Welcome to another special episode of Pod Save America. I'm Dan Fiverr. This is the final bonus! for NBC News and MSVC and the man behind the magic wall. Steve, welcome to Potsayva America. Thanks. Great to be here. So before we get into the nuts and bolts of the race and what we're going to see in this election, I do have to ask you, what is your plan for how to get ready for election night? Do you have one big meal early on? Do you stop drinking water
at like three? How much caffeine do you take? I mean, you are on call for days, potentially. Well, how do you get ready? It's not too elaborate. The excitement of, you know, everything gets me easily through the night. I don't have to do, you know, anything artificial for that. I guess the big thing is I always, I carve out like two hours in the middle of the afternoon to go take a walk. Just clear my head. You know, you get all those anecdotal turnout reports.
And it says, there's useless. So, you know, I just ignore it. Yeah. I know you guys have game planned a whole bunch of different scenarios about how this election could go. We didn't learn for several days in 2020. Have you guys thought about based on changes in whose voting, how votes are being counted, when we're likely to get a result here or what some of the different scenarios maybe? Yeah. I mean, I'm sort of quaisously optimistic. It's going to be quicker, maybe significantly
quicker. The main difference is just the volume of vote by mail this time around. It's down dramatically. That's what really clogged it up in 2020 in some of these states. Plus, some have changed, you know, their procedures to make it even better. Others that haven't even changed the procedures. At least they have more experience with it now. A couple of elections under their belt. So, yeah, I remind people you go back one election further 2016. It was, it was a close election.
You know, it was a couple states by, you know, about 50,000 votes, 75,000 votes. We had the, the verdict by 130 in the morning, I would say. That is a verdict. I remember quite well. That came down. As you can imagine, all of the polling suggests that this is one of the closest races in history. We're basically at a one point Harris lead in most of the national polling averages. Battleground states are, at least if you look at the New York Times average, all under two points.
Many of them tied are under one point. How are you sort of seeing the race along those lines? Yeah. I'm sort of at the point where I don't think it's going to change dramatically. I don't know if I'd even trusted if a bunch of polls suddenly showed some kind of movement. And, you know, my overall thing here the last two months really has been, I just don't trust confidence, you know, period. The more confident, confidently, somebody's asserting they see something in the polls
or the early vote, the more skeptical I'd become. I think that's fair. Particularly when it comes to the early vote, you know, 2020, 2016 marked in many people's minds by a pretty significant polling miss. Mostly on the state side in 2016, everywhere in 2020. Do you have greater confidence of the polls are accurate this time? If so, why? Well, yeah, it's one of those cautiously optimistic things again, but there's an argument that the fact that they're so close right now across
the board. Trump is running at a higher number than he pulled at in the past and the race is closer than it ever was in the polling in 1620. Is that the sign that the Trump voters who were missed in 1620 are now being accounted for? Whether that's because of methodological changes from pollsters, that itself correct was the big miss in 2020, more the product of just the weirdness of COVID,
the pandemic, did that somehow? So, I mean, that's that's that's one way to look at it, but yeah, I mean, when it's happened to election to row, I don't discount the possibility that that again, the Trump votes undercounted, maybe not by as much, but even by a little would make a huge difference. And poll misses do not always have to favor Republicans. We've seen it before the other way, and that I'm very alert to that possibility too. The other thing I try to tell people is if the polling
has Harris up one in Michigan and Trump wins by two, that's not actually a polling error. That is right within the range of expected outcomes. There's a chance that this can end up where we have a big point miss one or the other, but it's more the more likely to never going to race this close, if you look at 16 and 20 as benchmarks is the outcome is likely within the margin of error of the polling average, which is not not an error. It just is the reality of just like 2022, right?
