KURT RUTHERFORD: Hi. This is Kurt Rutherford (ph). I am at Kennedy Space Center, Florida. We are just about to launch our Europa Clipper mission. We’re going to go explore Jupiter’s moon, Europa. It has twice as much liquid water underneath its icy shell as we do here on Earth. Is that ocean habitable? What is in there? That’s what our mission’s going to investigate. This podcast was recorded at…
TAMARA KEITH, HOST:
12:10 p.m. on Tuesday, October 15.
RUTHERFORD: Things may have changed by the time you hear it. OK, enjoy the show.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE BIGTOP ORCHESTRA’S “TEETER BOARD: FOLIES BERGERE (MARCH AND TWO-STEP)”)
KEITH: OK, that is very cool. I think he is an actual rocket scientist.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: The more I hear these time stamps, the more I think I have very limited skills.
KEITH: But you can talk about polls, and we are going to do that. Hey there. It’s the NPR POLITICS PODCAST. I’m Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.
STEPHEN FOWLER, BYLINE: I’m Stephen Fowler. I cover the campaign.
MONTANARO: And I’m Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.
KEITH: And today on the show, Election Day is three weeks away. People are voting early across the country, and the campaigns of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are in the home stretch. Domenico, this has been a tight race pretty much all along. Is it possible that it is now tighter?
MONTANARO: It is, which is wild, to me, frankly…
KEITH: Yeah.
MONTANARO: …Because you know, you don’t think that you’re going to see too many twists and turns in a race where you saw this many twists and turns already. But, you know, when Harris got into the race, the trajectory of the race really flipped. And all of a sudden, all of those leads that Trump had in those seven swing states evaporated. Harris took over the lead in the blue wall states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania by, you know, two to three points or so. And she closed the gap entirely in those Sun Belt states of Arizona, Nevada in the West, and Georgia, North Carolina in the East.
And now that has completely changed. Now Trump has eaten into Harris’ margins after about a month of just intense negative ads and attacks. And now the average margin in the polls of the seven swing states – the seven states we’re most closely watching that I just named – Trump now has a lead of 0.34 percentage points in an average of the polls. I don’t know how it could possibly get any closer than that, but this is the first time Trump has had a lead in that average since Harris got in the race.
KEITH: This is a margin of error campaign, a margin of error race, which, I guess, of course, means that anything could happen?
MONTANARO: Anything certainly could happen, and I think that there are some big questions on the accuracy of the polling because in 2016 and 2020, they understated Trump’s support. Biden was leading in lots of places by a lot more than he wound up winning by.
KEITH: Right.
MONTANARO: You know, Clinton wound up losing in 2016. In 2022, they overstated Republican support, and Democrats did better. Of course, Trump wasn’t on the ballot. So have the polls corrected themselves and now it’s actually a true coin flip? Are we stuck in a place where Democratic strategists and pollsters are concerned about, where Trump might actually win? It certainly seems, with the momentum in the race seemingly on his side right now, that he’s in the driver’s seat somewhat.
KEITH: And I think that we are getting a hint of how the campaigns are seeing this moment and how they’re feeling based on how the candidates and their campaigns are behaving. And Stephen, let’s start with Trump. In recent days, his rhetoric on the trail has gotten – I don’t know – pretty extreme.
FOWLER: Yeah. I mean, I would argue that Trump’s rhetoric has been extreme the entirety of this campaign. Everything that he has said has pointed towards this vision of – I keep using the word dire. It’s dire right now with Democrats in charge and dire if he doesn’t win again. And it has only escalated the closer we’ve gotten to the election. Most of the 90-minute speeches that he does and the campaign ads and everything are the same things.
But there are instances that stick out and kind of one-offs that sort of illustrate just how abnormal what he’s saying is, like the other day when he said that maybe we should use the military, the National Guard, on some people in the left. Over the weekend when he was in California, he mused that maybe he would withhold money to help with wildfires for California because of Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat. And thus, he changed his tune on some different things. And those are things that are not normal, and they’re very antagonistic and very aggressive and not the type of unifying message that some Republicans had hoped that Trump would bring.
KEITH: Well, and Domenico, some of these things start out as a one-off, and then there’s this cycle of outrage and experts on extremism and, you know, the whole thing. And then within a week or two, it becomes a regular part of the playlist.
