Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Wvuafm, Tuscaloosa. Any opinions expressed in this program are those of the host and do not represent the thoughts or opinions of 90.7, WVUA or the University of Alabama.
[00:00:18] Hello, everybody, and welcome to season four, episode five of Pulse of the Nation. Of course, I am Braden Vick. As always, I am the host of Pulse of the Nation. We're about to go through the week's biggest political political stories and really, as far as this election cycle is concerned, because we are approaching 10 days until the presidential election. At the time of recording, I want to get you through a lot of the polls and the early votes in particular, because the biggest news stories are obviously related to the election. So we've got five minutes. Let's go through some of the biggest ones. So the first one I want to touch on is really the storm that has gone on inside the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. After their bill, their owners decided to withhold the editorial boards from endorsing political candidates. Both editorial boards were planning to endorse Kamala Harris. Both editorial boards lead Democratic and usually endorse Democratic candidates for president. So that caused a major storm. It found out that the calls came from the top. There were a lot of accusations, not just from, you know, outside observers, you know, just checking in, but also from people within the journalism industry themselves that there was a potential fear on the part of these billionaires, especially Jeff Bezos at the Washington Post, that they might be fearful of if Donald Trump wins, what happens to. What happens to their relationships with the United States government. And they've been criticized for that a lot. Bezos, particularly, has come under fire. There have been thousands of Washington Post subscriptions that have been canceled. If you go to a certain section of Twitter, you'll see it massively. You know, there will be a lot of posts about, oh, I canceled my Washington Post subscription. You know, I canceled such and such subscription. And there were also a lot of journalists, you know, who work for a lot of other publications. You know, I think Puck News and CNN in particular, some of the ones I found, and also some, you know, local journalists, especially even in southeastern Pennsylvania, that condemned the decision by Jeff Bezos in the Washington Post, you know, to not. To go back to not endorsing presidential candidates. And there was one, I think, Jim Gardner, the, one of the longtime anchors out in Philadelphia, though, who condemned that situation. That's, that's very notable because if you are in the Philadelphia media market, you know, he is a legendary figure. If word gets out that he's called Donald Trump an authoritarian. And mind you, the people who are criticizing this decision are supporters of Kamala Harris or at the very least, opponents of Donald Trump who say that Jeff Bezos has engaged in massive cowardice against the guy who they see as an authoritarian leader. Now, speaking of, you know, speaking of the guy they accused to be as such, Donald Trump was revealed today again by, by a General John Kelly, I believe his former chief of staff, that Donald Trump apparently openly proclaimed that he wished he had the, the generals of German dictator Adolf hit. Now, this also caused a massive firestorm not just against Trump because, well, if these, you know, this is proven true, then why would it cause a firestorm, but also against mainstream media because, again, this ties into the story of liberals are, how do I say this? Liberals are getting more and more skeptical of mainstream media for what they see as failing to meet the moment. You know, liberals, you will see on Twitter, resist liberals in particular, you know, I don't want to say that they are attacking the media for not being critical enough of Donald Trump. What they're accusing the media of doing is they're accusing the media of whitewashing Donald Trump, covering him as a, you know, as a normal presidential nominee when the Democrats will allege that he isn't and thus has caused another massive firestorm.
[00:04:35] And what, you know, what the next 10 or so days will transpire out to be, we'll see if a lot of fears are materialized, you know, regarding that situation. But it has been true that, you know, public confidence in the mainstream media, particularly among Democrats, has been down from four years ago. And I do think I have discussed this before, what with the New York Times and A.G. sulzberger. Situation is there's a previous episode, this season of Bolts today. Should I talk about that? Or maybe it was these season three as well. I think I talk about it, too, but go watch that. It's very interesting, you know, what's happening in the press, especially with the loss of journalist jobs this year and the crunch that, you know, the journalism industry find itself in. Speaking of industries that are facing quite a crunch, let's talk about the polling industry first. We'll talk about, you know, the 538 polling averages that I go back to. And for the record, I do apologize for not getting an episode out last week. Week, if you know how I sound. I'm still a little bit, you know, you know, backed up my sinuses. It was really bad last week, so I unfortunately couldn't come. But I am feeling a lot better, at least as far as energy levels are concerned. So there you go. So we'll go from closest to least close in terms of the swing state and states and we'll go up to, we'll go up to Arizona.
[00:06:01] So we'll start out in Wisconsin. Like look like when I tell you that a lot of these pollsters I believe are hedging their bets towards just saying everything's a toss up. This is what I mean. So the538 averages in Wisconsin is Kamala Harris up by like 2/10 for a percentage point or 1/10 of a percentage point. Like you see a lot of these polls, that's that the ones from Emerson College say Trump by one, Redfield Wilton Harris by two on message, Trump by one one Quinnipiac a tie morning consult a tie.
[00:06:38] You know, Bullfinch Group, Paris by two to Harris by three, Atlas until Harris by one and whatnot.
[00:06:45] If you take a look at Nevada, Trump by two tenths of a percentage point. Ref by three morning consult you know, Harris by one. You know, Atlas until a tied race. You know, you know, in Washington Post George Mason have you know, Harris tie with likely voters would chop it up by three with registered voters. If we see in the state of Pennsylvania, I'm just rattling off numbers. Here's a third of the seven swing states, Pennsylvania. Apparently Trump is now ahead by 3/10 of a percentage point. Why is that? There has been a state of spate of friendly Trump polls. Now one of the things I want to talk about, Franklin Abarthal has Trump by 1 of the likely vote and then Harris by 4 with registered voters. Which let me tell you something, if your likely voter models change that much, you must be assuming a very Republican electorate, you know, which would be similar to 2022, which would be similar to, you know, a red wave election. That would mean Democrats would not be enthused to vote in that state. I have my doubts about that. But you know, okay, you know, morning consul is Harris by two Qantas and on it, I'm not counting Qantas insights as a poll. That Twitter account talks about how the election was extolled, whatever, I don't know but Robert Furrow went was Harris by one Emerson God just Trump by two. You know, Atlas intel had Trump by three.
