Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making better decisions. I'm Maria Kanakova.
And I am Nate Silver. Well, shit is getting real. It's one week to go to the presidential election. And since this is a show about making good decisions, we're going to talk about some of the good and bad spoiler alert, mostly bad decisions that the campaigns have made so far in the race. How are they managing risk and reward?
And after that, since we are a week out, we're going to look at the Silver Bulletin model and see where we stand and what this next week is shaping up to look like. The news this week has been I think more Trump dominant than it has been for a while while, maybe since the assassination. I'm attempt I'm not sure, but I think you actually did Google words analysis or something like that.
Yeah, the number of people searching for Trump is the highest that it has been since the second assassination attempt, and you've not seen that spike for Harris. So sometimes having Google news searches is good at might indicate voter interest, but this seems like it's at least potentially correlated with with the rally that Trump held outside my apartment. Basis right.
I was going to say, in your backyard, some square garden.
I lived near Messi's Fort Garden, which is tremendously convenient when you're going to Rangers games or Knicks games. I'm a fan of both teams. A great start for the Rangers, by the way. But Trump also decided to have a rally there on Sunday went all day. I was like, oh, maybe there's a next game nine. I'm not doing anything. Nope, Trump rally woke up at eight am. You hear Houghton and outside your window, and then all day my block
is cordoned off. You have to show your idea to to you know, if you go get coffee, it'll go show your idea when you get back. So a comedian named Tony Henschliff, I believe that's fanatic, made a disparaging comment about.
Puerto Rican disparaging comment.
A joke, many.
Disparaging comments, but yes one in particular.
You called it a floating island of garbage, very dry humor at best. John Stewart defended him. I don't know, but like you know, Puerto Ricans, there's actually a fairly large Puerto Rican population in Pennsylvania. But you know, you had the all Stars. I don't know how to put it. You got Rudy Giuliani, you got Hope Hogan, you got Elon Musk. I know, if it's jumping around, I tried to avoid it, but this is kind of the major news cycle heading to the final week of the campaign.
It dovetails with some other messaging that Kamala Hair is focused on. She is giving recordings on Tuesday early afternoon Tuesday night Eastern time. Harris is holding a rally in Washington, d C. At a location where Trump It's called it the Ellipse maybe or the Eclipse or something. I know, DC where Trump initiated the insurrection riot. Some people call it a coup. I think the coup experts say it's not. It's sparkling insurrection or not coup or something.
It doesn't come from the coup region of Francia.
Yeah, but trying to bring this home to h January sixth and Trump's threats to democracy, which is, oh boy, now I'm gonna piss summer ar listeners. Not a message that one has to wonder whether it might be a little stale. This was a message that Joe Biden kicked his campaign off, and look, I believe that uh Trump, I mean, I think January six was really bad and I think he has no respect for the rule of
law and the guardrails are weaker. And you know, to an elite like me, uh, college educated elite like me, uh, this messaging has a lot of resonance, but I don't know that it has as much message with swing voters. But anyway, Trump avy is kind of u the New York what The New York Times called a closing carnival of grievances, misogyny and racism plays into her hands a little bit when she had lacked the closing message. So I guess are we saying good decision or bad decision to have this?
Well, So this is a This is an interesting one because you know, there's the old saying that all publicity is good publicity, but in this particular case, I don't actually know if that's the case, because there are some people who did not endorse Kamala Harris for president before who all of a sudden rose up and were like, what the fuck? You know? So we have we have peany Yeah, bad bunny, Mark, Anthony J. Lo, Ricky Martin.
There are tons of people people whose names, by the way, like obviously Bad Bunny we hear all the time in j LO, you know, in the context of Ben Affleck we hear recently. But but like Mark Anthony and Ricky Martin, I'm like, whoa blast from the past.
I have Martin and Ricky Martin reunion tour. It would sell out masses for gardens.
