Inside the GOP and Democratic Ground Game in Pennsylvania and Other Swing States, with Scott Presler and David Callahan | Ep. 906
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Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. With just over one month to go before Election Day, the latest stats show nearly 1 million votes have already been cast.

We've been talking a lot on the show about the battleground states that will likely determine the next president and ground game. Who's got a better ground game in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin? Perhaps no state is more important, as you know, in this election than Pennsylvania with its 19 electoral votes. And the latest polling there shows the race is tough.

Tied the real clear politics average 48.2 to 48.2. Oh, M G. So we really want to drill down on the get out the vote effort on both sides. How are both parties getting ready to get voters out to the polls and to vote for team red or team blue?

In this episode, we're talking to two people who are totally keyed in to this issue on the ground game in America. One supports the Trump Vance ticket, the other, the Harris-Walls ticket. And we begin the show with Scott Pressler, founder and executive director of Early Vote Action. His group is currently zeroing in on, yes, Pennsylvania.

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Scott, welcome to the show. Hey, thank you, Megan. Yeah, thanks for being here. All right, so all you hear is that the Democrats are the ones with the amazing ground game and the Republicans less so. And that Trump hasn't been pushing early voting enough, so the Republicans are too dependent on day of voting, whereas the Democrats will have banked millions of votes prior to then. I'll give you just one stat.

We are looking at the number of early votes already cast in the states that allow early voting. NBC News reports today that as of right now, it's

Just short of a million, 887,207 mail-in and early in-person votes have been cast nationally. So far, 52% of those are from registered Dems, 31% from registered Republicans, 17% other. So what are you seeing, thinking, and feeling about the Republicans' ground game?

Thank you, Megan. Well, again, my organization is Early Vote Action, and all of our time, talent, and energy is going just to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. We have a state director. We have 50, 5-0 paid field staff on the ground all across Pennsylvania's 67 counties.

And I want to dispel any myths right here and now that there is no ground game. I'm a data guy. So let's go over the numbers for a second, Megan. In 2016, the Democrats had an advantage of nearly 1 million more Ds than ours. Donald Trump won Pennsylvania by 40,000 votes.

Fast forward to 2020, that data advantage was narrowed down to 650,000. And Pennsylvania was ultimately decided by a very narrow 80,000 votes with the mail-in ballots and everything else that was going on. Now, where are we today and how is 2024 different?

That advantage of D over R has been narrowed down to three hundred and thirty three thousand. We have cut in half the Democrat advantage in just four years time. And if you take out inactive voters, Megan, people that haven't voted in, say, four years or eight years, that number is

is just 160,000. So A, Pennsylvania is very much in play. And if I were the Democrats, I would be very worried that their voter registration numbers continue to decrease even after the so-called Taylor Swift endorsement. Now, let's also talk about briefly the mail-in ballot situation.

I'm here to tell you, and this is based on Cliff Maloney, his group is great, P.A. Chase, they're the ones that are going to be knocking on doors and chasing all of those votes. The Democrats are down 416,000 mail-in ballot requests from where they were four years ago at this same time. So again, 12%.

2020 was decided by 80,000. They're down 300,000 voter registrations and they're down 416,000 mail-in ballot requests. So Republicans, in my humble, objective opinion, are in the best place possible to actually win Pennsylvania and therefore the presidency this November.

Okay, so walk us through how you do it. So you go to Pennsylvania, you set up shop there. And what do you do? Is it just about canvassing, knocking on people's doors and saying, hey, are you registered to vote? Are you going to vote Republican? Then let me show you how to get registered. And then like, walk us through how you do it. Yes, ma'am. So again, numbers guy, data guy, let's break this down.

by the math. That 80,000 number, I want everybody to write that on a chalkboard in your brain. Let's talk about conservative groups that support our values but may not vote in elections. There are 80,000 truckers in Pennsylvania alone. If we mobilize that group, we win.