Right. Some states they under predicted Democrats, some states were right on, but historically accurate polls, right? Yeah, I mean like the big miss in 20, for instance, was Wisconsin. It was the worst of any swing state. The average was about eight and a half for Biden going into election day. Six tenths of one point was the final result. There was a famous, you know, ABC poll October 2020 in Wisconsin that had Biden up 17 points, you know. I mean, that's that's the
scale of what we were talking about four years ago. Yeah. So it's election night, right? The first battleground state where the polls goes to be Georgia. What are you going to be looking at in Georgia? And I think that one of the things I just want to tell voters is, you know, everyone has their model, right? That's all these polling is a model of what people think the electorate is going to look like. Republicans turn out, Democratic turn out by demographic group by age. And sometimes we
learn early on that that model is off. Are there specific counties in Georgia specific things should be looking for when those polls come in? Then North Carolina obviously comes 30 minutes later. Right. But there's whatever you're warning signs. So I'm going to look at a couple places in Georgia. First is what I call the blue blob. And it's the Atlanta metro area. It's now nine counties in that core that Biden won by, you know, cumulatively like 37 points in 2020 accounts for more than 40%
of the vote statewide is just getting bluer and bluer every election. My question there is, I guess one of them is, is the blob expanding? There's one county in that area that's been moving pretty dramatically towards Democrats, but just missed Fayette County the last time around. If the Democrats are flipping that this time around and expanding that blob, I think that's a sign because that's talking about enthusiasm in the suburbs, you know, one of the things Democrats are
hoping for here. That would be a very good sign for them of that. Then I look further north, sort of the fringes of the Atlanta metro to giant counties there Cherokee County and Forsyth County. Cherokee, in fact, I think used to be one of the top plurality producing counties for Republicans anywhere in the country. It's just massive and it stayed heavily Republican, but you still see it there, you know, whereas Romney was winning that county by like 50 points back in 2012,
it was in 2020, it was just on their 40 for Trump. So I want to see the Trump people believe they've arrested that slide. They think it's a bunch of things. It's, you know, four years of Biden has changed attitudes there a bit. They think, you know, Trump has mended fences with Brian Kemp, who did very well in a place like Cherokee County. Is that true? Has Trump arrested the slide there?
Has he clawed stuff back? That's what they're counting on. There's the whole swath of counties, many of them rural, many of them with significant black populations where Democrats are hoping for higher turnout. You know, something they saw in a lot of cases with with Raphael Warnock when he won his first runoff victory back at the start of 2021. So I want to see what's happening in those places too. We tend to get the vote pretty late out of Atlanta. Is that right?
Yeah, Fulton, DeCab, you know, and it's that's a wild card everywhere this year is just the sequence and how this is going to happen. So it's I think what we're going to get in in Georgia, though, early is more of the pre-election day vote. Then we'll start getting the election day. We saw a huge, huge disparities obviously in 2020 where the election day vote was so Republican friendly. The only I say from these early voting stats that we're seeing is clearly there's more
interest from Republicans in voting early this time. Does that just mean we're going to look up and say, wow, there's a lot less Republicans voting on election day than last time, you know. I mean, that is such the big question here because, you know, obviously I find most of the early voting for an investigation to be kind of like sorcery, right? You can read into whatever you want. You have other people talking about the gender gap and the gender gap is huge in the
voting across the board. Now, if you dig deep, it's also the same gender gap as 2020. Is that still good because you have more Republicans voting. Therefore, more men hard to say. The one place where I do take it incredibly seriously is John Ralston and Nevada, who has been quite dark on Democratic prospects. Are you seeing anything in Nevada? I mean, I see what you're seeing from him because I have the same attitude. You make the exception for him because it's so established to go back decades
doing this in the state and he has a great track record. But again, it's, I think what hangs in my head here a little bit in Nevada and everywhere is just we're so tied into the patterns that we saw in 2020. And I just think when you talk about early vote and these different vote methods, I think there's volatility there in how, you know, how voters are going to, you know, make these
choices. And I think the fact of Trump and the Republicans deciding this time they want to embrace it so much coverage, you know, even in conservative media the last four years about wow, this might have been a blown opportunity. And so I just, you know, we may end up looking back at this and saying wow, everything was inverted this time in these patterns. And so that's kind of in my head too. You would assume, I mean, this is pure anecdotal assumption that the Republican voters most likely
to switch to male voting would be stalwart Republican election day voters. But you guys actually have an analysis from your decision desk folks today about Arizona saying that you're a whole bunch of newly registered men turning out in Arizona. And also the best, the sort of John Roelston of Arizona was also looking at it and looking at the turnout rates. What was interesting to me was if you look in Maricopa, which is pretty much the ballgame out there close to it, it is the first congressional
district. And that's one of the most competitive that's Dave Schweikert, the Republican, you know, barely survived in 22. This is one of the races of the side of the house. This is the highest income area in Maricopa County, highest college degree concentration. This is a place where Democrats think, you know, just demographically based on some of those factors, they can make more progress this time. And the turnout levels there significantly higher than elsewhere in Maricopa County,
like the core city of Phoenix or Tempe or something like that. And what does that tell you if anything? Well, then that's the question. How do you read it? Are those the types of Republican voters who are kind of turned off by Trump? Because demographically, that's where Trump has struggled among traditional Republicans, or if they made peace with Trump and they're just, you know, they're ready to go. Yeah, I'm like you, that's why there's that sorcery we're talking about here.
