S4 Ep58: How [He/She] Wins (with Ron Brownstein)
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Hello everyone and welcome to the Focus Group Podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark, and this is our final show before the election. We are in the home stretch of this campaign and I am getting the same questions from reporters and people I run into and friends. They're saying, what can you tell me about your focus groups? Is there any late movement? What can we learn?

And the truth is, if the polls aren't moving very much, there will be even fewer noticeable changes in the focus groups, at least not in sort of the head-to-head vote tallies. But that's not what focus groups are for. They're not going to tell you who is going to win, but they can tell you why someone might win. So this week, we're going to walk through some of the key reasons this election could go either way from what the key persuadable blocks I talked to have told us over the last year or so.

And we'll leave the movement detection to the pollsters. My guest today is Ron Brownstein, senior editor at The Atlantic and one of the smartest people anywhere in American politics. Never miss him. Ron, thanks for being here. Hey, Sarah. This is the final, I mean, no pressure. No pressure. It's like being the last guest on Carson. I really wanted it to be you because you

You're somebody I agree with the most in what you write. And so I was excited to have you on. And you have a piece fresh off the presses about one of the things that I think is the most interesting phenomenon of the current election, which is the split between the Electoral College and the national popular vote and how what we saw in 2016 and 2020 might be dwindling. Yeah. Okay. So explain how you see this.

the disconnect between the current swing states, especially sort of the northern Rust Belt states and places like New York, California, Texas, and Florida that have been moving toward Trump. Yeah. First of all, great to be with you. And I've learned a lot by listening to your focus groups and your podcast this year. So back at you. I think because of the two Trump races,

there has developed a widespread belief in both parties that Democrats need a big national popular vote margin to win the electoral college because the key electoral college states are to the right somewhat of the country, right? So political strategists and political scientists alike have the concept of the tipping point state, which is if you rank all the states from the most Democratic to the most Republican, you're

You look at the state that provided the 270th electoral college vote to the winner, both in 2016 and 2020, it was Wisconsin, first for Trump, then for Biden.

And each time it voted three to four points more Republican than the country overall. So the assumption became that Democrats had to win the popular vote by somewhere in that ballpark in order to get to 270 electoral college votes. And of course, Biden won the popular vote by four and a half points and barely won the states that put him over the top. And Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by only two points only. I

and didn't get over the top. And so this view is developed in both sides that Democrats need a big popular vote win in order to squeeze out an electoral college majority. And obviously, that's a source of anxiety for Democrats, because I think pretty clearly the national popular vote has narrowed in October. And it does not seem likely that even if Harris wins the popular vote, she's going to win it

by nearly as much as Biden did. It might be somewhere in the range that Hillary won the national popular vote. But that assumption, you know, from talking to people in both parties and kind of looking at the data, that assumption may be obsolete for two reasons. One is demographic and one is operational. The demographic reason is that, you know, the principal movement we are seeing that is narrowing the popular vote

on a national basis, is Trump improving among voters of color, especially Latino men and to some extent Black men. But even if that is real and it holds through Election Day,

The potential tipping point states in the former blue wall states, and you know that I am the father of the blue wall from 2009, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, 80% of the vote in Michigan is white. 80% of the vote in Pennsylvania is white. 90% of the vote in Wisconsin is white. So given the dynamic we are seeing,

where Harris is largely holding Biden's vote among white voters, maybe down a little among blue collar whites, up a little among college whites, but netting out to within a point, really, in almost every national and state poll.

You could imagine a world where, as Paul Maslin, the pollster, said to me, Trump improves in the national popular vote because he gains among Latino men and to a lesser extent Black men. But it doesn't really do him much good in the electoral college if she's able to hold the white support that Biden had, which was higher than Clinton had, and thus improve

maintain the Biden coalition in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, which with Omaha would get her to exactly 270 electoral college votes. It's really important to kind of conceptualize this. If you imagine a pie chart, Hillary Clinton wins the popular vote by two points, but of that advantage, a bigger share of that two point advantage is voters of color, right?

Harris might win the popular vote by two points, but a bigger share of her total vote are white voters. And therefore, her coalition, as the political scientists say, may be more electoral college efficient and thus able to squeeze out the Rust Belt, even if there is decline among non-white voters, which would complicate her path in the Sun Belt, where they're a larger share of the electorate. So that's the demographic reason. The operational reason is what we saw in 2022.

In 2022, general dissatisfaction with the economy and Biden's performance increased the overall Republican vote.

on a national basis, not only in red states like Texas, but a lot of blue states like New York and California. But in the states where voters were hearing the full dimension, hearing the full dimension of each side's case against the other, the outcome was very different, right? I mean, Republicans won the national popular vote in the House in 2022. Democrats did very well in the most contested swing states, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin,

Arizona, Georgia, kind of back and forth, a split verdict. Nevada, kind of a split verdict. But Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, they won those governor's races very solidly. And so the argument is that in a world where voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin are seeing, I don't know, a billion dollars in effort, all in digital advertising, organizing, it would not be a shock if they are responding differently and breaking differently than

than what you see in the generalized reaction in states where they're not hearing those arguments. And like I said, this is not just like a science fiction assumption. This is pretty much what happened in 2022. So no guarantee that Harris obviously is going to win Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, whatever happens in the Sun Belt. But certainly, if you look at both of those factors, it does not seem at all

implausible to me that she could possibly win those three states with the same popular vote margin on a national basis that was insufficient for Clinton to win them. So I got to tell you, and this is why I wanted to have you on, because this has been my operating theory. I have an ongoing argument with my colleague, John