MONTANARO: You know, I would argue that it matters for, you know, a majority of the country. We continue to see, you know, Trump trailing in national surveys, not getting to 50%. He didn’t get to 50% in 2016 or 2020. His unfavorable ratings are above 50%. But for his core supporters and for a significant portion of the country, certainly enough people to help him win in the seven most closely watched states that are more conservative than the country writ large, it doesn’t matter. It hasn’t mattered. And I think a lot of that is because of how much we’ve been able to insulate ourselves with the kinds of information that we’ve been taking in. Our information ecosystems are more segregated now than they ever have been in American history, and that’s what’s happening largely where you can’t really break through on a lot of these things. And if you do and you ask Trump supporters, they’ll say it either doesn’t matter or they don’t care.
KEITH: So before we move on, I do want to talk about something that happened last night that was really quite strange. Trump was holding this town hall style event in Pennsylvania. He was supposed to be taking questions from the audience, and he did take several questions from the audience, moderated by South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem. And then there were some interruptions because there were some medical events, and Stephen, take it from there.
FOWLER: Yeah. So there were people that apparently fainted because there’s a lot of people packed into a tight space. And then Trump decided that he didn’t want to restart the Q&A portion and instead kind of just wanted to vibe with music.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DONALD TRUMP: Let’s not do any more questions. Let’s just listen to music. Let’s make it into a music.
KRISTI NOEM: (Laughter).
(CHEERING)
TRUMP: Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?
KEITH: And then that’s exactly what happened, right?
FOWLER: It’s what happened for closer to 40 minutes. There were many songs on Trump’s playlist, his personal favorites, “Ave Maria,” “Time To Say Goodbye,” “YMCA,” “Hallelujah,” “Nothing Compares 2 U,” “An American Trilogy,” “Rich Men North Of Richmond,” “November Rain,” “Memory” from “Cats.” And then it eventually ended. I mean, some people did walk out. There were cameras showing people leaving as there was this delay, but for 40 minutes there was just this image of Donald Trump listening to his personal playlist, swaying along and conducting on stage with basically a captive audience. And for all of the things that I’ve seen covering Trump in the last eight years, that is one of the most bizarre, strange, abnormal things. And I don’t know what it means, and I don’t know how that affects things. But it definitely is something that will be memorable of this campaign cycle.
MONTANARO: You know, it’s super odd, but I have to say that it’s also emblematic of the way Trump has approached this campaign. He hasn’t really delivered serious policy ideas. He hasn’t tried to engage in debates or questioning back and forth. He avoided debates during the Republican primary. He’s only agreed to one debate with Kamala Harris. And even at the two debates that he’s participated in, he hasn’t really delivered on a lot of the sort of intricate policy that we would normally hear in those kinds of debates going back and forth. Instead, at a town hall, where people are getting to ask questions, he decides, who wants to hear questions? Let’s just sit and listen to the music. And there are some voters who certainly went to that last night who I’d seen quoted saying that they really wished he would have taken more questions. They’re still going to vote for him because they align with him, but it’s clear that he just doesn’t need to care, he feels like, about taking questions either from people, the media or at debates.
KEITH: All right, we are going to take a quick break, and when we get back, what Harris is up to.
And we’re back, and I want to talk about what Vice President Harris has been up to on the campaign trail, which is a lot. She is in the midst of a very intense campaign swing that will take her to Michigan not once but twice this week. She is today courting Black male voters, who she’s had some trouble reaching, with a town hall radio event with Charlamagne tha God, an entertainer who has not always been favorable to Democratic candidates. And last night at her rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, she played a super cut of some of the more extreme things that Trump has said on the campaign trail recently. She is this week leaning into the idea that Trump is unfit and unwell. She released her medical report and is saying, why won’t he release his? Domenico, do you think that any of this works, any of this effort to try to put more attention back on Trump and what he’s saying?
MONTANARO: Well, I think Harris is trying everything she possibly can. I mean, her campaign sees what’s happening in the polls. She knows that her biggest deficiency is with men, and she knows that she’s got to try to appeal to at least those who would be open to her. You know, and that starts with Black men, young Black men in particular, who, you know, her campaign really feels like she needs to be able to try to turn out to be able to win because right now she’s polling at lower than any Democratic candidate in presidential history. So below 80% would be lower than anybody ever, which would just be so unusual for the first Black woman who could be president. So she feels like she has work to do. Her campaign knows she has work to do with some of these groups that they feel need to go out for her, who should be open to her message.