And think about it. Truckers, they are busy serving us, the American people. They are driving rigs on election day. And in fact, I spoke with a wife whose husband, a Pennsylvania truck driver, did not vote in 2020 because he was working. And so especially for our beautiful truckers, we are pushing them to get a mail-in ballot. We are pushing them to vote early in the election to make sure that they lock in those votes if they're not going to be home on November 5th. Then,

are Amish. There are 90,000 Amish in Pennsylvania. Now, eligible voters is probably more around 40,000. But I know in the 2020 election, only 2,000 Amish voted. We are making a concerted effort, not only going to these service plazas to reach the truckers in Pennsylvania, setting up a voter registration table, but I'll tell you, every Tuesday, you will see us at Roots Country Market

and Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the major hub of the Amish. Every Friday, Ryan Sexton, a member of my team, is at the Green Dragon Farmers Market with a voter registration table, meeting voters where they are, courting the vote, talking about the fact that Democrat Governor Josh Shapiro is waiting

a war on school choice and religious freedom and small businesses and raw milk and dairy and farmers. Every aspect of Amish living is under attack. We meet the Amish where they are. Then we have 800,000 veterans. And let me tell you,

After Tim Walz admitted to lying on national television about his stolen valor the other night during the vice presidential debate, veterans do not take kindly to stolen valor. And veterans, furthermore, do not take kindly to the Biden campaign.

Kamala Harris debacle of pulling out of Afghanistan, which caused 13 Gold Star families. And then Kamala had the nerve to attack those Gold Star families when President Trump celebrated those families and the lives of the fallen soldiers at the Arlington Cemetery. So we are going, Megan, to the

VFW halls, meeting the veterans where they are. We're going to the American legions. And last and probably what I think is the most consequential group that we are making an effort to reach are our beautiful hunters and Second Amendment enthusiasts. This is very important.

30% of Pennsylvania hunters are not registered to vote. 30, three, zero percent. There are 930,000 hunters. Again, 2020 was decided by 80,000 votes. That means that there are 300,000 hunters in Pennsylvania that voted.

So we have been going to gunshowtrader.com the last year, visiting every single gun show, going to every single gun store, archery range, and we are even advertising in a newspaper article to 16,000 federal firearms license organizations and companies.

So our motto at earlyvoteaction.com is to meet the voter, to get them registered to vote, to follow up with them and actualize them. And so we are constantly-

Now you have to make sure they vote, right? You either have to get them a mail-in ballot if they're a trucker and they can't make it, or you have to make sure on election day they get off the sofa or they get out of their job and they spend the time standing. So what do you do about that? Because that seems like something the Democrats are good at. I remember the stories about getting John Fetterman elected and how many people brought buses to Pennsylvania to get people on board, drive them to the polling station. And it was all Democrats. Yes.

Well, this is all data. President Obama had the model in 2008 when he first ran. We're not reinventing it. We're just doing the President Obama model. We are community organizers. So whenever we register someone to vote, Megan, we get their first name, last name, email address, phone number, home address. And so a crucial component when I'm talking to my team and volunteers is you are not done

registering a voter until that voter has voted. Sure, registration is part number one. Part number two is actualizing. And so our team, when we're registering someone to vote, we ask every single person, are you going to be in town on Tuesday, November 5th? Do you travel outside of the country? Do you have a job that takes you outside of the state? And if they do, then we have them sign up for a mail-in ballot.

And I'm very proud to say that two counties in particular that we've been working on, Pike and Wayne counties in Northeast Pennsylvania, they are the top two most producing Republican counties per registered Republican that have...

have requested more mail-in ballots than the Democrats. And these are red, rural areas where normally Republicans are vehemently opposed to mail-in voting. But our education, our meeting the voter, our courting the voter is producing real tangible results. And one last part of that that I think is very important is in talking to our beautiful Amish, there's kind of a stigma that they shouldn't be voting. Some of their Amish elders are against it. And you know what? We're using the...

Democrat strategy of mail-in with the Amish. And when I tell the Amish that they can vote a private, secret ballot that is mailed to their house and they don't have to have their buggies seen going to a polling location, they love the mail-in ballot. And I can tell you tangibly that we are out-registering the Democrats in terms of mail-in ballots in Mifflin County.

Amish County in the center of the state and Juniata County and Amish County in the center of the state. And last, I want to make it clear if President Trump does a rally during a weekday, we are going to be busing people from whatever county he's doing a rally in to a board of elections to vote early. So we are basically doing a lot of the Democrat activities just to elect Republicans.

Hmm. This is fascinating. My gosh, the Amish, are they even allowed to use a voting machine? I don't know. Like aren't they, don't they eschew all electronics? So isn't really only mail-in balloting for them or bust?

Well, Governor Shapiro, thank you, because a mail-in ballot is a paper ballot, and they don't even have to use an electronic machine in order to cast their vote. So again, we are using mail-in ballots knowing that the Amish get married on Tuesdays in November, which happens to coincide with Election Day, to lock in those votes. Oh, Scott, I could just see you bombing in like a wedding crasher, a new version of Wedding Crasher, all the Amish wedding, like...