Let's move around to North Carolina. It's the next state where the polls will close. Anything you're looking for specifically in North Carolina. And do you have any sense of whether the hurricane is going to impact on vote counting in that state? Yeah, I don't get the sense on the vote counting side. I guess there's been some reports that the little bit less participation in the in the Western North Carolina area. We were we were running the numbers though the other day. I didn't see
it a very big difference there. What I'm looking for mainly is a couple things similar to Georgia, Eastern North Carolina. There's a swath of, you know, large black population, generally rural counties. Obama, you know, did very well there when he won a state. No way. That's the last time the Democrat carried it. Can Democrats kind of recapture that a bit? One thing they got to worry about there is the black populations have been declining in a lot of these counties too. So
it's not just a turnout question in some places. But I want to see if the Democrats are making meaningful gains there. And then I want to look at it. There's a counties outside of the sort of big major metrics just outside of the bedroom community counties down by Charlotte. You got union county. And similar to what I was describing with Cherokee in Georgia, big bedroom community suburbs, you know, a lot of a lot of banking industry kind of affiliations there went for a Trump by 30
points in 2016 came down to 24 in 2020. So you're resting the slide. Is he clawing it back similar just outside weight county, you know, where rally is, you know, the other big population hub. Johnston County, just outside of there, similar story. You know, I want to look at that. Nash
County is right around there. That's one lot of people are are talking about. So in all these states, too, there's the question of you can't pinpoint a single county, but you've just got this like collection of North Carolina dozens of counties rural, small population counties where Trump has expanded the Republican support by leaps and bounds, even from where it was under Romney 12 years ago. Take those collectively. Is he continuing that trend or not? Right. And you are running into
diminishing returns with some of that. Right. And most of these states, the population that has fueled that surge white non-college educated voters has gone down as a percentage of the electorate over the last four years. And certainly over time, North Carolina is the one exception to that where I think it is stayed flat. When the results come in, we're testing a bunch of propositions that
have been manifested in the polling. The three big ones. One is, is Trump making gains with black voters, particularly black men, working class black men, we will get a sense of that in Georgia in North Carolina, depending if he is improving on his margins in those counties you talked about, particularly those rural black counties in both those states. Then the second one is, is he really making gains with Latinos? Right. Have we snapped back to where we were? Is he
getting across that? That sort of magical 40% number? Do you think you can get any sense of that in those early states? Do we have to wait till we go west to know that? I'm going to cautiously look at Florida, which closes at seven and reports very efficiently. Not from Miami-Dade because Miami -Dade Trump made huge gains there. Demographically, though, lots of Cuban Americans, it's different than a lot of other heavily Latino areas. Where I'm going to look in Florida, in particular, is
Oceola County, which is just south of Orlando. It's one of three majorities, Hispanic counties in the state. It's the one with the highest concentration of Puerto Rican voters. It's about one third Puerto Rican as a whole of the county. It's a big-sized county. Obviously, you want to see there if there's any evidence that the events of the last week have had any impacts, but it's also notable because this showed that,
Trump's gains with Hispanic voters in 2020, Miami-Dade got all the attention. Again, because of the Cuban-American factor, I think Oceola was actually the more dramatic example of it. Trump gained 11 points. He lost it by 25, Oceola. The first time he ran, got it all the way down to 14. The next time, that's one of his best improvements in any county in Florida. That's exactly the kind of place that his campaign has felt. They're going to make more gains in big gains in.
The kind of place where the way they've been talking, a Trump victory in that county would be something in the range of what they're thinking. I want to see if that's happening there. I know Florida, it's, you can't extrapolate as much as you used to, but I think that one might be more meaningful than Miami-Dade. It was, and I probably left off my list because it's a not competitive and
be a lot of emotional PTSD as a Democrat in Florida over the last few cycles. But it is also, I mean, that is when every Democrat knew we were in big trouble in 16, was when Florida dumped in the mail in early vote. And all of a sudden it looked very different than we thought. In part, that election was less about Latino gains, but then similar in 20 big along. And we're going to get that vote pretty fast, right? In Florida, at least. It is state law within 30 minutes of
poll closed. They have to report out all the mail in early vote, typically that's like 65, 70% of the vote in a county. Everything but the sort of small panhandle part of the state that's 90% in the state is going to do that. So by 730, you've got just about every county has lighted up one color or the other. And then they just add the same day to it. And that can be very quick. You can have full counties, you know, by eight o'clock. I wish Florida was competitive for Democrats
that would make our electoral math easier. I will appreciate not being in the situation where you are hanging on waiting for the votes from Miami-Dade and Bradford to come in and possibly make up that gap because it always takes longer than you think and it doesn't go as far as you wanted to. So I at least have that emotional trauma removes. Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back.