KEITH: And from Charlamagne tha God to Bret Baier on Fox News, she is sitting down for her first interview with Fox ever tomorrow. Stephen, what is going on there?
FOWLER: Well, I think there’s a lot of things going on here. A central message to Harris’ campaign has been reaching out to people that did not vote for Donald Trump in this year’s presidential primary and will not vote for Donald Trump but would not call themselves Democrats. I mean, in Arizona she heavily touted, you know, the bipartisan support that she’s gotten from Republican mayors and Republican officeholders there. She’s illustrating that she will be a president to all people.
And the underlying campaign math is her coalition, which is the Biden coalition, includes a lot of people that would not consider themselves Democrats. And so by going to Bret Baier and doing an interview on Fox, one, it shows detractors on the Democratic side and on the campaign side that, you know, she is capable of doing these interviews, but two, it goes to show that she is trying to reach those people that aren’t going to vote for Donald Trump but might just stay home because they don’t like either one of those options. And I think all of these interviews and all of these stops she’s doing plays into that larger picture of, for Kamala Harris to win, she has to get votes from basically everybody, except for Donald Trump’s biggest die-hard supporters.
MONTANARO: I think that it’s an interesting theory of the case that both campaigns have that’s going to be tested. You know, Trump is – has not changed his message, although it has meant that he’s sort of cut into the margins with Latinos and Black men in particular, it seems, and that he’s going to try to run up the score with white voters without college degrees once again, which isn’t really changing his message very much or expanding out to appeal to anybody else who hasn’t wanted to vote for him in the past. As opposed to Harris, who’s really trying to reach across to moderate her positions, and there’s going to be a lot of autopsies (ph) that wind up happening depending on which side wins out.
KEITH: So I do want to, before we go today, Stephen, check in on early voting. It’s starting today in Georgia, later in the week in North Carolina. Are people voting? What is happening?
FOWLER: Voters are voting in Georgia in particular. There was a press conference this morning with Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, saying by 10:30 A.M. there had already been 71,000 people voting, and, you know, they’re not in the prediction business, but it could be a record first-day turnout. And as of the time we are taping this podcast, at lunchtime, they said that there’s well over 100,000 people that have voted, and they’re definitely going to have a record-setting blowout first day of in-person early voting. So people are voting, and there’s a lot of interest. I went out early this morning to a northern Atlanta suburban early voting site, talked with a bunch of people. One of them was Brian Heath (ph) of Johns Creek.
BRIAN HEATH: For me, it’s preservation of democracy as it stands. We’re not perfect – we recognize that – but we don’t need to go backwards. I think we need to move forward. Plus, having daughters, I was concerned about someone else having rights over what they do with their bodies. That’s a big issue with me.
FOWLER: He voted for Kamala Harris. I also talked to several Republicans who are supporting Donald Trump. The things that they said are important to their vote are immigration and the economy, basically everything you’re hearing these campaigns talk about. And so there’s a lot of interest in voting in Georgia. There’s a lot of attention on voting in Georgia, and I expect those numbers will continue to rise as we get through these next three weeks.
KEITH: There is this exciting thing that happens, where at some point we don’t have to just look at what the polls are telling us, we can look at what the voters are telling us.
MONTANARO: Yeah, I think it’s going to be – obviously, it’s really exciting for me after people, you know, wind up actually putting in real results as opposed to everyone saying, what do you think the polls are going to say? Do you think they’re going to be right? It doesn’t matter. It’s going to be real votes. And I think there’s a couple really notable things to watch as those results start to come in three weeks from now ’cause we are seeing movement with some significant groups here. You know, they could make history, could decide the election.
One, we possibly could have the largest gender gap in history. It’s certainly what polls are indicating could wind up happening – men voting in big margins for Trump, women voting in big margins for Kamala Harris. Trump, as I noted, is cutting into the margins with Black and Latino voters, mostly men. Does that hold up? But Democrats look like they might win the largest margin with white voters with college degrees for a Democrat in history for them as well. And again, that margin with men, how does Trump wind up doing? You know, I think those are going to be things that are super important to watch, and a lot of movement underneath what’s been a very close race.
KEITH: We’re going to leave it there for today. I’m Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.
FOWLER: I’m Stephen Fowler. I cover the campaign.
MONTANARO: And I’m Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.
KEITH: And thank you for listening to the NPR POLITICS PODCAST.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE BIGTOP ORCHESTRA’S “TEETER BOARD: FOLIES BERGERE (MARCH AND TWO-STEP)”)
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