Did you just sign this card for the bride and groom and also this voting form? OK, so that's Pennsylvania. But now talk to me about what's happening in the other states, because he you know, they say it all comes down to Pennsylvania. But realistically, it doesn't. He's going to get have to get 270 to win or she is. And things are tight. They're tight, tight, tight in North Carolina, Nevada. Trump lost Nevada in 16 and 20.

though it's still in play. She matched his no taxes on tips thing, which that helped her. Anyway, what's happening in the other states? Well, what is a pathway to victory? Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania,

Pennsylvania that wins the election. It's done. It's over. And that's why I'm focused so heavily on PA and Georgia with Governor Kemp. I know he's not the most conservative in terms of the President Trump fan base, but we have made strides in election integrity in the state of Georgia. And the fact that we performed well in the midterms reelecting Governor Kemp, I think Georgia is probably one of the most easy Sunbelt states for us to win. And by Sunbelt, I mean North Carolina,

Georgia, Arizona, Nevada. Now, I was feeling really good about North Carolina because not only similar to Pennsylvania, have we cut the Democrat advantage in voter registration in half, but the Democrats, they are underperforming in terms of mail-in ballots. They are underperforming in terms of early voting in North Carolina. Now,

However, I'm very concerned and God bless every family that is suffering at the tragedy of the hurricane and water damage and losing a home. And I have to say the areas that has been affected the most is Western North Carolina. I want to hear, A, what are we doing to help all of these people that are suffering this tragedy now?

But B, most importantly, if we are going to rebuild their lives and have an economy that works for working class America, we must reelect President Trump. And so I want to hear from Chairman Watley. I want to hear from Mark Robinson. I want to hear from everybody in North Carolina. How are we going to help these families and make sure that Western North Carolina has the ability to vote in the upcoming election? Because if Western North Carolina, the Asheville area, does not come out, we may reelect.

not win the North Carolina presidency for the Electoral College for President Trump. We may lose the gubernatorial election as well. And so it's critical that we have a plan this next month getting those WNC people out to vote. Now, Nevada... The gubernatorial election does not look good in the wake of that Mark Robinson scandal. He's polling some, I don't know, more than double digits, well, double digits behind his opponent now. There could be many, and the Republicans are banking on there being many ticket splitters

who might not vote for Robinson, but who will nonetheless show up for Trump. How do you deal with that? As a guy in your position, I assume you have to argue the positions with people, reluctant voters who are like, I'm not voting for a guy who said he wanted to bring back slavery, even though he's a black man, I'm not doing it. And then what do you do? Do you say, well, but there's still Trump at the top, like get there anyway.

Listen, President Trump needs a Republican House. He needs a Republican Senate. And he needs Republican governors. In the wake of COVID, when governors had the power of whether or not they were going to be dictatorial and tyrannical or open their states like Governor Kemp did in Georgia, I think the American people understand the importance of winning the governor's mansion. And especially with a state like Virginia, the Commonwealth of Virginia, where I formerly lived, but I'm now

living in Pennsylvania to vote for Donald Trump, that the governor has the power to to get illegal aliens off the voter rolls to fight for election integrity. Now, I'm not going to get into polls. The only thing that matters is ballots into boxes. The only thing that matters is on Tuesday, November 5th. And if any of you watching the Megyn Kelly show right now are feeling nervous about this election, I'm asking you to do more.

knock on more doors than make more postcards, make more text messages, go reach out to your family and friends. Let me ask you about that. Let me ask you because I've had so many people, friends of mine here in Connecticut say, how can I help? How can I help? And there's no work to be done in Connecticut. Donald Trump is not going to win Connecticut, but we're so close to Pennsylvania. And so how, how can people help who are not from Pennsylvania?

Thank you. Great question. Well, I do have a wonderful man in Connecticut. His name is Ruben. Shout out, Mr. Ruben. He's on his way to Pennsylvania right now to Pike County, to Milford, an area that we have an opportunity to flip a congressional seat from blue to red. And he's going to be outside of a post office with us registering voters and helping to court voters where they are for the next until the deadline on October 21st.