It absolutely would. And that's when I started looking at the number of their followers. I was like, holy shit, Like, you know, this could actually, Like I'm not talking about like Bad Bundy, who has over eighteen million followers, Like these are people with massive reach, and as we've talked about, like even fractions of a percent in swing states matter. So I am wondering if that specific thing is going to matter on the on the margins, and so in
terms of good decision bad decision, I'm not sure. I don't know if all these I actually I don't know if swing voters are listening, if undecided are listening. If they are, then maybe it was a bad decision. What do you think name?
Yeah, so I don't think old people like well you
should a little reality in Pennsylvania. I mean He's had a lot of fucking rallies in Pennsylvania, you know the nash press attention that you get from this, but these this is like some of the most negative headlines, yes from the liberal media that Trump's gotten in weeks, but also from some news outlets like Politico or writers that are studiously neutral and in their headline choices are pointing out comments that they call racist, they don't say racially
charged or and those probably aren't great headlines for Trump. And I don't know, I mean again, he is relying on picking up a substantial share of the vote from black and Hispanic voters. If you look at the polls, or something like a fifteen point shift among black voters. Supposedly there is something like a a eight point shift among Hispanic voters that vary their poll to poll. This is pre rally, yeah, rally, but yeah, maybe have to
look at the Puerto Rican demographics and more detail. I think this coterie of people that Trump surrounds himself with, I mean, I don't know, it's a goof a goofy law of act is you know at sight, I don't know what why more some Australian accent there. It's all good.
I love it.
It's not putting. Yeah, I think it's a bad decision to have this guy speak, and you had Republicans, your Republicans apologizing for it. That's kind of a relatively objective benchmark. Yeah, for rich Scott, the Republican Senate tour, one of them in Florida had to apologize for this.
Yeah. And you know, Pennsylvania has approximately half a million Puerto Ricans, So like to think that they thought that this was a good, good thing to do is just kind of crazy. It just goes to show that Trump truly does think that he can get away with anything at this point. And it doesn't matter. It's like this, you know, it's this Hubris that's next level.
He's not a detailed guy. No, I don't think Trump is going with a red pan call it when he's a red pin or a black I don't think Crump's going over with a sharpie.
Sharp as his instrument of choice, that's true.
Yeah, I don't think he's going only with a sharpie and vetoing individual jokes. But but anyway, you want to talk about some earlier Yes.
So, so I think I think we I think we're coming down on the line of bad decisions. But since we're talking about Puerto Rico and Pennsylvania and Puerto Ricans and Pennsylvania, let's go back in time to another pivotal campaign decision, which is choice of vice presidential candidate. And we we have our listeners know what you think, NATEA and what I think. But let's just let's just talk through it right now with one week ago until the election.
Vice presidential candidate choice. Good decision, bad decision, overrated, underrated in terms of a factor.
I think it was a bad decision to go with Tim Walls, who has been very much backgrounded after being part of this bratt summer. I mean, the argument was that at least he can kind of crack these like dad jokes and me a good public speaker. They haven't had him do that many TV appearances. When he has
done them, he seemed very nervous. He kind of sucked, I'm not gonna pull punches, especially in the early half of the jd Vance debate, and then the whole message that hey, buddy or just two guys hanging out having a debate, when the rest of the Kamala campaign has been about like what a unique threat is and how we should not normalize this. I just thought was like was very strange, and you also would like to have.
You know, Shapira accomplishes two things. The more important one, of course, is that he is the governor of this really important state called Pennsylvania, an extra Pennsylvania. It's exact scenario that Harris would most want to have Jos Shapiro. Where Michigan is polling half a point to a point ahead for Harris, Wisconsin's pulling half a point to a point ahead. Pennsylvania is a pure tie zero point three points in favor of Trump according to our polling average.
And so boy, just to have one extra percentage point in Pennsylvania, so doesn't kind of fall It's not the straggler falling behind the line. Also, it would have like signaled more of a break toward this new generation of talent. Democrats have a lot of talented members. I mean, boy, one good thing is if if Harris loses for Democrats is that they actually have a really robust bench. Right, I mean, her career is going to be over it. Maybe she'll try to run percent or something again, right,
probably get some university president job. I don't know, but you know, but they have Shapiro and Gretchen Whimer and Wes Moore in Maryland and ruffel Moarnock and Georgia, and they have a robust bench and like, you know, maybe the bench is better than the starting quarterback, but you are able to pick from the bench. And instead they went, I don't know what they did exactly, they went and like drafted a guy from like the Arena football or something.
