Final Campaign Ad Blitz; Political Fights At Work; Deadly Floods In Spain
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Before today's Up First, it's been a wild and exhausting election season. It's felt like a marathon and a sprint and a heart attack sometimes. But as we get closer to Tuesday's elections and continue to follow events with this podcast...

We want you to know there are other ways to keep up with developments until Election Day and after, as votes are counted. First, you can find a new episode of the NPR Politics Podcast with context and analysis on the big stories whenever they happen every weekday. And, you know, you don't have to stare at your phone 24 hours a day because we'll send you breaking news alerts to let you know when there is new information.

And you can find context and analysis a few hours later with the NPR Politics podcast. Plus, you can also listen to Consider This. It's the podcast where NPR covers one big story in depth every weekday evening. They are all over this election and will be all over its aftermath. So if you weren't taking notes, let's recap. You've got Up First in the morning, Consider This in the evening, and the NPR Politics podcast any time that news happens.

An around-the-clock election news survival kit from NPR Podcasts. Okay, well, thank you for listening. Now let's get back to business. Inundated with millions of campaign ads and hoping it might let up this weekend? Not a chance. With three days left before the elections, the final push is real and it is intense. I'm Scott Simon. I'm Aisha Roscoe, and this is Up First from NPR News.

Campaign ads are everywhere, with each candidate slamming the other on everything from the economy to immigration and access to abortion. We'll tell you who they're targeting and in which states. Plus, finding it hard to focus on work because of these elections?

Your supervisors may have noticed and will tell you how they're bracing for how you'll cope with the results. And we'll bring you the latest on the deadly floods in Spain. So please stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your weekend.

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Swing states are getting hit hard with a lot of campaign ads. Maybe you've heard some. Take it from the people who knew him best. Donald Trump is too big a risk for America. Under Kamala, there's been a big hike in Medicare premiums. And these ads aren't cheap. Billions of dollars have been spent trying to win what could amount to a small amount of voters who could make all the

the difference in this race. And Pierre, senior political editor and correspondent, Domenico Montanaro, joins us now. Domenico, thanks so much for being with us. Hey, Scott, great to be with you. How much money in the swing states do we know? It is an incredible amount of money overall that's been spent this cycle, $10.5 billion dollars

More than ever spent on political ads, this is for everywhere in the country. That's from campaigns and outside groups for the presidential race, the competitive House and Senate races, all the way down to county commissioner races. So, you know, this is all political advertising wherever you see it, on your TV, radio, online, social media, which, by the way, has seen a huge investment this cycle. And what kind of messages do people see?

Well, let's look at the most run ads this cycle to give people a taste of that. More than $36 million, really a staggering amount for just one ad, has been spent on this ad. It's from a pro-Harris outside group, FFPAC. Here's a bit of it, which features a Republican who says he voted twice for Trump, but is now switching to Harris.

Certainly a big piece of the Harris campaign has been trying to appeal to disaffected Republicans. On the Republican side, MAGA Inc., which is the major super PAC supporting Trump, has had this ad in high rotation. There's about $27 million behind it and tries to frame Harris' time as a prosecutor as too liberal. Here's part of that one.

As San Francisco DA, liberal Kamala Harris let killers go free. And as California Attorney General, Kamala continued to put criminals first. Don't make America her next victim. The Harris campaign refutes some of those claims, and it's a bit ironic considering that she became district attorney running to the middle against a much more progressive candidate. But this has been the challenge for Harris in a shortened campaign to try and define herself amid this barrage of overwhelmingly negative messaging from the Trump side in the past month.

Domenico, back to that $10 billion number. For all the races, how much into the presidential race? Yeah, I mean, only about a third has been on the presidential election, but that's still $3 billion, which is a massive amount. And it's a lot that's been spent in a smaller number of states. Just seven swing states have seen three out of every $4 spent. We're talking about Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, those blue wall states.

as well as North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada in the Sun Belt. Overall, though, 23 states have seen more than $100 million in ads overall. Which state's getting the most advertising thrown at it? I could guess, right? Liberty Bell, Philly's?