And so we've got people coming from New York, coming from West Virginia, coming from Maryland. A lot of these blue states, with all due respect to them, the things that matter are Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, Nevada, the swing states. So if you are feeling overwhelmed,

hopeless or helpless in a blue state, I want you to reach out to me. Go to my ex account, which is at Scott Pressler, S-C-O-T-T-P-R-E-S-1-S-L-E-R. Slide into my DMs in the most wholesome manner, and I will connect you with a member of my team all across the Commonwealth. And if you were unable to travel, which I understand, then you

You can download my app. I have an app for iPhone, for Android. It's called Early Vote Action. You, from the comfort of your home, can send text messages. You can make phone calls, and you can even write postcards. I want to give a shout-out to a woman named Marcella. She's a grandmother in California, deep blue Cali. She has written Megan to Cali.

thousand postcards handwritten from Cali into Pennsylvania, helping us to flip Pennsylvania counties from blue to red. And so whether you're in a deep red state like Alabama and you want to do more, download the Early Vote Action app. Whether you're in a blue state like Connecticut or Rhode Island, download the Early Vote Action app or come to Pennsylvania and help us.

Okay. Good to know. Now, what about the money? Because she, boy, oh boy, she's taken in a lot of dough. The latest number that I see here is 690 million her campaign has raised. Trump's is 313. So not even half.

Uh, she's got 235 million cash on hand. He has 135 million cash on hand from the outside groups. She's outraised him to her super PAC, 167 million. His is 55 million. Um, though of the top 10 super PACs, I guess Trump is edging her there. In any event, I'm trying to, it looks like she's got a considerable financial advantage over Trump. How does that affect you?

Well, it reminds me of 2016 when we were facing a similar fundraising juggernaut. And I believe Kamala is a less likable, less accomplished Hillary Clinton 2.0. We defeated the Democrats in 2016, and I think we can do it again now in 2024. And I think numbers matter. Data matters. The fact that we are... Let me give you the data...

for the last seven days in Pennsylvania to put things into context for you. Despite all this dough you're talking about, despite endorsements from Taylor Swift, despite everything, the entire machine the Democrats have for them, the Democrats in the last week in Pennsylvania only registered 7,600 names.

new voters for their party. Republicans, on the other hand, on the contrary, registered 12,500. We are nearly doubling them in terms of voter registration. So people might look at things like cash. I'm looking at things like action, like data, like science. And I think everything is pointing in the right direction that this election, I think, is Trump's to lose. We can win this for President Trump.

So when you see the polls super tight, like I said, the RealClearPolitics average of polls in Pennsylvania, literally the same right now, totally even.

What does that just not comport with the reality you're seeing on the ground or you are still in the position of no, it's tied, which is why you need every single individual to make sure they leave their Amish wedding and cast a ballot, stop their trucks and cast a ballot.

Look, in 2016, Hillary was, what, 10 points ahead in Pennsylvania. In 2020, I think Joe Biden was like four points, five points ahead. I think the fact that they are tied with real, clear politics shows you exactly what I'm saying, that the fact that it is tied, there are going to be a lot of conservatives that aren't answering these quote unquote polls. And again,

Guys, the point of a poll is to depress and to discourage or it's to contrive and to manipulate. I believe, quite frankly, that the polls were made really high for President Trump with Joe Biden in order to force the Democrats and give more credibility to pushing him out and make way for Kamala. The polls are only a tool used to either discourage, depress, divide,

or encourage one group to do something else. The only thing that matters, guys, is ballots into boxes. The last day to register voters is on October 21st in Pennsylvania. You use every single gosh darn day to court voters and lock in those votes on Tuesday, November 5th, 2024. Scott Pressler, thank you. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Nice to see you. Hey, thank you, Megan.

Amazing. Okay. Coming up, we look at the other side. What are the Dems doing and how are they feeling? Don't go away. Hungry Root is one very easy way to eat healthy. They send you fresh, high quality groceries, simple, delicious recipes, and essential supplements. It's like having someone else do all the planning and shopping so you don't even have to think about it.

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Now, the other side of the coin, the Democrats. We know that the Harris-Wallace ticket has a clear fundraising advantage. However, some are warning that Team Blue is not spending its money entirely wisely, saying more needs to be done to engage in particular Black, Latino and young voters. Joining me now, David Callahan. He's founder of Blue Tent.

His organization is helping engage those very voters and recently issued a memo to the vice president about its concerns when it comes to those voting blocks. David, welcome to the show. Hey, great to be here, Megan.

Okay. So I was just talking to my previous guest who's trying to get Republicans registered. And what I said to him is what I say to you, which is people talk about, I hear it everywhere. The formidable ground game of the Democrats. Thanks to Barack Obama, this juggernaut was put in place.

and that they're just better at it than the Republicans. Now, Scott Pressler, my first guest, who's like hauled up in Pennsylvania only, says he's changing that in Pennsylvania. Just give me like the 30,000 foot perspective on that notion as we start. Yeah.