I just I think this is decision that, as I was critical of at the time, I think is not held up very well.
Yeah, I completely agree with that. And let me add to what you said. It's not just Pennsylvania. You alluded to this, but I think Shapiro has much better debating skills, would have come off much better against JD. Vance and in general right now, would be probably hammering home more guided,
pointed messages with kind of the end game. This was is something we talked about last week that the campaign has been a little bit wishy washy hasn't really figured out, you know, what are we going to hammer home, you know, like abortion or whatever it is in these last weeks. And I think Shapiro would have actually probably been much better at that and so on the margin that might have helped with other swing voters. So I will agree with you bad decision for all of these.
Reasons if you're running on personality, Because look, Harris doesn't really have ambitious new plans. You go to like the issue section of her page, her homepage and says a couple of heroes was a prosecutor. She cares about the people, like, no, honey, I want to know about the fucking issues. That's why I kicks on the issues page. Enough bio, enough fucking vibes.
What are your issues? And she's been very afraid of that because on the one hand, she doesn't want to own the unpopular accomplishments of like the Biden Harris administration in their hands. She wants to run away from her unpopular positions in twenty nineteen, and like ambitious new government spending programs are harder sell in an environment where there's lots of concern about inflation and deficits and interest rates and things like that. And so I don't know, at
least with Shapiro, you have two really strong personalities. Maybe they clash a little bit, but you can do things with clashing personalities. What are podcasts all about Maria clashing personalities.
No, man, it's just yeah, yeah, And I think, well, well, there's something in there that will will come back to because it's another kind of good decision, bad decision, because obviously Kamwell Harris is in a really shitty position because she's still the VP, Biden is still president and she you know, she's also running, and she she has been put in this unfortunate place where where it does kind of put a damper on the types of things that she feels that she kind of can't say.
But before we move on to that, let's let's do this decision for the Republican camp as well. Jd Vance good decision, bad decision.
Also a bad decision. I mean there was like the season of jd Vance like couch jokes misinformation by the way, but jokes are okay if they're about Republicans. But like, he remains I believe maybe the most unpopular VP and history. I think Sarah Palin stumbers were declined at this points. That's probably a close two way race. Ohio is not a swing state. It does have a competitive Senate race.
He is a good debater, I mean, Jie advances like the blogger personality type, right, Jadadvance would be a good podcaster and a good blogger, and that probably correlates well with doing a relatively effective job at the debate, although again he was also hamstrung by not wind to deny that Trump's an election denier. I'm using a double negative, right, but not willing to admit that Biden won in twenty twenty. Very inexperienced campaigner. He ran one, just run in and
won just one election in his lifetime. And the decision was made apparently after intervention from like the Trump kids, and at a time when Trump was writing really high in the polls. This is when he'd just been almost assassinated, when Joe Biden was still trying to run as a candidate. But after the debate, and I think they just thought they're going to run away with this and we'll cement our legacy. And that was a bad decision too.
Yeah, And I think that we can I agree that it was a bad decision for Trump, but I think that another kind of element of that good decision, bad decision is forceight, right, like being willing to think that, oh, Biden might not be the person I'm running against, so kind of failure to look ahead, failure to consider the possibility that Kamala Harris might actually be the person that
you're running against. It does seem like the Trump campaign, We've talked about this before, really drops the ball on this. So that's another bad decision in terms of campaign planning. And I don't know if that has to do with, you know, over confidence with the people he surrounded himself with. I'm not quite sure what was behind that, but it does seem like a major oversight in terms of campaign planning. And that was another decision point, you know, when he
picked jd. Vance, it was clear that Biden, you know, was not necessarily going to stay the presidential choice for the Democrats and Republicans.
