. Yeah, and where abortion could be a featured issue, as we've been discussing with our

Entreaty.

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And as we consider the abortion issue in particular, Joe, this is one as we've had these conversations here on

We've seen that born out in a number of states, living Kansas. If you remember going through the midterms, the way.

This was impacting.

It's kind of the unquantifiable issue. Though we are seeing polling showing abortion right up there with the economy in some areas today.

Siena New York Times pointed that out.

But the An Salzer poll also makes us wonder that is motivating women over sixty five in a state like Iowa.

It's pretty remarkable to consider.

Yeah, women overall in Iowa twenty percent more likely or twenty points more likely for Harris than for Donald Trump. So for more on the polling we are seeing in this final stage of the race. Joining us is Eli Yoakley for Morning Consult, where he is US politics analysts. We of course have been working with Eli and the Morning Consult team here at Bloomberg for a year on our swing state poll that just came to a conclusion last month. Eli, welcome back to Bloomberg TV and Radio.

Yeah.

I mean this is a close contest nationally and in these key states. I think the point that we saw in Iowa about women and older voters proofs true. Kamala Harris is doing well with both of those groups nationally. Donald Trump's doing a little bit better with men. We'll see how this bears out. I think that a lot of people find it hard to believe that Kamala Harris would be able to pull off a victory in Iowa, but even movement against Trump there could suggest some negativity

So what are the chances eli you'd do this for a living? This has been quite an experience for polsters over the past year. Were struck by the concer assistency in your polling that has found this essentially a tide race ever since Kamala Harris got to the top of the ticket. If we're too close to call right now, likely something's going to break in one direction or the other.

Will there be a reckoning either way?

For the polling industry, for the way you look at the sample, for the people you're contacting.

Following Tuesday night, there's always a reckoning. We always get these questions after after elections.

You know, I think one of the big things that we are going to be looking at after the election is this debate over weighing by pass boat choice. A lot of posters do, A lot of posters don't ANCELSR. I don't think does, for example in Iowa. Those kinds of questions I think are going to be asked by the industry.

But hold your breath a little. Don't hold your breath on this.

It's going to take a while to do a full accounting here after the election. It takes a while for all these states to get their ballots counted and to start doing those kinds of analysis. But you know, look, a lot of the numbers are in line across the map. Every poster I think is finding a close selection nationally and then a lot of these key states. The differences are pretty marginal right now. That is what leads us all to say this is we're going to be a pretty close selection.

But I guess we'll find out tomorrow well.

Or the next day or the day after that, depending on how long it takes to actually tally all of this up. If it's as tight as all the polls suggest it could take some time to actually count every vote.

Eli.

As we consider that, though, with the amount of early voting we have already seen, do you have any sense of ultimately what that is telling us about what turnout is likely to be. How many votes will there be to be counted that we're going to have to work our way through in the hours after poll closing.

Yeah.

For example, in North Carolina, it's I think over half right now of the state's registered voter population has cast balance and by the way, it's higher in those places that got struck by the hurricanes earlier this year.

I think it's somewhat hard to parse out.

I think the early voting and the mail voting rules have changed in twenty twenty was obviously a strange year for how this works. I think maybe the selection will be a better benchmark looking ahead at what you can extrapolate from those. But what we've noticed this in our data we've been collecting nationally is sort of a mode difference in terms of how you cast your ballot might

So ela help us rationalize some of the numbers that we're seeing here. On election Eve, New York Times CNAs says, among the eight percent of voters who said they had only recently decided their vote, I can't imagine what took so long. Harris wins fifty five percent to forty four percent. We have eleven percent voters remaining undecided. But when you look at the big election models here, five point thirty eight has odds favoring Donald Trump fifty three to forty seven.

No, I mean it's going to come down to who votes, and the Harris campaign.

Had a big weekend and knocking on thousands and thousands and thousands of doors in Pennsylvania. They've got a strong field operation that means they're talking to people. A lot of that operation has been exported by the Trump campaign to other Republican actors. So the Harris campaign's optimism might be coming from what they're hearing on the ground from voters. Late breakers have had a chance to listen to a bit of an unfettered Donald Trump as he's become more trumpy and less restrained.

In recent weeks.

The kinds of information voters have been taking away about Kamala Harris, by the way, it continues to be overwhelmingly positive, as it has throughout her campaign.

The vibes are on her side.

The question is just going to be who's casting ballots in all these very very very closet contests.

Well, and we know that by and large, the vibes among women are on Kamala Harris side. That doesn't remain the case though with men and young men in particular ELI who do tend to be lower propensity voters. Are we seeing signs though that they may actually be willing to show up in a way they haven't in past cycles this time around.