[00:08:13] And, and you'll see this, you know, everyone just going for oh, Harris by two to Trump by three or whatnot. Michigan Harris is up by 410 per percentage point. The 538 bowling averages quarter piat catter by four. But Redfield Wilton is A top Morning Council as they're up by four.
[00:08:31] But Atlas intel had Donald Trump bought by three. But then the Bullfinch Group comes out and says, nope, Conway is up by eight points. So there are at least some outliers, some divergences and whatnot, which is good to see mean. But if you take a look at North Carolina, Trump's up by 1.4 percentage points. Again, Emerson Colleges on Maris had Trump up by two. You know, Emerson had him up by two. Raffle one had him up by two. But Server USA and High Point had Air by one. Whatnot. We take a look at a state like Georgia, you know, 5:30 has pegged that. Trump by 1.7. Raphael Wilton, Trump by 1. Marist College, a tied race. Morning Council, Trump by 2. You know, Atlas until Trump by 2. And then if you take a look at a state like Arizona, once again, Donald Trump by two, you know, again Ralph Hill is a tie. Marist College, Chamba one, you know, Morning consoles at a tied race as well. So what is going on is that I first need to explain, you know, and with the 530 model, it's very interesting because all the models apparently say it's a basically a pure Tassa. Now this 538 model has Trump 53% chance to win. But that's, that's so close you can't really even say anything.
[00:09:52] So, so like what do you see? Like what do you know? But what do I think is going on in regards to a lot of these polls is my main theory with this is that the pollsters don't want to be wrong three times in a row. So to give you a little bit of flashback, the pollsters in the polls in the presidential elections, they've been wrong two presidential election cycles in a row in 2016 and in 2020. And both of those times they overestimated the Democrats and underestimated Donald Trump specifically. And one of the things that came out of the aftermath of 2020 was the pollsters were like, okay, we have to make absolutely sure we are not underestimating Republicans anymore. And so they adjust their turnout models, they adjust their waiting to refer reflect that for this election. And the second thing I think is going on is there are a lot of Republican pollsters insider advantage, you know, WIC Strategies, Qantas, Fabrizioli and Associates. So some of the Trafalgar and SoCal strategies, Rasterson as well, a lot of those pollsters which are Republican aligned, it's flat out partisan polls in many cases.
[00:11:16] What happened in 2022. What I've seen some of in 2024 is that those polls are flooding polls are flooding the zone with GOP friendly polls to try to gin up what I believe to be false Republican enthusiasm and momentum in certain states. Now, is this happening again? What were the recent spate of GOP friendly polls in the past week or so, which was similarly what happened in 2022? You had a spate of GOP friendly pulse both from, you know, both from partisan and nonpartisan polls. And what happened? Those Republicans were estimated in 2022 way overestimated. In a lot of cases, like even Michigan's governor's race, those polls were tightening up. And, you know, Gretchen Whitmer, one bite said, you know, Washington Senate race, you know, between, you know, Patty Murray and Tiffany Snowley, that race tightened to like, you know, tightness, single digits. And Patty Murray and what he'd like, 15 points or whatever, huge miss there.
[00:12:18] And the question I have is whether or not this is happening again, whether the pulse or polls and the pollsters and even the pundits are so deathly afraid of getting it wrong the same way three times, are they willing to make it more likely that they're wrong, but in a different manner than risk being wrong for the same time? Because if they're wrong for the same reasons three times in a row that they underestimate Republicans, then you really. That again, you really have then the guest industry. I'm struggling to put words together. What it is with the industry is that, you know, your reputations are on the line and everyone knows that. It's like, okay, we've got two presidential elections wrong in a row, you know where, and we've gotten it wrong the same way.
[00:13:16] And if you get it wrong the same way again, your reputations are going to be in the tank and no one's going to respect you. So I do wonder, is it possible, you know, the thing the same what we saw in the same what we saw in 2022, because again, the final few weeks, there seemed to be a lot of Republican enthusiasm. There was supposed to be this red wave election. You know, Republicans are going to take everything. And then that didn't happen because a lot of the nonpartisan polls decided to hedge their bets to basically say all these Republican polls are coming out with results favoring the Republican candidate. We have to wait our turnout models to say it's going to be a more Republican electorate than we thought we were going to expect, and then have that electorate not be the electorate that shows up Which I think is a really interesting phenomenon that, you know, what's going on in the background. Because as with literally everything else involved in, you know, covering politics is that when you're doing polls, there's a lot of politics going on in the background as well. And essentially I do want to go over not just Franklin and Marshall, what I did before, but also those that there was a, there was a Tip Insights poll that I want to show y'all, if I can get back to that in Pennsylvania, which really got a lot of flack and exposed like, yes, this, this is the one which really exposed that pulse, which is once, I say once a respected bolster, very respected bolster.
[00:15:11] This is progress commissioned with American Greatness that had Kamala Harris by four with registered voters of Pennsylvania. But for whatever reason, Donald Trump was up by one in Pennsylvania. That again, five point gap. And what ended up happening was Tip Insights nuked Philadelphia from the likely voter rolls. Basically they controlled it for, you know, a white or a college educated. And Philadelphia has a lot of non white, non college educated people. And so even if the, a lot of those registered voters indicated that they were probably going to vote in this election with those controls, they were basically nuked off of the likely voter screen.