I don't think believe that. I think they thought, well, there he's Trump of the Democratic Party, and I think Republicans underestimated Democrats desire to win elect the fuck loss of shit up right, But like Democrats know how to look at polls showing Biden behind in every swing state and there's a sizable minority of polling spinners and deniers in the party. But cooler heads and stander heads prevailed. But you want to go back, let's go way back
to March twenty twenty three. I think I'm still working at ABC News at that point, kind of half acidly and uh, because the writing is on the wall, and the writing was also on the wall for Joe Biden being really fucking old. And to be fair, the times when Biden consistently began to trail Trump and head to
head poles was later in twenty twenty three. By fall twenty twenty three, all these poles from and it's too early to look at polls, et cetera, but like these poles are coming out showing that Biden is now trailing Trump again a year plus and advance doesn't mean that much. But also that like depending on pole you look at, like eighty percent of Americans say he's too old and you have concerns about his ability to like effectively serve out.
I'm sorry, how many Americans.
Eighty seventy eighteen zero seventy's that's a big percent. Kings Kings versus Queen's you like to being on the eighties. Yeah, you know, that's pretty good. But Biden decided that he was going to hit a two outer and decided that he was going to run for election again. But in March twenty twenty three, Democrats eased his path by announcing there would be no primary debates. I'm sure envisioning, you know, Mary and Williamson and Biden and a circus or whatever
that would have been. So, I know, good decision or bad decision.
Horrible decision. I think this was probably one of the worst decisions they could have made. If we had had primary debates. I think that a lot of Biden's weaknesses would have come out immediately, right we wouldn't have had to wait until his debate with Trump. And by the way, Democrats absolutely knew this, which is why there were no primary debates, right like they already I think maybe they didn't know it was going to be such a disaster, but I think they knew that he wasn't going to
hold his own in all in all respects. I mean, he was already not doing much media, like, I don't know you're going to push back. You don't think that they knew that he was gonna not be a good debater.
I think first of all, Democrats, whatever they're doing behind the scenes, managed to convince that there was no credible opposition to Biden. Mary and Williamson. I actually went throughte no offense to Mary and Williamson and Dean Phillips, but xxx there wasn't a serious primary, and he both responded Dean Phillips like, ah, no offense taken, and Mary on Williams it's like, I do take fam, I'm a serious candidate for president. She's like a mid Atlantic act. It's
like newscast. I can't. I don't know in never mind, I'm not trying to do that those but like, yeah, I think to have Biden up on stage with the Maryam Williamson wouldn't have accomplished very much. And Democrats kind of live in fear of they confuse cause and effect. It's what happened generally speaking, what happens that when you
have a primary challenge, that party loses. The reason why it is the only time you have a primary challenge is when a candidate is going to lose anyway, so he's vulnerable and and you're trying to get voters under alternatives, So you're confusing cause and effect there. And look, Democrats, I mean the rumors before twenty twenty two, Carolyn Maloney, my former congresswoman, went out and said, oh yeah, everyone knows Biden's going to retire. He's a one term president.
And then I think the reporting on this is still not entirely clear on whether Biden was leaning toward retirement and then changed his mind, or if he had never announced any plans, or if it's like, fuck these people, you know, they can't make me retire. I'm the president of the United States. And then but but anyway, Democrats had had this relatively good mid term and made a decision, we want to clean our hands of anything that could
muck up this coronation. I mean, they thought, you go back and look at this, right, they thought, oh my god, we're gonna get another Biden Trump rematch, and we won that last time. So this is awesome. This is great. And then after a nine percent inflation and eighty one years old and some major increase in illegal undocumented if you prefer immigration across the Mexican border, that's a pretty tough electoral environment and you probably need a stronger candidate.
Yeah, I agree with you that. Like, if we look back on any one decision, Biden's decision not to retire and say, you know, I'm not seeking a second term is probably the single most pivotal decision of this whole campaign, something that let's dovetail that with the debate decisions. So the timing of the debates and that first debate, you know that I watched in fetal position between President Biden and Donald Trump, where that was kind of the beginning of the end if we look at it that way.