All right, let's switch to Pennsylvania. Viewed by many as these state that will decide this election because if you don't win it, it comes very hard to piece together the replacement electoral votes to get to 70, particularly for Kamala Harris. What are you thinking in Pennsylvania? Now you're talking about a more significant Latino voting population than like in a North Carolina. So you're starting to really see it here. You look in Philadelphia, first of all, Democrats obviously
depend on massive pluralities and turnout from Philadelphia. So you want to see if you can get a sense of the turnout early. But also, you saw in 2020 in Philadelphia progress for Trump in working class majority Hispanic areas. Not huge, but he did actually, while losing ground in Pennsylvania as a whole, he actually improved in the city of Philadelphia, which is Philadelphia County. So you want to see that. And then you want to see again, for Latino vote in Pennsylvania, another area that Trump
folks have targeted for growth is you can call it the 222 quarter. Some people have called it the Latino belt, but you've got this sort of like network of small mid-size cities with large and really fast growing Hispanic populations. You know, Alentown, Reading, Hazleton, Hazleton is a small city, but you know, turn to the century, it was 5% Latino. Now it's almost 70% Latino. These are places where if you looked inside the cities, Trump made gains of 10, 15 points at net
points in 2020, even as he lost the state. So this is where his campaign, you know, the way they've been talking about this, if that's happening, this is where you're going to see it dramatically. So look there, you know, and look, you want to look at the collar counties. You know, this is where the
Democrats, Chester County is in the Trump area. There's no county in Pennsylvania that has moved more in the Democrats direction than Chester, you know, high college educated concentration right outside Philadelphia. You know, it's like his hair is cracking 60% there. They want to keep growing there. And then the one, you know, bucks is a big swing county there. And the other one I really want to look at is, is lack of Wana, Scranton. It's interesting because it's very classic for the sort of
Midwest region, wherever you want to call it. I know nobody up there would say they're in the Midwest, but Obama won it by by 28 in 2012 came all the way down to three for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Biden comes along and he brought it back up to nine. And it's interesting because Scranton is where he's from originally, was there a local effect for Biden that produced that or was there something else? Is Trump able to bring that back down and maybe even flip that county? I'm paying close
attention there. We had Bob Casey at a Paz de America show in Philly a couple weeks ago. And you know, I'm sure you know, this Bob Casey is a very big map guy. He's he calls himself the Steve Kornack. He have the Senate. And we went through the map and lack of Wana County was the county where that he was most focused. And obviously it's where he's from. So it means a lot to him. And he
for his race, he's got to get big numbers out of there. But he also pointed that out as a place where if that snaps back to 16, that's a hard place for Biden to find those votes. It depends on you to me. It's the real test about the suburbs. Is she beating Biden's numbers in the suburbs, which if you believe there is some bleed anywhere, right? If it's a little bleed with black men with Latino voters with young voters with, you know, all the different possible groups,
you know, white non-college educated voters, right? She can even appoint. She was the point or two of any of those groups. She's got to make it up somewhere the most likely place I believe. And I think the polling shows to make it up is in these suburbs, like is she juicing those numbers? Is she getting some of these hailey voters, these Republican leading independents, right? And I think you will see some of that in Georgia and North Carolina. But Pennsylvania is the one where I think
it really comes home because it's so critical to her, right? Yeah. Of the 67 counties in Pennsylvania, there are 10 that have actually, you know, gotten more democratic, you know, since 2012. And I obviously as a whole, Democrats are doing worse in Pennsylvania than they were when Obama ran in 12. But there's 10 counties where they've actually gotten even better than they did under Obama.
And, you know, Montgomery, Chester, Delaware, these, you know, Collar counties right outside, you're talking about these big suburban counties right outside Philly, a little bit of a sleeper one South Central Pennsylvania is Cumberland County where Carlisle is. There's actually been democratic growth in that area. It has a lot of these demographic characteristics. You know, and you go out, Allegheny County, you think Pittsburgh, it's 1.2 million people. There's a lot
of inner suburbs within Allegheny County that again, fit this demographic profile. It's been so rich for Democrats. So yeah, I mean, a place like Chester County, an easy benchmark to start with is she is she over 60% you know, because Biden was able to get it up to the high 50s. Could she crack 60% there? That starts to get into, you know, I think an encouraging territory for her.