[00:15:56] And there are few regions where they conducted this poll. And Philadelphia was the vast majority of the people who were in the registered voter poll, but not in the likely voter pool or at least nearly half of it that just cannot run.
[00:16:13] And what was essentially happening is that Tip Insights was found out for cooking the books, essentially doing what they could to get a Trump favoring electorate in Pennsylvania. And when that happens, and this again speaks to, I guess, an eroticism of, you know, you know, liberals online who follow elections closely.
[00:16:38] And when you get into the weeds of all this and whatnot, and this was exposed not just by, you know, not just by those people, was exposed by very good people who work at Split Ticket and whatnot, you know, Laksha Jain and a bunch of other people.
[00:16:53] It really like, if you're not confident in a pollster to give you accurate data. Like if you're assuming like you see this happen before now, now you're assuming that, oh, all this, you know, you know, Tip Insights polls, which, this is a completely different likely voter model from what they've done before, for what it's worth, and thus what ends up happening is that it just essentially reduces confidence in the results that the polls are giving out, leading to a lot of people saying, oh, the polls are just fake.
[00:17:33] And that becomes really dangerous you know, especially if you get it wrong again.
[00:17:41] Now, what happens if, you know, the polls achieve their goal? You know, we're not wrong the same way, you know, we're not overestimating Republicans anymore. But what if they're underestimating Democrats?
[00:17:56] What if election night rolls around? You know, it's a similar story as 2022. A bunch of GOP friendly polls have put into people's minds like, oh well, Republicans are expected to win now, Trump is expected to win, yada yada yada. And then Kamala Harris wins comfortably. Like, what happens then if you know, you're found out to have underestimated Democrats? Well, I'll tell you what will happen. Like if you ever go on like Twitter, if you ever go like Nate Silver's mentions of Kamala Harris wins, oh my goodness, he is going to, he and all these posters, they're going to be slaughtered. They are going to be slaughtered by liberals from all walks of life.
[00:18:42] Like it is, it is going to be basically a very, very interesting thing that happens if, you know, if such a scenario happens to where pulses are underestimating Democrats because usually pollsters don't underestimate the same group 3 election cycles in a row and they haven't for a very, very long time.
[00:19:07] And essentially what is happening is you're getting basically a near universal swing among all these different cross tab averages and whatnot. You know, if you look really, really closely is that, oh, Donald Trump is getting basically everywhere except for some Democrats who are coming home to Kamala Harris is, you know, what's going on, you know, also whether that's noise or whatnot.
[00:19:35] So the question is again, if you know, if what is going on is that polls are doing everything they can to make sure they don't underestimate Republicans, are they hurting?
[00:19:50] And that is the great question that you know that a former Democratic poll, so the name of Adam Carlson brings up. There's a couple of likely voter polls nationally from CNN and the New York Times that had the national popularity is being tied. And also that previous Franklin and Marshall thing was caught doing a similar thing to tip Insights, which is again, they had Harris by fourth registered voters, Trump by one Viking voters. How do you get that? Except if you think that the Republicans are just going to horrendously outvote the Democrats.
[00:20:26] Like essentially like if it is true.
[00:20:32] All right, we have about 10 minutes before I have to go on to early voting and the early voting numbers. If it is true that pollsters are hurting towards a tie to cover themselves and Hedge bets.
[00:20:48] If that ends up being true, then the trust that people are going to put in the polls, or at least the people who follow this closely that are outside of mainstream media, is going to go into the tank, you know, and this brings up another question about the polls because oftentimes we talk about polls as, oh, they are this end all, be all, you know, sort of like they are oracles telling us how a state's going to vote and whatnot. We take the averages, we'll have a good idea of how states going to vote. But what if that's not what polls can do? Because we know polling is expensive. We've seen a lot fewer polls this go around than in 2020, you know, for example, and it's really difficult to do a really good poll these days just because of how expensive it is. You have to buy all these like voter rolls, voter list or whatnot, contact everybody.
[00:21:50] Like it is expensive, you know, especially when I've talked about low response rates before.
[00:21:57] Like if these response rates are sub 1%, it just makes it even more time consuming, which directly leads to less polls getting released because you just don't have enough time to contact all these different people because people just don't answer, not answer random numbers anymore.
[00:22:17] Right. So we've gone through that. But polls have this little thing called a margin of error.
[00:22:25] And usually it's somewhere around four, you know, like three to five points, let's say, like the really good polls of margins of error, like three, three and a half points. Other polls, well, four, 4.2, 4.8, like 5.2, whatnot. And the cross tab is going to very whack margins of error that make them really not worth looking at, in my opinion.
[00:22:50] But technically how statistics work is if you have a poll that has a margin of error of 4 points, for example, in a state like a state like Wisconsin, and if you have a Trump by one result in Wisconsin, Wisconsin, that means that the state's results could fall anywhere from Kamala Harris winning the state by three points to Donald Trump winning the state by five points, but the poll isn't wrong because that result falls within that poll's margin of error.
[00:23:29] Right. And so if the average margin of error of polls, you know, say it's around three and a half points, and the same thing is, the same thing comes true. But we rely on these polls to give us like all these minute, you know, details about, oh, how is this state exactly going to vote in Grant, there are going to be pollsters that nail this election. What Pollsters, they are. I don't know, maybe it'll be the New York Times. Maybe it'll be Trafalgar. Probably not. Maybe it'll be Big Village. Probably not. And probably not New York Times as well either, to be completely honest. Like, I don't know if any pollster is going to nail it and maybe many will. Who knows.