So changing the debate schedule and having that debate when it happened, I would say, you know, it was probably a good decision for the campaign because it actually forced their hand. But let's talk about that a little bit.
It's like when you think you're bluffing and your opponent calls you with the worst hand. It turns out it was a value. But so look, the reporting is still when Biden made that move, or his campaign made that move, I kind of wrote, like, you know, the one nice thing this touch Democrats is that if Biden is so bad he has to drop out, then finally you have some option value to get rid of him. I don't tend to think that his team was doing that on purpose.
I think they just were like, we have to try something. We've been behind the polls from months, and the media narrative is not changing. I mean, if there is reporting post facto, if Maggie Haberman writes a book or something that says, actually, someone in the Biden office was trying to get him out and this is their secret plan. Because but I don't think there's been any reporting on that. So it's a decision that I guess worked out well. I mean, Democrats do have this almost fifty to fifty
chance with Harris they wouldn't have had with Biden. I think we'd be talking about, like, you know, hey, can five percent chances happen and things like that. Right, However, there's another hidden consequence to Harris, which is that so Biden didn't just ask for an early debate, he also blew up the three debates that had originally been scheduled for the counts by the Commission on Presidential Debates. I believe we're in October. Maybe one was in late September
and then two in October. I don't remember exactly, but the normal timing of the campaign. So you went from having three debates to two, one of which was taken up by Biden. And so no Harris, in one of her strongest formats, only has one debate. I mean, Harris's best polling period of the whole campaign was after that
first debate and her honeymoon period. But like the first and only debate and like lost any leverage to claim I mean, I mean, once you blew up the calendar, then you can't really make hay of the fact that, like Trump is also very unreliable and he didn't go to the GP primary debates. He had lots of gripes with a Commission on Presidential Debates last cycle, he might have been very strategic and not cared about like the
reputational risk from looking like you're ducking a debate. But like if Kambal Harris had another debate last week, I think this might have been a meaningfully different race. And the fucking Biden people fucked that up.
Yeah, yeah, that's just I don't know, I don't know, Okay, So let's sum this up. Obviously, there are lots of moving parts to this debate decision, but let's come to a net assessment. Nate, what do you think in terms of kind of the the end result the decision of the Biden campaign to rearrange the debate schedule. Have that one earlier debate, you know, blow ups of the later debates net positive net negative. Good decision, bad decision?
Are we focusing on process or not? Or results?
Maria working on process?
Don't we tellt people? Then it was a terrible decision because if they actually thought that was going to make Joe Biden look good and the stupidt fucking people in the history of the world, well not just the politics.
Now, I think we have to focus on process. And we're taping this Tuesday, October twenty ninth. We don't know, right we cannot be outcome oriented right now. We know that what happened in terms of the Biden campaign, but we don't know what that means for the election.
We do know that they improved terros gives Democrats, to my estimation, double the chances roughly are more than that, right, So like, so that part of the decision worked out well for them. I guess if she loses by less
than nobody really cares, I suppose. But so in a poker tournament where second place gets like eighty percent of first place money or something, right, it could be president time you alternate round up to like it's a landslike it and be like five days Tuesday, So HAIs be president Tuesdays Wednesdays, and I think Trump likes to play golf on Saturday, so let's give Harris Saturday too.
I love it. I love it. But yeah, now, I think we do have to focus on process rather than outcome, because as poker players, as people who talk about decision making, that's the only way that you can that you can actually evaluate the decision quality. And in a case like this, where there are so many moving parts, I think that that that it has to be the swinging net and determination bad process.
And we'll be right back after this break.
So let's talk about that moment when Biden drops out and Harris very very quickly becomes the presumptive not money. I know that at that point night you were talking about potentially doing kind of this mini primary. That's not what happened. So let's talk about that decision to go straight from Biden to Harris.