Well, so the way to understand it is that, yes, the Democrats have a very powerful ground game. It's really two different tracks. On the one hand, you have the Harris-Walls campaign with all of their offices in battleground states across the country. There's more than 250 offices that the campaign has opened up. They have almost 2,000 staff on the ground.

And then there's the second track, which is progressive grassroots groups. A lot of these groups have really scaled up since 2016. After that election, people felt like, wow, we clearly need to invest a lot more in mobilizing our voters since that election was lost by such a razor-thin margin in 2016. And that progressive ground game...

Has a lot going for it, hundreds of different groups, but is underfunded significantly. So they don't that money that she gets, I mean, that she's taken in the stats are her campaign had raised six hundred and ninety million. But she also has PAC money of hundreds of millions from the PAC. So does that not go to any of those progressive ground game groups? Is that all just Harris campaign money?

Yeah. So if you think about what the money that's raised by the Democratic establishment groups spent on, that would be, you know, the Harris-Walls campaign, the different candidates who are running in the states like Senate candidates, and also those super PACs like Future Forward, which is the main super PAC supporting Harris-Walls.

A lot of that money goes to advertising. It goes to fighting the air war, right? TV ads, digital ads, big expenses in that. I mean, hundreds of millions of dollars that's going to that air war. But some also goes quite a bit this year to that ground game that Harris Wall's campaign has with those couple hundred field offices. However,

The campaign does not share its money with these progressive grassroots groups. It's not like, hey, here's $50 million and go turn out Latino voters in Arizona or Black voters in Georgia. That's not really the way things work, in part because there's legal restrictions for such funding transfers. A big part of the problem is the choices that donors make. Most Democratic donors don't know much about these progressive grassroots groups that are doing vital work

in communities. And so they just give money to the Harris-Walls campaign and to the future PACs that they're familiar with. Do you know how your numbers stack up against the Republicans? I didn't ask Scott that in terms of offices and staffers.

Yeah. Well, that has been a subject of a lot of investigation and confusion. I think that the extent of the Republican ground game is unknown. There's not a lot of transparency there. There's a number of

of different ground game groups on the Republican side that are working to elect Trump. The Trump campaign itself doesn't have a strong ground game. It's largely outsourced that work to groups like America PAC, which is Elon Musk backed group, Turning Point Action, which is the sort of C4 arm of Turning Point USA.

You know, the Koch network, Americans for Prosperity, they have a ground game, but it's largely focused on on the Senate side. Trump 47, we hear a lot about. But we don't we don't get a lot of hard and fast numbers. Politico just published a major article on this recently where they went out and talked to a lot of.

Republican operatives in different battleground states. And those people said, hey, you know, we're not seeing a lot of evidence of this Republican ground game. We're very concerned, particularly about how that might affect down ballot candidates who are running in these states. So it's kind of a mystery. Who normally runs herd on it? I mean, would it typically have been the RNC and the DNC like in years past or like who's normally in charge?

Well, normally you have the RNC and the presidential nominee working in close concert to field a strong campaign ground game. That's certainly what you have on the Democratic side. The ground game that Harris-Walls has put together is controlled by the Harris-Walls campaign. It's quite extensive, as I mentioned. And in turn, there's

coordination between the Harris-Walls campaign and the DNC and state Democratic parties, which play an important role here too. Like in Wisconsin, for example, the Democratic State Party of Wisconsin has raised over $30 million for its operations, including a lot of field work.

So in the best case scenario, you have these national democratic campaigns and parties working very close in coordination with state parties and down ballot candidates, including in Senate races. There's Senate races in almost all the battleground states.