[00:24:09] But if, for example, you know, we have a national popular vote of, you know, Kamala Harris by like, like three or so, that's the result, the national popular vote. But you know, all the polls say that the popular vote is going to be tied. The polls technically aren't wrong because the result falls within the margin of error, even though the polls were off.
[00:24:38] And thus we need to have a conversation about what do polls actually do and what do we in the media interpret them as doing? Because we talk about poll results as if they are a look into exactly how a place or a country is voting. You know, it gets covered on media like that. You know, all, you know, the morning news, you know, you'll have these big poll releases and whatnot. And that'll dominate like an out, like that'll dominate a news cycle or for example, dominate a show's coverage in particular. You know, I know NBC News often does that a Morning Joe. And you, a few other, you know, media companies do that as well.
[00:25:25] But you know, what if those polls cannot tell us how a place will vote? What if they can't? You know, I have had this idea that's when swimming in my mind for weeks about, you know, what can polling do?
[00:25:42] And what can polling do? I honestly don't think it's much more then telling us which states are toss ups and which states just aren't toss ups and which states are competitive versus which states are not. Because if we go back to that 538 average, then, you know, we will find, you know, that the next closest state for the presidential average is Minnesota. Kamala Harris has a five point advantage there. Now, do I think Minnesota is only going to vote for Kamala by file points? No, it's. It's just not.
[00:26:18] Because that, I do think that is underestimated. But there are only a few polls out of there. The Last poll was October 12th to the 14th and that's going to be two weeks before this episode gets released. That was Kamala Harris by 8. 8 and then 8. And to be honest, I don't know how this waiting works if I'm gonna be completely honest, because you have Harris by six, Harris by eight, Harris by six, Harris by six, Harris by five, Harris by seven, Harris by seven, Harris by four. And that go for the past like two months. Another Harris by seven, Harris by five, Harris by nine. And that goes into being common. Harris by five points, five through eight. What are you smoking? But, you know, that tells us that Minnesota, you know, is competitive, but it very much leans Democratic. Same thing with New Hampshire. You know, a Democrat by six, Florida Republican by six or so. You know, Virginia by Democrat by six or so. Texas is Republican by like seven points or so. Although some of the polls have shown a bit of a closer race. You know, the morning consult has Trump up volley four in the state of Te Texas.
[00:27:34] So the thing I do want to really ask of us as consumers of news and not just us, but the media as well. Like you see New Mexico, Ohio are also in that range of competitive but not battlegrounds. And then there's another tier of states after that. If you, if you take a look at the polling, that would, you know, there'd be Missouri, you know, New York, for whatever reason is only democrat by 15. I blame Siena College for that. Although the last poll was Kamala Harris by 19. So, you know, we will see, you know, we will see on that front, you know, should, you know, if that also underestimates Democrats. Spoiler alert. It is. But with that other states like Missouri, Montana, then another tier, Montana, Nebraska, Washington, as you get to your safe states.
[00:28:32] So can polling only show us the tiers that states fall into, like toss up lean, likely and safe, like certain. And like certain races as well. Like even you go to the Senate in the House, they have bigger margins of error. Like it's funny, you know, the, apparently the closest Senate race in the polls is Nebraska Senate race between Deb Fisher and the independent candidate Dan Osborne. That's apparently fish about 0.9. And there was a Torchlight Strategies poll that had Jeff Fisher up by seven points. And that was a, I think a Republican internal. Yeah, that was a Republican eternal.
[00:29:13] I think the last non internal poll that Deb Fisher has led was all the way back, or at least a non was all the way back in August.
[00:29:25] And even then she's only up by like one point. So Deb Fisher has been caught slacking. I mean, she's still going to win because Nebraska is a little too red right now for an independent candidate, you know, with I guess, nominal Democratic backing to pull it off. But, you know, we'll see. But it really does show us that can polls show us how a state's going to vote or does it give us a range of outcomes? You know, and if it can only give us a range of outcomes, then why do a lot of us rely on polling so much to tell us how a state's going to vote if it can't do that?
[00:30:05] You know, and I talk about non polling indicators all the time. Time. So I've mentioned the Washington primary, I've mentioned special elections. I also want to mention fundraising. I also want to mention advertising. I know I've mentioned advertising a lot, but I want to mention that again. And micro targeting and also ground game, as well as basic fundamentals of the race. You have to look at those as well. If the polls can only give you a range of outcomes for a state, then you have to look at other factors, I think, to determine how a race is going to go. And if you have to do that, then if the election goes the way I think it's going to go, which I think it'll be. Kamala Harris wins the presidency. Democrats win the House, which I'll get back to in a little bit, but Republicans win the Senate, then maybe in future elections, election models will shift away from polling and more towards a fundamental style when they, when they do their waiting. Because the polling industry has a lot on the line and I think no matter what happens, it's going to get a lot of flack from a lot of people. But if it underestimates Democrats, then who? Boy, the backlash you are going to see is going to be huge. Huge. And if it's underestimating Republicans again, then I don't know what the bowling industry does besides curl up in a ball and, you know, spontaneously explode on the spot.
[00:31:40] So let's go into the early voting and as of the time of recording, we have 36,355,289 early votes. And that is over 23% of 2020's turnout, for what it's worth.
[00:32:02] So, I mean, I guess, I mean, I gotta tell you and remember, two thirds of Americans, you know, turn out in 2020. So right now we're around 15% turnout as far as, you know, total turnout is concerned.