I advocated at the time for having a mini primary, and some other Democrats did that as well. I think in retrospect that was naive. Maybe not because it has been a baddie in theory, but like in practice, you have the vice president in a party that doesn't particularly like nominating white men, she did a very good job by all accounts, of understanding that Biden was in trouble and consolidating her support and you know, having her chips ready to cash in the minute of the cashier's window open,
maybe a few minutes beforehand. Maybe she was she was first on the elevator to the to the to the win cashier before even checking out of her hotel room. Maybe inkling is something, and so you kind of have, you know, so if you have the following options, right, Harris wins in thirty six hours, or you have everyone agrees that we should have this primary process, or you
have you have a week's long fight and then Harris wins. Anyway, I mean, I think we can agree that, like the third decision is the worst decision, and maybe the second decision wasn't possible, therefore you get the first decision. But again that the timing matters here. Even a few earlier weeks of a Biden announcement might have given things people a few more options. So I mean, this one I'm
more forgiving of. But again it comes back to Biden should have left the race earlier, and at first of you as well, she doesn't really have to go through like a normal campaign, and maybe that's helpful. She won't get enough scrutiny. July August, four and a half months
is plenty enough time for scrutiny. And her campaign kind of ran on this premise that we can just kind of run off the fumes of brat summer and like and didn't find a second gear, and like again, like the problem is, like all these fucking things are like foreseeable, Like all these things I've like criticized in real time and they worked out badly, and like and like you know that she needs second gear. People gonna ask, what's the issue? Why are you know you want change? But
you're the incumbent vice president? Like how's that work? Harris? And like the fact that she goes on interviews and gets asked, what's one thing you do differently than Joe Biden? And she can't asker that fucking question, Like what the fuck is going on?
Yeah?
Yeah, And people thought she'd be a C minus candiate and she's been a B minus. Right, she might win because Trump is unpopular, She'll probably have a good ground game. Trump steps in his own shit a lot, right, But I think you cannot like quote unquote objectively say that she's like run a great campaign, you know, maybe a B can eight and D campaign that averages out to
see and people, though should be worse than that. I mean, I mean, luckily for Democrats, she certainly has improved, Like her public speaking in like teleprompter settings, right, she was She's a very good debater, so she has some attributes and she and she you know, United Democrats around her. So she's done some good things. Her convention speech was good.
But the things that are less about the candidate and more about the campaign, and the fact that the campaign is not prepping the candidate for that question, I just I don't understand it.
Yeah, no, I think I think those are all valid points. And who knows, there's still a week left. Maybe all of a sudden we'll get clear answers, uh and and some issues. But what about you know, we're talking a lot about the democratic decisions, and we've talked about JD. Vance, But what about the decision to nominate Trump? Again, Like, what what do we think about that? Obviously we do not know the results of the race, but you know
you just mentioned and his popularity. Good decision, bad decision there? You know, there were other choices, And I think the Republican Party made a very conscious decision that you know, they were going to kind of go into the Trump direction, the Trump camp, that they were going to be kind of the Party of Trump instead of any number of directions that that could have happened at that stage, especially
since he had lost the last election. So what do we think about that and what do we think about that decision process. That's something that is not talked about nearly as much.
That's because it wasn't a decision. It was the voter's decision. I mean, look, the one thing Republicans could have done is that when Trump was impeached, they could have voted to convict him in the Senate, in which case he would not be eligible. You need a two thirds majorities, you have to have a lot of Republicans come on board, in which case he is not constitutionally eligible to be president ever again. So that's a point at which they could have. But like everyone ran, Mike Pence Ran, the
then popular governor of Florida run. His said, is ran, Nikki Aleey the only half decent candidate in the bunch? Frankly ran. It's a star studded field by objective metrics and like, and the voters overwhelmingly picked Trump. I mean, what Nickie win should win Vermont. There's something DC which is better than I thought the over under it was probably zero and a half states. So I I mean,
would they be off with a more normal candidate? I mean yes, on the one hand, I mean when you had Hailey versus Biden polls, Hailey and the more quality polls was doing significantly better than Trump. At the same time, it's a little bit like if a if a dog had wings that could fly. I mean it's like kind of like the Republican Party of today is not capable of not nominating Trump if Trump is on the ballot. I mean, it just wasn't even close in any of
these things. It's by the way, nobody trying. And you could blame like Ron DeSantis for like being oh cozy up to Trump and not saying bad things about it, and then magically something happens and I win. I mean, he has an aged well his strategy, but like it just what, it's what the voters decided.