Yeah. I'm sure no one wants this election to be over more than the good people of Pennsylvania. The birthplace of American democracy has seen an astounding $1.2 billion spent on it. It's the first time we've ever seen a single state see over a billion dollars spent in political advertising. Almost $600 million of that has been spent on the presidential election, which, by the way, Scott, that might be a good opening bid offer to someone like, I don't know, Juan Soto, who might go to the Mets or something. I'm not sure that'll be enough.

But Pennsylvania's been important for a few cycles, hasn't it? Does this really increase spending? Yeah, it has. But the spending this year is almost three times as much as what it was in 2020. And the major focus in 2020, if you remember, was Georgia. It saw about $800 million in total advertising that year. But that's still well short of what we're seeing in Pennsylvania. So follow the money here. The campaigns really see Pennsylvania as the critical state this year. And, Piers Domenico Montanaro, thanks so much for being with us. You're welcome.

It's been a tense election season, and some of us haven't been able to keep that tension out of the workplace. Yes, that's right. A human resources group that keeps track of these things reports that major disagreements over political views have caused a huge increase in workplace incivility this year. NPR's Maria Aspin talked to HR leaders about what they're preparing for on Tuesday and beyond, and she joins us now. Hi, Maria. Hi, Aisha.

So we've seen lots of disagreement online and even at polling places. But what has that looked like at work? So there are a lot of tense water cooler conversations at the physical office, but also over Zoom or social media. In fact, let me play you a clip. It's getting hot out here.

That's Johnny C. Taylor Jr. He runs a group of HR managers called SHRM. We literally are seeing month over month increases in incivility and incivility specifically in response to one's political opinions or one's perceived political affiliations.

And there's a financial cost to all of this tension. Taylor's group estimates that all of this incivility is costing employers some $2 billion a day in lost productivity. $2 billion a day. Is that because workers are ignoring their jobs and just sitting around arguing about who should be president? Yeah.

I mean, there's some of that, but it's not just that everyone's arguing. It's about what happens after you might have a tense confrontation with a coworker. On average, after an individual experiences an act of incivility at work, it takes them 31 minutes to recover. That impacts productivity. Ayesha, it's worth remembering that we spend about a third of our lives at work. So it's inevitable that we're going to bring some of how we're feeling into our jobs.

And with a lot of people on edge right now, it's going to be even harder to stay focused. So what's the answer then? Can employers just tell everyone to leave the politics at home? This is what surprised me. I thought that was going to be the advice I got when I started talking to HR leaders. We've seen some big companies like Coinbase and more recently Google saying exactly that, telling employees to leave the political debates at home.

But that's really hard to enforce in practice. And some companies are recognizing that. I talked to Melissa Anderson. She oversees HR for Albemarle, which makes lithium for car batteries. The best way for them to handle their emotions is to feel like they have a safe place to talk about it.

and to be able to engage safely and to feel supported. So Albemarle has created some employee resource groups and also hosted some internal meetings for employees to get together and talk about current events that are affecting them. So as we go into this week, what else can employers do and what can we as workers do? Well, for us workers, I mean, take a breath and remember to treat everyone, including our co-workers, with respect.

For employers, it really varies, and some of it is kind of extreme. Taylor told me that some small businesses are even canceling meetings on Wednesday and Thursday so that employees who voted different ways aren't forced to interact. But as you know, it might be days before we know the election results, months before the inauguration, and we're going to continue to face a lot of other uncertainty at home and at the office.

So in general, whatever your company's policy is about talking politics or not talking politics, there should be a policy. If you don't already have one at work, it's still worth starting to think about it. That's NPR's Maria Aspin. Maria, thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you.