And we're not seeing that on the Republican side this year that we can make out. And so basically it's a mystery. It's like a mystery on the Republican side. What groups exactly are playing? What efforts do they have in place to get out the ground game? And you could be overwhelmed on election day with, wow, it was amazing. How did they keep that a secret? Or you could be underwhelmed and

and thinking, well, it's just as disorganized and in disarray as we suspected. There's going to be a lot of surprises, I'm sure, as there have been in past elections, particularly that 2016 election. And keep in mind that Trump's own theory of turnout, as best we can tell, is that he is the ground game, right? He's the person who inspires a lot of, uh, uh,

low propensity voters on the Republican side to get out and vote. I mean, remember, a lot of what an effective ground game does is it goes after those people who may or may not vote or who need persuasion to vote for your party, right? So you want to put your effort into those kinds of people. And Trump's theory has been that, hey, people are so...

you know, eager for a different kind of candidate, somebody like me, that they'll come out and vote for the first time in years. And that's not a theory without foundation. I mean, it certainly worked for him in 2016. And in 2020, he increased his vote share, you know, his number of votes by 13 million over his 2016 tally. But the concern of many Republicans is, you know,

with these razor-thin margins.

every single vote counts and you can't leave any votes on the table. I mean, remember, if you had switched around 42,000 votes in the last election, Trump would have won. I mean, Biden won that election in the Electoral College very narrowly, 10,000 votes or so in Arizona, 11,000 in Georgia. I mean, this is where your ground game really kicks in if those are the kinds of margins you're looking at.

What you guys do is positively vital to what's going to happen in this election. There's a lot of responsibility. So when you look at it, talk to me a little bit, if you if you would, about the polling, because what the experts have told me in the past is that national popular vote, generally speaking, needs to be, let's say, five points in favor of the Democrats in order for Democrats to be feeling good about

on the electoral college that just the way voting works and given the democratic advantage in the cities and the urban centers, generally you want to see a lead by the Dem of about five or six points going in. And that will probably suggest a, a lead in the critical swing States that will lead to electoral college victory.

Right now, what we're seeing is that she does have a lead in the electoral college, not that big. But these swing state polls, I mean, ask on a different day, you'll get a different answer. But they're very tight. They are incredibly tight. I don't remember an election which they're just so uniformly tight, maybe little tiny moves one way or the other. So what does that tell you?

It tells us that we have a highly polarized electorate and there's not a lot of people who change their minds, right? And in August for a couple of weeks, there was this tantalizing sense among Democrats that Harris could really break out and open up a commanding lead. And we'd see something similar to what happened in 2008 with Obama, who got a big lead and then kept it and won the election.

And that never happened, right? She certainly reversed a lot of Biden's weaknesses, but the election has basically been deadlocked ever since. And the crazy thing about the polls and the reason this is so nerve wracking, I think for people on both sides, is that they were wrong in 2020 that, you know, they underestimated Trump's strength in 2020, just as they did in 2016.

And they were wrong in 2022 the other way. So they underestimated the extent of democratic strength. Everybody was talking about that red wave that never materialized and Democrats did a lot better. So, you know, if you look at...

analysis of polls, you can find the New York Times has this of if the polls were as wrong as they were in 2020, this is what the outcome would be. Or if they were as wrong as they were in 2022, this is what the outcome would be.

Can I one other one other point here, though, which is that the polls tell us what likely voters say that they that they their choice would be what those polls don't tell us is who's going to actually show up. So turnout is the big variable that polling cannot capture. Well, on that front, can you talk to me about the mail in balloting?

Because traditionally, I mean, since we've been pushing more mail-in balloting 2020, obviously with COVID, but we've had a couple of elections thereafter. The Democrats have been much better about that, in part because Trump doesn't like it. And while he's kind of said a couple of times, yeah, do it.

He's got this inner opposition to it. He doesn't trust it. Whereas every Republican operative on the ground is saying, for the love of God, please do mail in balloting. Don't leave it up to chance on Election Day. So how how is that looking? Do you think the Democrats still have a big advantage on the mail in balloting where their voters are more used to it and trust it more?

Yes, for sure. Although there's likely to be less mail-in balloting this time around than there was in 2020 because we don't have a pandemic going on, which is one of the big changes from the last presidential election.

But I think it's really interrupt you. But have rules been changed to tamp that down? Is that why you say that? Or it's just people are more likely to. People are just more willing to vote in person because there's there's no pandemic going on. And so the imperative to vote by mail is not what it was that many people felt in 2020.

The big advantage that mail-in voting gives, as well as early voting, which is another major factor here, early voting is already underway in multiple states.

And this really helps whoever has the strong ground game, because what these ground game groups do is every day they get a list of who has voted. They don't it doesn't say, you know, who who those voters voted for, but it does say who voted. And then they cross those people off the list and don't focus their get out the vote effort on on those already voted people. Instead, they go after those people who haven't yet voted early or who have voted.

not yet turned in their ballot. And so, you know, the Democrats are in a strong position to effectively win this election in October by really bearing down on those in those early voting states and through the mail-in balloting to try to bank as many votes as possible before Election Day. And that is a key part of their strategy. Do you think we will know who won on election night?