No, I I right, obviously, I was just kind of talking about earlier kind of rallying around Trump and like deciding that this was, you know, this was the way to go, rather than kind of trying to distance themselves from Trump way back when after January sixth, after you know, or even you know, the impeachment, as you said, like, there were points in time where I think the party could have made different decisions in to not And we'll see how that turns out. But I think that that
is that does say something. So I think where we come out on this is that it's complicated. Right, As with everything, there are lots of good and bad decisions. But if Kamala Harris loses the election next week, I think we've crowned the single worst decision. This will be squarely on President Biden's shoulders for not deciding to step away from the race and say that he was not going to be running for a second term. Do you agree with that?
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, That's the core fact of his campaign. And you know, it's not as though people thought Harros was a great candidate before and look, they did make that decision, right right. I mean, so Biden running was the worst decision. Replacing him was the best decision by
either party in the campaign. Trump's worst decision, I guess JD Van Actually maybe maybe the campaign the convention speech where he had just gotten assassinated in the first half an hour of the convention different a softer side of Trump, and then he just rambles for an hour, right, you know. I you know, he wasn't very prep for the debate with Harris. Maybe he shouldn't have accepted this early debate from Biden because that gave Biden a chance to skate
free her Democrats chance to skate free from Biden. So I don't think it's it's not a campaign where you would go and give everyone high marks.
Yeah. So I think that with the Harris campaign, with the Democratic Party, we have one clear absolute worst decision and one clear best decision. With a Trump campaign, we have a lot of bad decisions, but unclear which one is, like the worst decision. They didn't do anything as a gregious as the Democratic camp when it came to you know, when it came to the Biden decision. But let's see what happens. Let's see what happens.
Yeah, we can brow there. It's still approximately fifty to fifty.
Race and it's still yep, it's still approximately fifty to fifty. So after the break night. Let's uh, let's talk quickly about the model quick.
Break and then a quickie little model horse race segment.
All right, one week to go, Nate, What are the models saying? I know we're fifty to fifty, but are you seeing movement? Are you seeing any anything important? Kind of where where are we and what's happening?
Valleatest numbers Tamala Harris.
Every time you need, you need to get a new voice going.
I love Kamala Harris has a forty five point three percent chance of winning the electoral college.
Are you trying to be the AI version of yourself?
You see, you have these automated we're dating ourselves as automated and a seventy one point four percent probability of winning the popular vote. It's basically fifty five forty five Trump or fifty four forty five with a small chance of a tie. Um, it's been a little weird. I mean, look, it's gradually drifted to Trump over actually a fairly long period now. And you know, two and every three days Harris has lost ground on the forecast since since roughly
early October. You know, it looks like you could stabilize a bit. Maybe I don't think we're gonna don'tink we're gonn gonna learn very much in this last week of the polling. In fact, I kind of trust polsters lest this. They all every time a polster, Oh, every state is is just plus one, every little every single state to tie. No, you're fucking hurting, you're cheating, you're cheating. Your demos aren't all gonna come out at exactly one point leads when
you're sampling eight hundred people over dozens of surveys. You are lying. You're putting a fucking figure on the scale. I will not name names, but some pulsters are really bad about this, all these all these gop leaning for it's always, oh, we're not going on too far on a limb. Trump. It's just Trump plus one in Pennsylvania every fucking single time. No, it's how fucking polling works. That's not how that's not how polling is supposed to work. There's a margin of.
Tell us how you really feel, so you get.