[00:32:19] So some of the big states I want to highlight here, a lot of the states with over a million people. California, 3.6 million early votes. Michigan, 1.4 million early votes. Ohio, about 1.4 million. Virginia, 1.37 million. Tennessee, 1.3 million for whatever reason. North Carolina, 2.3 million. Georgia, 2.6 million. I'll go over Georgia, Texas and Florida later. Later. Well, Florida, I mean, 3.8 million, I won't go over them as much. Texas, 3.3 million. So let's go, let's go over some states. Let's go over, let's go over first. I want to go over Texas. So give me some time to look this up. And what we find is very interesting and there's another theory going into a lot of these early votes. And we'll talk about Nevada as well with this.
[00:33:10] So what is ending up happening?
[00:33:16] And we'll just start out Texas in, just in general. So what's going on is in Texas, in Nevada and a lot of Georgia, what you're seeing in the early, in the in person early votes is that rural counties and rural voters showed up big on the first day and have severely tapered off since then. Meanwhile, a lot of urban voters started out a bit sluggish, a bit steady, but they are steadily rising. You know, as the days go on. You're seeing this in Madison, Wisconsin, you're starting to see this in Georgia. You're seeing this in Texas as well. There is a recent change of statewide vote sharing and day one to day four of early voting. What I find is very interesting, interesting that the Texas triangle, particularly the Austin, San Antonio and Dallas metro areas, their share, their chain, their share of the statewide vote has risen. Meanwhile, a lot of these rural areas in south Texas and the Panhandle in East Texas and some, some of the other disparate parts of the state have fallen, which I think is very, very, very interesting that we have that piece of evidence. We have pieces of evidence in a state like Georgia where, you know, you're fine, where we find out that, you know, a lot of these rural areas, especially rural north Georgia voted came out the gate strong. But then here come a lot of these urban areas, which they're starting to pick up the pace here as well. If we want to take a look at Georgia in particular, which has exceeded, I think, 50% of its 2020 turnout. And he starts northeast Georgia and you know, suburbs of Athens, Georgia came out the gate strong. But, you know, here comes Atlanta, you know, Cobb, Fulton, DeKalb, Henry counties, even Coetta, Mayfair. It's always been strong.
[00:35:15] But, you know, here comes like some areas like Savannah or Star to catch up. Areas like Augusta are sort of very slow, but are starting to catch up a little bit as well. So what. So again, again. So you see in Georgia, what you're ending up seeing is, you know, some of these urban voters, these more now white voters are starting to, you know, Pick up the pace now that a lot of these, you know, rural, more white areas kind of, you know, kind of, you know, blew themselves a little bit early here, you know, in the, you, you blew all, you know, your turnout in the early game and you don't have a lot for the late game which give, which might give a false impression of weaker, you know, Democratic turnout, which I mean, you know, Republicans have been running away with this concept, oh, this early video. Oh, I mean, we're gonna win Virginia. And no, I mean that is not what happening. But you go now if we want to take a look at Georgia and I'll give another update when I do another episode next week is that right now, as far as the total voted by age, there's really a rule of, you know, 30 for 30. You know, Democrats want to have 30% of the electorate be black people in the non Hispanic black people to be precise. And then they want to win 30% of the white vote to win Georgia. And right now an IP black proportion of population that is voted right now is 26.2%. Remember in 2020 it was closer to I think 27%. So again, a little under where they want to be. But you know, you know, coming up this weekend you still got souls to the polls and whatnot.
[00:36:58] You're gonna have a couple more, you're gonna have a couple more weekends of that and obviously you're gonna have election day and who knows what's going to happen on election day.
[00:37:07] But with that being said, also want to take a look at Nevada because that's been one of the huge, you know, areas where, oh, you know, Republicans have done so well in the in person early vote. And to be fair, they have, they've done so on the in person early vote and whatnot. And I want to say a couple of things. Again, we're seeing this happen again, you know, where the Republicans are, you know, blowing it a little bit on the early game. You know, they come out the gate strong but then they start to falter a little bit. Here come rights and Democratic and particularly independents, those who are not registered with a party. And that's going to be the big thing because with states like Nevada who have automatic voter registration, a lot of people, a lot of young people, when they get their driver's licenses, you know, it's like they're left as independents, but they usually vote for Democrats, I. E. You're getting, you're getting a situation in which you have Democrats in disguise as independents. And that's what Democrats are Hoping for what Democrats in Nevada are confident on you. Democrats had canceled their investments in the three, you know, Las Vegas area House districts that they gerrymandered for themselves and you know, in the 2020s they want all of them in 2022 in a, in a, I think a Trump won electorate or whatnot. And then of course Catherine Cortez Master was leading at Sam Brown by a pretty big margin.
[00:38:37] Although I think, you know, the Senate polls are generally underestimating Republicans just because of another phenomenon with the polling, which is they want to capture every Trump voter, which some of the Trump voters will say I'm voting for Trump F off, then hang up. Thus, I think kind of artificially underestimating Senate Republicans. That's another conversation for another time. Just in regards to this, you know, early voting stuff.
[00:39:01] You know, again, Democrats would probably need to do better in the at least in the Clark county early vote. But the Republicans are under where they were in 2022 as well, about the same as the Democrats are under their 2022. What's going on as the others and if those others are predominantly Democratic, which I think they are, that changes the ballgame a lot. And that's what Democrats are thinking is happening as well. And again, we'll need to see what happens as these days of rolling vote go by. Like we're going to have from this episode to next a whole week which is going to tell us, I think a lot about how this thing is going to shake out.