Yeah, I think we're seeing energy among young people.

I think the.

Challenge here is Kamala Harris's.

Numbers among young voters are just less than Joe Biden's were four years ago, and that is consistent nationally.

It's a five point decline, I think.

And then in some of these key states, the margins we're picking up in our final surveys in Arizona in Wisconsin are just far worse for a Democratic candidate among young people than you to expect that to be.

I don't know that they're.

Turning anti Democratic part party entirely, but you know, we've been picking up on an ideological shift among young voters for.

A few years now.

They're not more likely to say they're liberal, but they are more likely to say they're moderate, and so that might be working in republicans favor in the long run.

I'd love to know what your expectation is eli on when we get a race call, at least for the top of the ticket. I know the house might be a little bit more complicated, but are you going to bed tomorrow night waking up to fight out on Wednesday?

Or you're staying up because we might know.

I'll go to bed. I bet it's I bet it's closest.

I'm gonna be on Bloomberg on Wednesday morning.

I bet it's Thursday.

I think that it'll happen this week a little sooner than it did back in twenty twenty.

That's my only prediction I would have made on your air waves today.

So that's on FED day, Kayley, Yeah, wouldn't that be something when that happens at the same time.

That's a good question.

We should talk to management.

It's going to be a big day, a FED decision, likely a twenty five basis point rate cut, and then potentially a call if Eli Oakley is to be believe, Politics Analyst, US Politics analyst at Morning Console Things, Eli as always thanks you.

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The more of the Trump campaign's closing arguments and Republicans' chances of keeping control of the House. We're joined by someone who has worked on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. Former acting White House Chief of Staff, co founder of the House Freedom Caucus, Mick mulvaney. He's with us from the Nation's capital, and Mick, it's great to see you.

I wonder how you would.

Describe Donald Trump's closing arguments here. You saw that headline in the New York Times, dark and dour tones. Trump says he shouldn't have left the White House. He said as well in that same event, he doesn't mind if reporters are shot at. This is the noise, Mick. Some people are offended by it, understandably. What's the part that counts though for voters trying to make up their minds?

Uh, not much.

I mean, if you haven't made up your mind right now, then you're not going to make up your mind.

There was an interesting op ed in the Wall Street.

Journal this week and that said, look, if you're still undecided, please don't vote, because it just means you're not able to make a decision. Don't cancel the decision of somebody who can actually think this through. I don't put much weight on c arguments. I've seen the narrative Joe against Donald Trump. Then I go I see the headlines that I go actually watch the videos and the headlines and the videos don't match.

You don't think it's fair, it's I.

Don't think it's been accurate.

I really don't look how I describe it to people. If there was a sort of concerted anti Trump media effort over the course of the last two weeks, it would look just like this. I have no evidence that it is. I have nothing but circumstantial evidence. But face it, the headlines have been pretty horrible against him. He didn't say he wanted to shoot Liz Cheney or put in front of a firing squad. He didn't say he wanted to physically hit Michelle Obama, which is the story that's

Run into Michigan from all the campaigns.

Because they know that's where the election is going to be won and lost.

Well, there may not be many undecided voters left to me, but there are recently decided voters, if you believe the New York Times in Siana pole that looked at the battleground states, and it found that the eight percent of voters that said they had only just made up their minds pulled for Harris by a margin of eleven points fifty five to forty four percent for Trump. Do you believe that?

You know, I'd have to see that. I'd have to see the actual polling to see.

Do I think that there might be a bias against Trump at a New York Times poll?

Yes, I do.

But look, if they're right, then the election will be over on election evening.

Right.

If it's that much of a break from the undecided to kamal ayers, then you'll know by ten o'clock that night as to whether or not she had won. So the proof will be in the pudding. I just hope that if he does win, and I still think this is a coin toss election, there'll be some real scrutiny given to these this this media coverage in the last couple of weeks, because clearly it has been heavily anti Trump.

We have spent a lot of time with Don Levy, who runs the Siena College survey operation that feeds the New York Times poll about his methodology, and he's pretty serious polster for what it's worth, Mick. But I wonder, just broadly, is there a reckoning for polsters coming out of this election that's going to have to break one way or the other here, isn't.

It it is?

I mean, look, they've been und a great deal of pressure since twenty sixteen. They underpolled Polsters underpolled Barack Obama twenty twelve. They underpolled Trump in sixteen and twenty. Are they under polling both of them today?

You don't know. But is a specific example.