Well, we'll move to Michigan. I think Michigan is perhaps one of the more confusing states to look at because of the sort of kind of hard to gauge impact of the uncommitted movement protest over Gaza, the very large Arab American population. What are you looking at Michigan? Yeah, I mean,
so Wayne County is going to cover a lot of the uncertainty you're talking about. That's where Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, you know, Ham Tramick, you have cities with large Muslim American, large Arab American populations, the way they do the vote counting in Michigan, they do it by, you know, at the municipal level. So I think we should be able to have access to some of those individual results. Hopefully early that could start answering that. You know, also in Wayne,
obviously that's where Detroit is Detroit. Same story really as Philadelphia. It's as a city, Trump actually made a little bit of progress there in 2020. That's a place where he is Trump gaining. You know, as you're saying, small but meaningful support with black voters, particularly black men. And what's the turnout level in Detroit? What's the turnout level among black voters in Detroit? Because you look at it, you know, Biden was able to win, you know, Wayne County 68 to 30 last time
around when you start playing with the numbers. If it just went to 64, 34, that's in terms of raw votes. Because you know, Wayne County is, it's 25% of the state, just that one county. So that's going to move massive raw votes. And then the other quick test I have in that region, you know, because you got Wayne, you got Washington, where University of Michigan is, and then you got the two big suburban counties, Oakland, higher income, high college, plus suburb, McComb, blue
color auto industry suburbs, and measure McComb against Oakland. This is one of the tests I'm going to do in 16 when Trump won Michigan by a sliver. McComb, his support in McComb, he won it by 12, almost completely canceled out Hillary's support in Oakland, you know, was she won by eight. Basically, the case of these are out in 20 when Biden won Biden won Oakland by 14 and Trump only won McComb by eight. And there was actually a net difference of 70,000 votes in the Democrats'
favor and they won the state by 154,000. So almost half just came from that disparity. So I mean, I want to know, are we looking at a tiny insignificant disparity between them or is it netting out in the Democrats' favor like it did four years ago? And for our listeners who may not know McComb County is the quintessential home of the Reagan Democrat. This was the famous study that Stan Greenberg, Clint and Spolster did to look at why Democrats were losing working class white men. This is
McComb County. And once again, finding a similar level of significance because for a long time, that was a county everyone was looking at to see if we were holding on to the new deal coalition or not. So it's welcome back to the news McComb County. All right, let's move to Wisconsin. Wisconsin is interesting because on paper, it should be the most difficult of the blue wall states
for Democrats. It's the whitest. It's the most rural. It's been the closest, not that any of them were to have large margins recently, but Wisconsin was about a half a percentage point. Yet for a long time, it's the one Democrats felt best about. I think that's shifted a little bit in the last few weeks here as the polls have narrowed there and the Tammy Baldwin's racist narrowed
as well. Wisconsin, I'm going to look at two things. I'm curious what you're looking at. One is the wild counties around Milwaukee and then also the massive growth in Dane County in population and whether we because it is the one of the most Democratic counties in the country. And so at least among the battleground states, can you get even more vote out there to make up from any losses in the rural areas? What are you looking at? Yeah, no, I mean, exactly. It's like
geographically Wisconsin. Just if you paint the map is very red right now, the Democratic support, as we see in so many places, increasingly geographically concentrated, they just keep squeezing more and more out of Dane County every election. I think every election this century, the Democratic plurality in Dane has grown. There's a test right there because they increasingly need it to compensate for these losses they've taken everywhere else in the state. Milwaukee, again, very similar to what
we talked about with Detroit and Philadelphia. Trump showed a little bit of signs of inroads there in 2020. Are we seeing more of that or not of the three wild counties around Milwaukee? Ozzaki is the one that I'm most interested in because it's moved the most dramatically away from the Republicans. It was 55 43 for Trump in 2020. That was the best performance for a Democrat there since LBJ in 64. It has the second highest concentration of white college educated voters of
anywhere in Wisconsin. Second to Dane, Harris is threatening to win a place like Ozzaki County. And then we say, wow, I like to say bow wow because you've got brown, out of gamey and winnebago counties, Fox River Valley. And they all tell the exact same story. Mrs. Green Bay, Appleton, Oshkosh, and they tell the exact same story. Trump got up to about a 10 12 point win in 2016 in these counties. And then he gave back some of those games, not all but some. And he lost
them by, you know, mid high single digits. And so is he back at 16 levels in the bow counties or is he still back in a single digits? Because he needs to get back to where he was there. So let's end this little tour of the map in Arizona, which is a state that I think Democrats genuinely feel the worst about among the seven. Although many believe it's still very winnable. But it's the one in the polling average where Trump has the largest laid once again,
that largely it is two. So it's not it's not gigantic. Yeah, I mean, it's it's a Maricopa county. It's a little bit more than 60% going to come out of there. And then in South of that, you got Pima or Tucson is another 15% going to come out of there. So more than three out of four votes coming from those two counties. Unfortunately with Maricopa, we can break it down by congressional