[00:39:41] And right now I don't think we know a lot. Now it's also looking good in Florida, but see for Republicans, they are expected to win that state. Let's see what happens in a week's time. We'll let's see if any of the counties change. A lot of counties are very close between Republicans, Democrats and no party affiliates. CMPAs again, you have to watch the MPs as well because that complicates things.
[00:40:04] Now if you can't rely on, you know, a Democratic firewall or a Republican firewall or whatnot, you have to consider how no party affiliates would vote vote. And you can't really get a good gauge on that in my opinion, unless you have past election results. And in Nevada you don't.
[00:40:21] So it becomes very difficult to make an estimate about who's going to win a state.
[00:40:27] Even Joe John Raulston, the noted Nevada oracle of, you know, the Nevada independent whose post have been giving Democrats a lot of heartburn, even he acknowledges that like hey, the crystal ball is a lot murkier than it was in years past because of the prevalence of no party feelings. The independent voters who you can't really get engaged on and they also happen to be younger, they also happen to be more non white, which those are disproportionately Democratic leaning groups. Now if you take the crosstowns, apparently they're going to be Trump super soldiers. But that's only if you listen an innate con. That's another conversation for another time. Probably in two weeks time once we do our, you know, post election, you know, our election post mortem, but can't believe that you have this episode of Vaults of the Nation. They have another episode after this one and then the next episode after that is just going to be post election, you know, analysis. Like we're basically here like this is election season. We're less than two weeks out from the election of the time of this release. By the time you might be listening to this, I mean, the election might have already happened. A lot of the things I have said in the past 41 or so minutes might have aged great. They might have aged absolutely terribly. And that's really the beauty of this, you know, putting these thoughts out, you know, random thoughts on the Internet so people can judge you later. But that's what we all do and to go back to again back to this early vote is that we can't really judge so far in the early to mid game. Like we can only judge on the late game and we're not in the late game or the early votes yet. Like we can't make bones about how a state's gonna vote yet when there's still over a week of early vote to go before he can do that. Or in some cases you have a week of early vote left to go, you know, before he can do that. There's also this theory I saw in some of the primaries. Washington primary is another one of the key examples where, you know, more Democratic lean demographics were just turning in their ballot slate, being massive procrastinators.
[00:42:34] And if that is also the case in this general election, then we absolutely need to hold off on our early voting takes because not only does that mean that, you know, these latter days of early voting might, might be disproportionately Democratic in states that have gotten decent to good Republican news so far, but also means that election day might be a lot poorer and election day is going to be a lot bluer than it was in 2020, be a lot more comparable to 2022 if we're going to be completely honest. With ourselves because again, we are not living through a pandemic as needs reminding. We are living in the first post pandemic election election that's going to happen in about 10 days.
[00:43:18] And how that's going to affect things we don't know. That makes things a lot murkier because you still have a lot of this prevalence of in person early voting to just kind of get this out the way. But a lot of people, a lot of people who vote Democratic want to be in personal election days so you can get, you know, the see, so you'll get the I vote a sticker anyway. But you know, the feeling on election day is something that you can't get in person early voting for a lot of people. And thus, you know, election day is not going to be R by 50. Instead it's going to be R by 30 or R by 20. That changes a lot of things.
[00:43:55] You know, it changes a lot of calculation. And okay, what's a firewall? You know, you want to bank your vote and that could lead to a lot of, you know, I don't want to say false promises, I will say false predictions where you think you've got a state pegged down, but you actually don't.
[00:44:15] And that's the danger that we fall into. You know, with the polling being basically everything is the nation and all the swing states are effectively tied with the yearly vote not only being so early, but also kind of murky in what you can get from it. Because, you know, Covid, in 20, 20, 20, what you really have to do is embrace uncertainty. I know nobody wants to do it, but again, everything's still within the margin of error. Trump trifecta is only a few points that way. A Kamala Harris trifecta is only a few points that way. Like if we're going to be completely honest and I say that because the Texas Senate race is within 3 points in the 538 polling average, around 3 points. So just telling you, and Ohio is, you know, shared Brown by two for whatever it's for the Democratic incumbent in the 530 averages. I'm just telling you like we're only a typical polling error away from literally anything happening in this election and these early votes as well. We just have to wait and see because they will tell tell us something but we don't know yet. Let's transition to the U.S. house, which I have not talked about the U.S. house basically at all throughout this election cycle. And I think it's night time that I do. And I only have about 10 minutes to do so. So let's go through. So let's start in our state, let's start in Alabama because we have a new House seats, a second seat that goes from Mobile to some of the rural areas out in Monroeville and Evergreen, out to Montgomery and then out to the Tuskegee, Union Springs, Troy, Eufaula and Phenix City.
[00:45:59] And it is a Democratic leaning seat. Think by one up by about 12 points in 2020. But with a drop in black voter turnout, it was a toss up seat in 2022. Will Boyd I think won it by less than a point. Cabby, the Republican won it by one and a half block, I think 1.7% to be precise. But then with presidential election level turnout, you have the Democratic nominee, Shamari Figures. He is a Barack Obama alum. He is former lawyer with the Department of Justice which is where you get the Obama alum from. He is the son of a legendary political family in the city of Mobile. I think his father prosecuted the Ku Klux Klan. His mother other is Senator Vivian Figures, one of the most legendary, you know, Mobile politicians. And he is favored to win that seat. You know, his portion of the district is very free swinging. It's the closest part of the district, the Barton Mobile that are in what it's done, it's taken out, you know, northeast Mobile county like Sarah Land, Satsuma. It's also taken south Mobile county which is the part where I, where I'm from and live.