You look at the Iowa poll that got a lot of attention over the weekend. Oh my goodness, they're tied in Iowa. Nine percent undecided in the weekend before it was forty seven to forty four last time I checked the math. That only adds up to ninety one percent, which means that nine percent in this in Iowa are supposedly undecided in the weekend of the election. That would be a national news story in and of itself if there were really that many undecided voters. So but look, look,

We'll know in about what forty eight hours.

Well, we'll see if that's true, Mick. We're all bracing ourselves for the potential for a long haul vote tally here. But as we consider the fact that Donald Trump himself has thrown a lot of cold water on some of the polls that he is seeing suggestions in these final stages of the race that he actually thinks he's winning by a lot, I wonder if you take that for bluster, or if that may already be sowing the seeds of a contestation of the ultimate results when they come in.

Yeah, I mean, if you didn't have twenty twenty as a data point, you look at it and call it bluster, right, But how can you look at it like that, after we've got twenty twenty, is he laying the foundation for challenge and the outcome of the elections?

By the way, I don't have a difficulty.

Tyler did a nice piece on the lead and about the number of lawsuits. I know, difficulty with lawsuits. I'm fine with lawsuits. Lawsuits are part of the American electoral process.

They just are.

There's a reason there are people in this world, in this country who specialize in election law.

We do this all of the time.

And the more lawsuits you have, the more confidence you could have that the outcome is correct. You don't get to sit back and go, oh, it was stolen from me, and not present evidence, to present evidence as you win, as the Trump campaign has done a couple times already in Pennsylvania, and you lose as they did I think

Well, with that said, I know you're sensitive to the markets, Nick, when you've got your eyes on Wall Street here and what might follow Tuesday night, what's your thought on how long it's going to take to call this race and the volatility that we could experience. A lot of investors are hedging themselves for both outcomes right now.

Yeah, I saw the VIX number.

That doesn't surprise met it when you got short, give short shrift to the Russell. So because it's doing really well today, don't forget the.

Smart Let's go im give it to us, Mick.

That's exactly right. Look, I think it could take a while. I have to.

I'm giving some speeches next week in Europe, and they're like, look, we want to talk about the outcome of the election. I'm like, you know, there's a really good chance we won't know the outcome of the election next but I know that's what everybody's saying. Let me focus on one thing that not enough is not getting enough attention, I think, which is that the House of Representatives may take the longest to settle. I think the Senate you'll know on

But the House races.

California is notoriously slow in reporting final results from House races. I remember twenty ten when I got elected. I was having dinners here in January of twenty and eleven with people who didn't know if they were staying or not. So I think the House race could take a lot longer, and that affects the markets almost as much as the White House, because we'll know if we've got divided government or unified government depending on the outcome of the other two races.

So how would you be feeling right now? If you're Speaker Johnson Nick?

You know both he and had chemar on a razor's edge.

I know.

I talked to some of my Democrat friends. I was in Miami last week with a group of Democrats, and they were really excited about the House, really not excited about the Senate, and starting get excited about the White House. But then I look at some of the data, I see that real clear politics just moved Virginia ten, which is a race nobody knows about. A guy named Mike Clancy moved from a lean damn to.

A toss up.

That makes three toss up races in the state of Virginia alone. I guess is it's why Trump probably spent a little time there over the weekend. The races, Kaylee, are so there's so micro at the house level. There's so many local politics, so many local personalities. It's sort of hard to paint with a broad brush unless you have a wave election like you did in twenty ten.

You don't have that here.

So I think both Johnson and Hakim are just absolutely nail biting it down at the last minute.

They're going to be probably a.

Margin of five or six seats either way by the time it's over.

Then why is Washington so convinced we're going to have a split Congress. I'm of the mind that this might be why we haven't seen more volatility, or at least losses on Wall Street going into this contest, because it might not matter so much who the president is if you have a Democratic Runhouse in a Republican run Senate.

Two reasons Washington lives inside the Beltway and watches those same sort of drives, the same narratives we talked about in terms of the anti Trump messaging out of the media. Wall Street has always been a miserable predictor of what happens in Washington, d C. I keep telling my friends on Wall Street, asking somebody on Wall Street what's happening in d C is like asking somebody in d C what's happening on Wall Street. And nobody would be stupid

Well lose North Carolina.

That's a feel you get when you get out into the real world, talk to folks and get out in New York and DC.

Well, and of course that's where we all find ourselves Joe and I in New York and mc mulvaney in DC. We appreciate you joining us former acting White House Chief of Staff during the Trump administration.

Thanks for listening to the Balance of Power podcast.

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