district. So I was mentioning earlier, the first congressional district that Dave Schweikert seat, I think that's we want to key in on that one, you know, kind of right away. The other question though in Arizona too is it's the Hispanic vote. Because again, by exit polling in 2020, Biden carried the Hispanic vote in Arizona by 24 points 61 to 37. You know, I pay attention to the polls that come out there and the Hispanic numbers. It's all
over the place. There was one that had Trump up seven with Hispanic voters in Arizona recently. The I think it was the CNN one this week. Matt Harris up 18. But that's where, you know, again, given how tight the margin was in 2020, even a relatively small game with Hispanic voters could erase for Trump, you know, that gap just a couple more things on the Senate, barring some sort of recount sort of situation. There's a good chance we're going to know who has the Senate control
in the first 24 hours here, right? Given the size of the states, whether this is happening, and we're they're going to come. Is that right? Yeah. I mean, look, once you take West Virginia officially off the table and the Republicans get that pickup, yeah. You know, Ohio should be a pretty efficient vote counting state. So you'll know kind of Sheridan Brown there. And then if Brown doesn't hang on, I mean, you'll have test related, but if Brown, you know, doesn't hang on,
then Democrats have to pull a rabbit out of the hats somewhere. It'll be clear if there's any chance for them to do that in Texas, I think pretty early. And then the there's that wild card in the Brasca. I know not technically a Democrat, all of this stuff. But again, barring something like that, you know, if Ohio is a four or five point win or something for, you know, for the Republicans, you'll know that on election night. Yeah. And then finally, the House, good chance we're not
going to the House for weeks, right? Because we're waiting for California ballots to if the House proceeds as we suspect, and there's not some sort of a giant wave. And we're down to a few seats, probably decided in California, where you have second, maybe to New York, the largest batch of toss-up winnable races. They don't count those votes. Those votes can be postmarked by election days. That right. So they're coming in for a while after that. Well, yeah, they're coming in for what,
they're also they're just they're very slow at at at counting it. And it's a it's another conversation. But yeah, for the House, it could be election month that we're waiting on them. Yeah. Hopefully you don't have to wait on them. And you can actually go on with your sleep over that period of time. Steve Kronacki, thanks so much for joining us. Everyone is smarter from having listened to this conversation and good luck. And we will be watching you very attentively on Tuesday night
and beyond. Thanks again. Hey, thanks a lot. Yeah, this is fun. You can catch Steve as part of MSNBC's election night coverage on Tuesday, November 5th at 6 p.m. Eastern. Okay, before we go to break, I've been asked for you. It's officially the last Sunday before the 2024 election, which means this
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For the annual subscription, you'll be saving $30 a year and supporting Crook in media. Subscribe now at Crook.com slash friends or from the pot save America feed on Apple podcasts. Before we go, I wanted to answer some final questions from our subscribers. And join in me now as producer polar coaster, the amazing Caroline Reston. Caroline, thank you for being here instead of
a Elijah. I appreciate it. I'm really happy to be here. I don't know if it's because I haven't eaten or I've had two cups of coffee or stress, but I'm like actually weirdly shaking right now from anxiety. It looks for anxiety, do you think? Yeah, I like to roll. I mean, after listening to you and Steve Kornacki, I'm just like so overwhelmed with anxiety. But I'm very excited. Listeners, do everything you can. Don't be stressed with me. Yes, channel your stress by doing something in this
final days by going to votesaveamerica.com and signing up. Yeah, be productive with that stress. Okay, so we got some really great discord questions here. The first one is from Cal year 338. They say, I'm from a deeply blue state that is quite far away from most swing states. Is there evidence that texting and calling folks from the other side of the country sways undecided voters or how do voters respond from people who are contacting them out of state? In general, they may not know
you're from out of state. So that's a plus. But the voters were that is probably most helpful is geo TV calls. And that's usually what if you're sending up to volunteer for campaign, you're going to be calling people to remind them to vote. These are people the campaign has decided are likely
Kamala Harris or Democratic Senate or congressional voters who have not yet voted. So you're just trying to remind them to vote and giving them information about their polling places or early voting options. But everything helps do what you can from a blue state or deeply red state. Either one, it definitely helps do it. Okay, this next question is something I've been really thinking about too. It's from swinging liberal 901. There is so much conversation about how Harris is polling with key
constituencies. But how worried are you about the inability of polls to capture voters in hair sexism and racial biases? This is a great question. I'm going over both of Barack Obama's races 2016. And then obviously it props in the most vivid way possible in Kamala Harris's election. And so we don't know. Now, back many, many years ago, Tom Bradley, who was the black mayor of Los Angeles, ran for governor. And the polling showed him winning. And then he ended up losing
the governance race. And then that became known as something called the Bradley effect. And the Bradley effect was this idea that people will tell pollsters that they are willing to vote for a black candidate. But then when they actually get into the voting booth and are asked to pull the lever or fill in the bubble or whatever you're doing, they won't do it. And so that they basically this idea is you they might have seen more racially sensitive than they are.