[00:47:09] So what ends up happening is, you know, you have a seat that leans Democratic. The Republican nominee is Caroline Dobson. She is from southern Monroe county and she'll hope to get a lot of, you know, increased rural margins while holding up with typically Republican suburban old money areas of Mobile, Montgomery to win. Will she do that? I don't think she will. I think Schumer I think wins comfortably. This is because of the Voting Rights act is because of a Supreme Court decision that overturned a previous Alabama congressional map. Then we go to like a last Alaska. This is a Trump by 10 state as one House seat, Mary Potola won it. She won it by 10 points in 2022 after winning a special extra three points earlier in the year. This is more of a toss up because it's Alaska. You're running against basically AN R by 5 to R by 10, you know, presidential parts and advantage. Now Alaska politics is weird. Maybe Alaska will only be Trump by four this year. Maybe it'll be Trump by eight. I think it's swinging left. But just how much swings Left is going to be important, but it's like, yeah, like you're running into a lot of headwinds there. But you know that seat won't be, will be one of the last to call to be called. But it is a toss up race. Then you have two races in Arizona that I want to focus on. The first and the sixth district, suburban Phoenix, this is east, the Phoenix and then there's Tucson suburbs and areas out east in south in the southern and eastern southern southeast Arizona. David Schweiker and Juan Cisco Money are you two Republican incumbents here? They are in toss up races. They only won the races by, you know, by less than 2% and in David Schweiker's case, less than 1% out in 2022 as Katie Hobbs I believe won both of their districts when she won the governor's race in 2022. So Democrats are born a lot of effort, a lot of money into those districts. Amish Shah in the first district is a Democratic nominee and Kristen ENGEL in the 6th district is the Democratic nominee there.
[00:49:14] So those will be races to watch and those probably won't be called for a few days as well. One thing to know about the House, it won't be called for several days. It's I think the last thing that usually gets called in these, you know, in these election cycles. California is also one of those states. We have a bunch of House close House seats that aren't called until days of in weeks after the election. The 13th is the Republican incumbent, John Duarte in a Biden district. He barely won in 2022. Flipping it from the, flipping it from the, from the Democrats.
[00:49:48] David Valadeo again, you know, he won by 3% in a, in a Biden district. That's a toss up race.
[00:49:56] This is all in the central rural Central valley of California. Mike Garcia, North Los Angeles county and into Santa, into a Santa Barbara. That's a toss up race that you do very well in 2022. But that's, you know, a comfortable Democratic district as well. Democrats one also target toss up seat in the 41st. Ken Calvert, this is Palm Springs is Inland Empire, California's 45th. Orange County, Michelle Steele, you know, by the way, Will Rollins is a nominee in the 41st, George Whiteside's nominee in the 27th and Derek Tran is a nominee in the 45th district. You have a seat that Democrats are defending in the 47th. This is Irvine. This is southern Orange county. Of all the beaches, this Katie Porter seat, but you know, she's retiring so Dave Minn is coming in as a Democratic nominee against Scott Ball. This has proven to be a little bit more competitive than Democrats are hoping for.
[00:50:51] And then now we go to Colorado, another seat that wasn't called until very late. The Idea Caraveo in 2022 can thank the Libertarian nominee for her win, siphoning off a lot of Republican votes. This is a toss up district that Democrats, Democrats hope to not get caught flat footed in that probably won't be called until a few days after the election as well. One, one of the earliest House races that will get called that I think set the tone is the 13th district early 12 an indication. So Annapoli Naluna is a far right representative. This is Pinellas county minus St. Petersburg or at least minus the black parts of St. Petersburg. Thank you Florida Republicans for that district said Trump by, Trump by 8 or so district that Anna Paulina Luna I think drop a six or so that she did not overperform Donald Trump by that much or basically ran even with this part of the ship as Florida Republicans statewide ran 15 points ahead because of a massive Republican turnout advantage in the state. Thus her race against Whitney Fox, the Democratic nominee has become a lot more competitive than she would have bargained for. How that race goes I think will be very indicative of, of the national environment, really somewhat indicative.
[00:52:00] Then we have a couple of toss up seats in Iowa, the first and the third, Marinette Miller Meeks and Zach Nunn, both Republicans trying to protect themselves against, you know, Democratic efforts to flip those states. This is, you know, southeast and southwest Iowa. Des Moines is in the third district. So you know, watch those races there, there as well. So you have Christina Bohannon in the first and, and we have, if I can get this right, I don't know, I can't remember his first name for the life of me. I think thankfully we can look this up. Iowa Stero Congressional district in the 2024 race that is, that is going on there. But it's a guy that last name of Beckham that's in this thing as well. So if I can go ahead and look, get this going, if I can let this. Thank you Wikipedia for being stupid. But we have Landon Backham is the nominee in the third district there and I think would he be the first like Asian representative of this district? He might be. He's a former deputy chief of staff to the US Secretary of Agriculture and he won very easily in his primary and he might be like, I don't know, I don't know but he might be the first, I think Asian American representative that Iowa sent in their entire history.
[00:53:33] So Kunos like that could be some history that's made in Iowa. Landon Backham that no wonder I couldn't remember first. First thing.