Hurting and like everyone just saw well, I mean, basically, the posters are fifty to fifty is a forecast, because not all base rates are fifty to fifty, right, The posters are just fucking punting, except the New York Times, it actually has balls, right, The polster's just fucking punting on this election for the most part. I mean not just the New York Times. There are some of the other high quality polls will actually publish numbers that surprise
you once in a while. If a polster never publishes the numbers that surprises you, then it has no value. Information that has no potential to be surprising has no value. Should already be kind of like priced into your worldview. We're kind of priced into like the model in my case, the model lab become one in the last week of the election. But look, all seven swing states are still polling within it looks like a point and half here. Maybe Trump's leads up to almost two points in Arizona. Yeah,
two points in Aeras. So everything's pulling within two points. And Hare's got a good poll in Arizona that we haven't encounted for yet, right, so within two points. Doesn't take a genius to know that if every swing states a tie, that the overall forecast is a tie. You know, Pennsylvania is at one state though, if you just add up the states where where Harris leads then she is one state short. She is zero point four points behind in Pennsylvania. And guess who is the governor of Pennsylvania.
Maria start with an s.
John Fetterman, No, he's a center from Pennsylvania. Uh, Bob Casey No. The other say two senators Actually in every if the polls are exactly right, then actually, uh, it says even in Nevada. So then Nevada is tied. I don't know what happens there. They go play roulette. I think is the rule of Nevada if it's tied, and uh, but Harris would come up one state short, and that state's name is Pensylvania. But again, so if you're if you really are going over it with like an incredible precision,
but you don't want to have that precision. Anyone who says that they know what's happening is is just is they're guessing. And half the fucking pundit industry just kind of they've always been on red, been on red or been on blue every time, and like and they just always make the same fucking debt and rationalize blues lucky. Well, you know it's blues turn Now I have blues on a Wayne Streak, and half the time they're right, and they're like, oh my god, I'm a God's gift to
fucking election prognostication. Anyway, nobody knows anything.
Yeah, no, I mean, I'm in Nevada right now, and I'm actually you know, looking at the at the updates, and the Republicans are ahead in early mail in voting. It looks like Clark County, which is supposed to be, which is where I live, which is the kind of democratic wall. The mail in ballot rates are not good, and so you know, and both Trump and Harris are coming here on Thursday, so stay inside, don't drive anywhere on Thursday.
Why is that you're at the fucking airport in Vegas? Like I love Vegas, but like why because there's lots of Campagig events there. Why is the the airport's so weird about this ground stop ship?
Yeah, I don't know, but I made the mistake of flying out one day when one of the candidates I don't remember which was flying in and basically missed my flight because there was no going in or out of the airports and nothing whatsoever could be done about it. So so yeah, so so those are those are always fun moments. But yeah, it's it's close, it's it's a complete toss up, and I'm I'm glad that you are that your model with which you are one agrees with
that because that's exactly what it feels like here. And I did think it was interesting by the way that they're both coming here as opposed to one of the other battleground states on Thursday. But but I guess that goes to show that, yeah, when you're when you're short, you're trying to really rally those undecided voters and they definitely exist here. But yeah, let's let's see what happens
next week. We'll actually be doing two episodes, so we'll be dropping and episode for you right before the election on Monday, so stay tuned. We'll be be doing some real time visits to see what's happening with the election. But I think I would like to end today, and Nate, you can, you can end it however you want, but I would like to say, please, please, please, especially if you're in a swing state, but everywhere I just go out and vote. Please do that. I think that it's
incredibly important exercise your right to vote. And yeah, that I think is a really important message for this week.
Go out and vote. Don't don't. Don't let more money of the campaigns. They can't do anything with it at this point. I'm serious, like, yeah, save it for like a good cause that that money will do nothing for any candidate you're voting for. If you have to donate, donate to a local race, right, so vote. I agree with that, Maria, But save your money for a good cause, all right.
And on that note, let's see what happens next week. Let us know what you think of the show. Reach out to us at Risky Business at pushkin dot fm. Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kondikova.
And byby Nate Silver.
The show is a co production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced by Isabelle Carter. Our associate producer is Gabriel Hunter Chang. Our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
If you like the show, please rate and review us so other people can find us too. And if you want to listen to an AD free version, sign up for Pushkin Plus. For six, ten and nine a month you get access to ad free listening. Thanks for tuning in.
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