There was some sense that a similar thing happened in 2016 with Hillary Clinton. Now, studies have shown like retroactive studies that looked at the Bradley election that that's actually not what happened. It was actually just a polling error. There have been some political science and sociological experiments to test this proposition and have not found that exists. There isn't a lot of
evidence that inherent or silent sexism is why the polls were wrong in 2020. Now, this is not saying that racial biases and sexism are not huge parts of the electoral calculus for people and overhang these elections. That is absolutely true. But we don't have any evidence that they affect the polls. And we saw no evidence in either one of Barack Obama's elections, either in the primary or the general election in 2008 and 2012 of the Bradley effect. He actually outperformed
his polls. Okay. So they're not voting for Kamala Harris. It's not because she's a woman. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, this is a very important point. They may be sexist and racist. But the question I think here is is about whether sort of silent sexism or racism or hidden sexism or racism is skewing the polls in her favor. So in other words, people are afraid to say that they aren't supporting her because
they're afraid of being labeled sexist or racist. Right. And there's not evidence of that. But I'm not trying to argue that misogyny and racism are not huge factors in an election with Black woman running for president sits. All right. All right. All right. Next question. Anna Del Hunt asks, if we lose, I'm not sure I'm going to find the strength to face the next four years. Obviously, I'm going to do what I can now. But what about on November 6th or whenever we find out
what should I do? Any tips? I don't know how much value there is in preparing ourselves emotionally for what comes next if Trump or to win. I think we should focus our energy on doing everything we possibly can to make sure that does not happen. If it does happen, it's obviously a deeply frightening, deeply dangerous, it's a crisis, right? It's a crisis. And there are people
in this country are going to be hurt in terrible ways. It's going to be scary. If that were to happen, we can all get together and figure out what we're going to do after that because there's going to be huge responsibility for all of us to do what we can to prevent the worst things from happening as we mobilized in 2017. But do not waste your time and energy and mental space right now thinking about that is my recommendation. It would be take the energy and focus it on trying to win this race
because it is so close. It is very winnable. It's in the margin of effort. We can absolutely do that. Okay. This is a similar-ish question. And then we'll get to something a little more positive. But down the ballot 96 asked, I already voted, I phone-baked, I've canvased in swing districts, and I'm so stressed about having nothing to do on election day. Is there anything productive I can do on Tuesday beyond just watching Gable News? You can absolutely volunteer on election day.
It's one of the most important volunteer days out there because the campaigns are going to have a list of who their target voters are and they know they have people at the precincts getting updated voter rolls as who's voted. So they have people calling the people who have not yet voted. We may
need people who can drive people to the polls. Like there are all kinds of things you can do on election day from phone banking to driving people to the polls to being a poll watcher or working for the campaign on that day to just helping out in the office to get administrative work or coffee and donuts or whatever it is for the people who are working that day. There's so much you can do. So I would check with you local campaign or local party or go to vote state of America to look for
opportunities. What level of creepy is it to call a stranger and be like, hey, do you want me to come pick you up at your home and drive you somewhere? You don't call them. The campaign calls and offers them a ride because you have a lot of seniors who cannot get there on their own. If you live in a city parking can be challenging. People can't do public transportation. And so it is the thing that happens all the time is the people do rides to the polls. Oftentimes are people
from your community or your neighborhood. But you can. It is absolutely a thing that happens all the time. You don't call them and say, hey, you don't know me. Meet me outside of my windowless van in 20 minutes. I'll take you to the next. I don't know why that's how I'm picturing it. And mine dumbass would be like, okay, I'll get into this. If you vote, basically, Uber has normalized that for all of America. So I don't know what the difference is, but you're just taking a free Uber to the polls.