Thanks to Pennsylvania, not...

allowing all the ballots to be opened and counted until election day, probably not, assuming it all comes down to Pennsylvania, which could well be the case. And so in Pennsylvania, there's been legislative attempts to allow the election authorities to start opening and counting ballots before election day. Those efforts have not succeeded. And so what we saw last year in Pennsylvania was, again,

This frantic effort counts huge numbers of mail-in ballots that went on for a few days. And we're likely to see that again. And it could really leave people on pins and needles for a while. Why don't they just get more people? Why don't they get more counters? Yeah, absolutely.

I've seen photographs of these huge warehouses where they count the ballots and counting hundreds of thousands of ballots by hand and tabulating them through these machines apparently is a huge job. But yeah, you would hope that they would just expand their capacity to do that.

Oh, my gosh. Can you imagine the number of media trucks and cameras that are going to be outside of that center if it all does come down to Pennsylvania this year? My God. Yeah. Not to mention potentially violent protesters. Oh, God. I mean, not to mention lawyers.

Yeah, I mean, that's the scary thing. And there is a whole legal side of the election that doesn't get much attention. But both sides have really lawyered up and have a large cadre of lawyers ready to go to try to

challenge ballot results. I mean, obviously there's been a lot of controversy about that in Georgia with changes to the certification process. So there's certainly things that can go wrong in a big way in this election. I know. Yeah. There was the Arizona misprinting the ballots and

A couple of years ago, things do tend to go wrong here or there, though overall it's comparatively smooth, I mean, compared to other countries. But yeah, the lawyers are always... I remember when I was at Fox, Ben Ginsberg used to be walking through the hallways before this big election lawyer, and they always anticipated problems, especially after Bush v. Gore and how tight that one was. So the lawfare will be...

There's a lot of threats against election workers. I mean, this is a new phenomenon in our democracy that we've seen arise since 2020 and even before with these almost all of them coming from the Republican side of this kind of

MAGA acolytes who've been fed a lot of misinformation and have threatened the lives of election workers. It's not such a great job to be an election worker these days. And some of those positions are hard to fill. And that kind of getting the manpower to do this large work of administrating these elections is another challenge.

Well, those Republicans should volunteer. The MAGA folks that should volunteer for the job and get the training and make sure that they're in there and they can count just as well as anybody else. You know, instead of complaining about it, go and go do something productive about it. All right. Scott Pressler was talking about Pennsylvania and everything may come down to Pennsylvania. And he was saying one glimmer of hope for his side is that the number of registry registered voters is

uh, for the Democrats, the advantage, which was 1 million, he said in, um, I think it was 16, a 1 million, uh, registered voter advantage has now been shrunk down to about 300,000 because they've had so many more Republicans register or the Democrats have moved out. What have you, is that true? Do you like, is that your experience too?

I've heard about that Republican registration advantage, not just in Pennsylvania, but in other states. It was kind of hard to verify the claims and counterclaims. I think one thing we do know is that many new voters are registering as independents, and that is by far the fastest growing segment of the registered electorate. And many of those are young people. And so I

That is a kind of creates another wild card if you can't predict it as easily. And there's also, of course, quite a few Republicans who have crossed lines in recent years. I mean, there's that that, you know, Haley, 20 percent Haley vote. And the big question is whether they're going to listen to Liz Cheney or listen to Haley, who has endorsed Trump.

Well, if you tell me a bunch of people have registered as independents in California and are voting in record numbers, I will say those are Republicans. But if you're registering as an independent, just as a young person, the odds are you're probably a Democrat who's like maybe disaffected a little bit with Democrat policies, but young people tend to go blue and independent.

the only people who like in California, you're a Democrat, unless you call yourself an independent, which case you're a closeted Republican. That's been my experience. Um, okay. So you're the, the registration advantage you're seeing in a couple of States before I let you go, can you just explain ballot harvesting to me? This term gets thrown around and Republicans always complain that the Democrats do it. But now I've seen more and more Republican groups saying we just also need to do it. I don't fully understand what it is or whether it's legal and how it works.

Yeah, I mean, it's a term we hear a lot. I think there's different definitions of it. It's often, you know, bandied about with allegations of fraud. You know, the idea like you go to a nursing home and, you know, you get everybody who has ballots there and maybe you fill them out yourselves, right? I mean, there's a lot of allegations of fraud that Republicans have continually made. Trump, of course, repeating that lie again and again and again.