Valencia, a region of eastern Spain, is still recovering from the catastrophic floods that devastated entire towns on Tuesday night. At least 205 people have been confirmed dead so far, but rescue and recovery teams are still working to access all locations and expecting the death toll to rise.

NPR's Miguel Macias joins us now from Sevilla. Miguel, thanks so much for being with us. Thank you, Scott. Let's begin with latest what authorities are saying about the death tolls. Well, just last night, the Minister of Interior, Fernando Grande Marlaska, said in an interview that he cannot estimate how many people are missing. So think about that. We don't even know the potential magnitude of the tragedy at this point. It's been a few days. How are rescue efforts proceeding?

Slowly. We've all seen the images of cars piled up on top of each other. It's just shocking. Yesterday, speaking to Gatenacet, a Spanish radio network, María Isabel Albalat,

She's the mayor of one of the impacted towns, Valleporta, said that many streets were still blocked, so help could not fully access her town. She's saying that when they get access to locations where one person has been reported dead, they find three or four bodies.

A lot says that some people have died inside their vehicles. Some people have even died inside their street level homes, blocked by cars that were swept away by the river or mud. Think about this almost as a tsunami, Scott. This wasn't just water accumulating on the streets. You can see videos of a wave of groundwater advancing until it turns into a violent river.

People are devastated and sometimes also angry at what they see as a lack of response. And Miguel, what has been the government response? I understand there's been some controversy over the way people were alerted to the floods. That's right, Scott. The official agency that oversees weather events started to warn citizens about the storm as early as Thursday the 24th.

Then they also issued warnings, including a red alert on Tuesday early morning around 7 a.m. But the direct alert to people's cell phones, that loud beeping alert that came from the regional government of Valencia, went out just past 8 p.m. that night. By that time, the flooding was up to two meters in some areas. This is also rush hour in Spain, so many cars were on the road going back home. In other words, the destruction was going to happen regardless, but the human toll was

might have been avoided. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez spoke just this morning and said that the government will deploy 5,000 more troops to the region, 5,000 additional police officers. He also said that the regional government of Valencia, in the hands of the opposition party, only has to ask for what they need and the central government will deliver and that it was time for political unity. No subtle message to the conservatives. Miguel, what kind of reaction are you seeing among the people in the region to this crisis?

We've seen an outpouring of help and solidarity. There has been some looting as well, but most people helping each other. Yesterday was a national holiday in Spain and we got to see some images of hope with thousands of people from Valencia walking to the most impacted areas in the outskirts of the city to help. And I want to leave you with a happy story. Laura Hernandez was driving back from work yesterday.

with her husband when the flooding started on Tuesday. Their four children were back at home waiting for them. Laura and her husband had to shelter inside an office building. She spoke to Cadena, said. When they finally reunited, Laura says that their 17-year-old and her 12-year-old could touch them, hold them in disbelief that the family was finally together after this nightmare. So here's to more of those moments in the hours to come, Scott.

And Piers Miguel Macias, thanks so much for being with us. Thank you. And that's up first for Saturday, November 2nd, 2024. Just three more nighty nights until Election Day. I'm Scott Sivan. And I'm Aisha Roscoe. Andrew Craig produced today's podcast with help from Gabe O'Connor. Our director is Michael Radcliffe.

Our editors are Dee Parvez, Melissa Gray, Dana Farrington, and Nick Spicer. Hannah Glovna is our technical director with engineering support from Stacey Abbott, Misha Hynes, and Arthur Halliday-Lorent. Evie Stone is our senior supervising editor. Sarah Lucy Oliver is our executive producer. And Jim Kane, our deputy managing editor.

Tomorrow on the Sunday Story, the gang at NPR's Politics Podcast, take a look at how Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are going big in the swing states. Tune in for a detailed analysis of each candidate's campaign strategy. And for more news, interviews, sports, and music, you can tune into Weekend Edition on your radio. Just go to stations.npr.org to find your local NPR station.

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