[00:53:42] But there was also a seat the Democrats going to flip in Louisiana 6 congressional district also, you know, court basically court mandated redistricting for the Voting Rights Act. And also because Louisiana Republicans wanted to get rid of Garrett Gray's and decided that, you know, a Democratic state senator by the name of Cleo Fields was like, okay, we'll give him a district that stretches from Alexandria to Baton Rouge. Like why not? So yeah, this is the thing because Garrett Graves made fun of Steve Scalise, kind of spoke bad about him after Scalise was shot in 2017 at a congressional baseball game practice. So yeah, that's pretty much a solid Democratic flip. Main second, another quintessential toss up race. Jared golden as well, facing a huge challenge from Austin Terrier, the Republican nominee. Then you have Michigan seven, Michigan's eight, two retiring Democratic incumbents and toss up races there. Alyssa Slotkin is vying to be the next Democratic senator from Michigan. Dan Keeley is just kind of screwing off. And then there's John James also in a competitive race in the 10th district in McCollum County. Nebraska 2nd Democrats think with Tony Vars this is finally the time they're going to take out Don Bacon. After numerous attempts and numerous failures, NJ 7th is an opportunity. Democrats have come in late in New Jersey seventh with Tom Keene Jr. They're hoping that Sue Altman can flip that district. New Mexico second Dave, Gabe Vasquez, they're defending that. Yvette Harrell for the Republicans trying to get her seat back. A bunch of seats in New York, New York's 4th, 7th, 19th and 22nd. You have Republican incumbents trying to hold Biden one seats and it's not looking good for a lot of them. Mike Lawler I think is the best chance of holding his potentially. But you know, it's still going to be very close in the end. North Carolina's first because of of North Carolina Republican redistricting and let's be real gerrymandering. Don Davis is in a tough fight, but that's but I do think he'll end up surviving. You know, there's a couple of competitive races. The 9th and the 13th district smarts you capture in the 9th is a long time incumbent now in a Trump seat trying to hold off Derek Marin there 13th, Amelia Sykes trying a fresh representative trying to hold off the challenge. Akron, Oregon's fifth, Lori Chavez Derimer is in the fight of her life. It's Janelle by him in the fifth. Pennsylvania seventh and eighth are Democratic seats. Susan Wilder, Matt Cartwright are trying to hold an Allentown Bethlehem area in northeast Pennsylvania. Cartwright is in a Trump one district, so be very interested to see if he holds on. Susan Wild looking pretty good in some of the polling there. Scott Perry in the 10th district, this is the Harrisburg York areas. He is in a tougher race than he would like against Janelle Stelson and there are some, you know, if you look at some of the district polls, Stelson might actually be in a pretty good position. Scott Perry is a far right representative. He used to have the Freedom Caucus and it would be quite an achievement for Harrisburg area Democrats to scalp a member as infamous as Scott Perry is.
[00:56:42] Elsewhere. Virginia's seventh Democrats trying to hold on to their seat there with Abigail Spanberger retiring to run for Virginia's governorship next year, they're hoping to hold up with Eugene Vindman who I think is a weak candidate apart from the fact that he raises billions of dollars in money. So Eugene Vindman might just end up winning against Derek Anderson anyways. Washington's third district is a grudge match. Marie Glencamp Perez, she beat Joe Kent in 2022 to trump one district. Joe Kent's back to try to fight for it again. This is going to be a toss up all the way until the end as well.
[00:57:17] So, so right now what we've got going on is about 20 ish or so toss up races that are occurring right now. There's also for Wisconsin Democrats are trying to knock off Derek Van Orden in southwest Wisconsin with Rebecca Cook. Time will tell and see if that actually gets anywhere but 20 or so races. A few other competitive races that I didn't mention but you know, some of those races, you know, might end up surprising you. You know, Vicente Gonzalez trying to defend his seat, the 34th District, South Texas, you know, Cameron county and some of the areas north against Myra Flores. Maybe he gets caught sleeping a little bit, who knows. And Meyer Flores might win that, you know, otherwise Chuck Edwards In North Carolina's 11th district, it might be in the fight of his life and we don't know it yet. That's western North Carolina. We, we don't know because, you know, with, you know, the hurricane that went in and just flooded everything, we don't know. Like a lot of these, you're going to have some surprises that, you know, a lot of people don't see coming. But I'll have, you know, next week, full ratings as we get to sort of the end of this episode. I will promise one thing I'll have ratings out for. Because we don't use social media much. It's we have a Pulse of the Nation Instagram account that I want to alert people to because we're going to post our final presidential ratings on, you know, our final presidential ratings on Friday.
[00:58:47] You know, it's Upcoming Friday, Friday, November 1st. I will be in Mobile by then, so I will end up probably recording on Wednesday.
[00:59:00] So that's going to really get some of the analysis fluctuated as well.
[00:59:06] So I'll have my predictions ready. Then we'll post the predictions on Friday for president, house and Senate. And I will defend all of my predictions there. Every single one of my predictions. That is what the episode is going to be. I might get in some, you know, early voting analysis in as well if there is enough information to do so. But I do want to tell you we are going to diverge in the next couple of weeks from what we usually do because we try to implement a wave model in regards to what we do, which we open with like a news story, then we transition into polling, then a huge topic, then early voting and another topic and then a clock close.
[00:59:51] But what I'm gonna do is we're just gonna go through straight ratings. I'm gonna justify them next week and then the week after that. It's an election post mortem. I'm gonna go through all these election results. I'll go through when I knew a, when I know a president is getting elected or when I know a chamber is flipping, I'll tell you the exact moment, the exact county, the exact race or whatnot. When they're like, oh, okay, this is what's going to end up happening and that is what's going to happen on the next two weeks. So thank you all for listening. And remember, we have just taken the pulse of a nation.
[01:00:37] Any opinions expressed in this program are those of the host and do not represent the thoughts or opinions of 90.7 WVUA or the University of Alabama, WVUAFM Tuscaloosa.