And that just empirical evidence doesn't bear out that this is a significant problem. And just to be clear, you're so you're not allowed to go. You could go to the nursing home, a guy like you in your position and say, would you like me to help you register to vote? Like, but you can't actually take their ballots. Is that the deal in the states? Yeah, the laws vary at different places. I don't know what the what the fine print says on this. So.

So some states will let a third party take somebody else's vote. I thought it was only potentially in some states if it was an immediate family member. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, in most states for a ballot to be counted, it needs to be properly filled out. It needs to be signed. It needs to be sealed in terms of a mail-in ballot and how that ballot actually made its way into the ballot box or to a polling station. I think there's a lot more wiggle room and flexibility around that, but I don't know the exact details yet.

Can you just expand on that a little? I know you're saying you don't have the details, but this is what worries Republicans. This is why they think many think that the Democrats cheat, that they're going to somehow stuff stuff, the mailboxes full of ballots that, you know, they filled out themselves or presumably if they're fake ballots, like not real people or people who are ineligible to vote, that's supposed to get caught on the receiving end. It's supposed to be.

But, you know, here in Connecticut, in Bridgeport, we had some mayor who was running for office and his staff were like he was it was this whole scandal. They were shoving ballots into ballot boxes. And, you know, Republicans think this is how the Democrats win elections these days. So what comfort, if any, can you provide that that's that doesn't work?

There's just been hundreds of millions of ballots cast in the last eight years. And when

people investigators go and try to find the incidents of voter fraud it's it's negligible to the point of entirely insignificant i would point to the ron desantis uh election you know security task force that he set up i mean if there's ever going to be ballot harvesting and bad behavior you would think it would be in a place like florida with all these nursing homes and uh

That task force basically came up pretty empty handed and has there's been very few prosecutions that have been bought at the state level for voter fraud and this kind of ballot harvesting that people are talking about. So.

So, you know, if you look around all these different states with, you know, hundreds of millions of ballots cast in the last decade and you look at how many voter fraud prosecutions have been brought, it's just it's so negligible that I don't know why this would remain a significant issue that continues to get a lot of attention.

I'll bet you do know why, actually. I think we both know why it's getting a lot of attention. Because Trump believes it, right? And he's pushed it quite a bit. Now, if Trump wins this election, I think he'll say that problem has been miraculously solved or at least overcome on the Republican side.

Look, it's going to be tight and it's it's almost like nerve wracking. I guess you're feeling better today than you were when it was Joe Biden at the top of the ticket. Have you seen have you felt the increase in enthusiasm of the people you're trying to get out there and get them registered?

Yeah, absolutely. There's a tremendous increase in enthusiasm and there's a tremendous increase in fundraising, which money is always important in elections. And there's been a big turnaround in the polling among key demographic groups that the Democrats need to lock down. We haven't talked about this much, but, you know, Biden was really struggling with a lot of young voters, a lot of black voters, a lot of Latino voters.

And Harris has turned much of that around, but she has not turned it all around. So she's still polling way below where Biden was in 2020 with Latino voters. Black voters are not as locked down as one might hope for if you're a Democrat. Young voters, the lead there is not as significant as it was in 2020. So Democrats have a lot of work to do. And these ground game organizations that I've been talking about that

are in communities and have built the trust to reach some of these kinds of voters are in the best position to go out and really try to bring them around to voting for Harris.

You're saying that it's that second group of progressive ground game groups that are not getting well funded, who are the ones who know the community can get people out. They need money. So both sides have their challenges. This is going to be amazing to watch. David, thank you so much for your expertise and for walking us through it. We appreciate it. Sure. Great to be here. Thanks. Oh, wow.

It's kind of crazy that we're so close, isn't it? I mean, I feel like this campaign has been going on for three years. How long ago was it that Trump went up at Mar-a-Lago with that long, long announcement? Remember? It's just been forever. And now here we are. How many, Steve? It was two years ago. Two years. We've had a presidential campaign going on for two years. It used to always just be from the summer to November.

like a few months. And now we have almost a few years of presidential campaigning. Good gracious. And by the way, if Trump wins, it's going to be even worse because he will be a one-term president. And so the campaigning for, you know, whoever's going to take over after him will start early as well. Okay. Uh, I hope you found that as interesting as I did. I feel somewhat illuminated, somewhat comforted and somewhat disturbed. I

And on that note, thanks to all of you for joining us and we'll be back again soon. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

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