Okay, there is a follow up from a discord user name super skink. They say, took Wednesday off in case I'm crying in the morning again, like in 2016. What should I drink on election night to celebrate Kamala's win? Well, first in a classic organic plug, you should drink and Z-biotics. They're your first drink of the night Z-biotics, Z-biotics free alcohol. Okay, that one's a freebie. Drink whatever you want. The only thing I was telling you to drink could be a long night. Drink water,
hydrate could be a while. You don't want to be the sad drunk as you're waiting for the final votes of America, but county to come in at three in the morning. Drink water. Wait till the elections called. If you want to have a champagne, you want to have a cocktail. I will have a cocktail if and when this race is called for Kamala Harris. I hope, you know, maybe that's at 730 in the morning. I'm okay with that if that's what happens, but that's where we are. Okay,
D-lul voter asks, Lebron James just endorsed Kamala Harris. I know we tend to dismiss celebrity endorsements, but so close to the election, can this help? Shinmore celebrities hold their endorsements until it's peak geo TV time? Celebrity endorsements, there's a handful of exceptions tell
or swift being one of them. Their value is probably a little overstated, but where it matters is these celebrities have giant social media platforms and followings and they use those to announce their endorsement, but also the fact that their endorsement reminds people to vote, right? Lebron James, one of the most famous people in the world, to get a huge following across the country, all ages, all races, all groups, and him telling people to vote could remind
people who would not otherwise vote to vote. It is less that the people are like, oh, you know, I wasn't really sure which candidate I liked on minimum wage, but I also care about immigration, and I also care about abortion, what do I do? And it's like, oh Jennifer Lopez is for on it. Like it doesn't really work that way. It's more that the reflected glory of the celebrities brings more attention to the candidate in their positions and then they use their platforms to remind
people to vote. With all due respect to Jennifer Lopez, who gave a great speech at her rally with Kamala Harris last night? So there is strategy to all these like mega celebrities waiting until the end to do it. Yeah, you know, it's six year half times of the other, right? Do you want one post at the end or you want 12 posts over the last three weeks, right? You know, it's hard to say. Yeah, I was listening to what a day and they were talking about the bad bunny effect and bad
bunny seems like actually a huge endorsement to get right at the end. Yes. And there's timing to it too, happening at the exact moment of the offensive comments about Puerto Rico from the Trump rally. Like it's a very powerful and terrible. Bad bunny would certainly be on that list with Taylor Swift in terms of celebrity endorsements. He probably care about. Man, I know it's been said before, but Democratic Party is so much more fun. We just are such a
better more fun party. We have we got all the celebrities, we got all the good music. They have that random comedian. I mean, that's something we should actually play up. This is something that was very true of the party in the Obama era and we've sort of lost some of that, but we should be the fun party. We should be the one with the fun. And Kamala Harris has brought that back. That's the joy. I would say we had that with Obama. We kind of lost that in the Trump era and then
Kamala Harris has brought it back. It's like her rallies seem fun to sell. They're fine anyway, but the celebrities. It's all great. It's a party. It really is. Okay. Here's the last question. And it is from yours truly. Oh, wow. A toughy. Okay. Dan, who's going to win? I will not answer this question. I will not. It is a cardinal rule of Fodzade of America that after 2016. We don't make predictions. We focus our energy on trying to make what we want
to happen as opposed to guess what's going to happen. The thing I will say is this is an incredibly close race. You can make a reasonable, rational, credible argument that either candidate is favored. Trump, the political environment is very much in Trump's favor. The Kamala Harris is the better candidate with the better campaign. I think, and I wrote this in my newsletter message box this morning. I think there are three reasons for optimism for Kamala Harris down the stretch.
One is the Democrats are more enthusiastic than Republicans. That's something that has not been written about much. Democratic enthusiasm is at the same level right now for Kamala Harris that it was for Barack Obama in 2008. And enthusiasm matters a lot, particularly when you have built an organization as the Harris campaign has to harness that enthusiasm into action and devotes. Second, if you look at the polling, the economies, the top issue for everyone. It is everyone's
most important issue. It's when we're Trump is heading hugely to get a 20 point lead on Biden at one point. In the most recent New York Times, Siena Paul, that lead is down to six points. Kamala Harris doesn't have to beat Donald Trump in the economy, but she has to reach a certain level of credibility and trust that the voters who are cross pressured where they don't like Trump, they don't like January six, they don't like how we act, but they also are deeply concerned about the cost of
guests and the cost of groceries and their economic future. Trust her enough to be willing to turn the page on Trump. And the third reason is, and this is something that everyone listened to, obviously listened to in my conversation with Ron Brownstein last week, but we are not talking enough about how the demographic shifts in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin in particular
have moved in the Democratic's favor. In Michigan and Wisconsin in particular, the base of the Trump coalition, white non-college educated voters has shrunk by two points as a share of the electorate. His mountain is higher to climb this time because of that. And I think that if Kamala Harris can maximize her gains with Corp. of her coalition, then she can win this race. That sounds like a great place to end on. That'll wrap up our episode for today.
Thank you to Steve Kornaki and to Caroline and our subscribers for the questions. If you're a friend of the pod subscriber, I'll be on your feet again soon for a new Policoaster. Thanks everyone. If you want to get ad free episodes, exclusive content and more, consider joining our friends of the pod subscription community at Cricket.com slash friends.
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