Jonathan Last about this, in particular, this national popular vote, that she does not need to win it by four points or five points necessarily, as long as she holds on to white voters in these key swing states and that she can withstand a little bit of erosion among Hispanics and Black voters.

particularly black men, if she's able to hold onto white voters and just do a little bit better with non-college white women. I don't love looking at crosstabs, but when I do, it's to look at where the non-college white women are moving. As you should, especially in these states. They're the biggest single block in the electorate, right? They are. And they voted a higher rate. There are more of them. And so if she can do four points better than Biden,

with non-college white women, with working class white women, I think that that is, that's a recipe for success. Okay. I'm going old school. I keep this stuff. I keep it on a legal pad. If you use the exit polls, non-college white women were 29% of the vote in Michigan in 2020. In the census, they were about 26. In

In Pennsylvania, they were between 25 and 30. In Wisconsin, they were closer to 30. They are a big group in the electorate. Now, college white women are also, you know, somewhere around 15 to 18 percent of the vote.

in all three of those states. And there is a risk that Democrats could see at least some erosion among black men in those states. So these states are not immune to the dangers that come with erosion among voters of color. Biden didn't win them by much, but the cushion isn't zero. I mean, he won Michigan by 155-ish pennies.

Pennsylvania by 80, Wisconsin by about 20. And so she has a little cushion. And also, if she erodes a little among black men, but gains among the college white women or the non-college white women, I mean, black men are basically 5% or less of the electorate in those three states. It's not Georgia.

Right. You know, actually have this as well. I mean, we can have an actual fact here. Black men were 5 percent on both exits and vote cast, which is the AP alternative in 2020 in Michigan and Pennsylvania and 3 percent in Wisconsin. So you don't want to go down four or five points among them.

But if you go up four or five points among college educated white women and go down four or five points among black men in those three states, you know, you're getting triple the bang for your buck. That's right. And again, this is not speculative fiction. In 2022, which was the first election after Dobbs.

The three Democratic gubernatorial candidates in those states, Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro, Tony Evers, all ran about eight or 10 points better among college white women than Biden had done just two years before. And like, you know, you've got the two groups that,

that are cross-pressured. I mean, we have an election in which the divisions along the lines of race and age are narrowing and the divisions along the lines of gender and education are widening, right? And in that world, what are the two big swing groups of whites? Well, it's non-college white women whose gender and education pull in opposite directions and

And it's college white men whose gender and education pull in opposite directions. And I think for the Harris campaign, holding the line among the college white men in these states would be fine. Like, I think they would take that in a heartbeat. I mean, they might improve a little among them, but more likely they are, I think, shooting to not erode among

them. And as you say, maybe gain a little among the non-college white women around abortion and general revulsion of Trump, although they also respond to some of his core cultural messages on crime and immigration, and then really blow off the doors with the college white women, who, as I said, it's not a science fiction speculative, you know, and not Isaac Asimov here. Like in 2022,

The Democratic gubernatorial candidates did run better than Biden did. You know, January 6th had not yet happened in 2020. Dobbs had not yet happened. It would not be surprising if Harris runs even better than Biden did among those college white women. And you can envision a world where the national popular vote is much closer, but the ability to hold white support at the 2020 level, which critically is three to four points above the 2016 Clinton level,

That might be the difference between Clinton narrowly losing these states with a two-point national popular vote lead and Harris potentially narrowly winning them with the same national popular vote lead. And of course, as we'll get into, Pennsylvania is the toughest of the three.

And probably where this whole thing gets decided. Yeah. Okay. That's the kind of table setting and math that fires me up. I love that. All right. So before we get into our big thinky, like why Harris wins or why Trump wins sections, I just want to get into how voters have thought of the closing news stories around Trump and Harris.

So we're just going to do a little bit of rap from the last, you know, their closing argument. So let's listen to some what Trump divided voters from a mix of swing states. And this was just recently. We just did this one said about Trump's Joe Rogan interview and, you know, Hitler did some good things. I like his generals comments by Trump that we heard from John Kelly. Let's listen to that.

To be honest, that interview was probably the most interesting Trump interview I've heard in a long time. I like when he's able to speak for a longer time. I thought that Joe Rogan kept him on track as best he could. Vance went on Theo Vaughn, who is a comedian that I love. And again, I really enjoyed that interview. And, you know, I was like, I don't mind this guy.

And so I like those longer format ones. I did see that Trump was really late for a rally. Maybe it was Michigan. And he's like, sorry, it was on the podcast. But I didn't hate that interview.

It was surprisingly good. I told my wife, who's a Kamala supporter, this is worth listening to. Forget the rallies, forget all the other stuff where he's just being the real estate salesman that he is, just overhyping things. Listen to this podcast where he's talking about his first day in the White House and how big the Lincoln bed is. And did you know Lincoln was depressed and his wife was too? All these other things that are just not things you'd hear on TV in an ad or at a rally. So I thought it was

I mean, hopefully Kamala will do the same and you can actually hear more that's not rehearsed from her. I mean, he was talking about how basically there was like the Audubon was created. The economy was improved. He wasn't talking about...

Hitler's feelings on other races. He was talking about what he did for the German economy. And he's talking about the generals that were loyal to him even to the end and how he wants people around him loyal to the end. So that's not an admonition of a terrible person. It was saying that there are people that he needs around him that can do good things.

So again, context is everything. It's like the bloodbath comment. He was talking about the auto industry, but you see commercials now saying, oh, it's going to be a bloodbath on election day. I have friends and family who are real big Trump supporters. Then they will often play those things off that he's just being hyperbolic and things like that. I choose to take people at their word. If we can't trust somebody who's running for the highest position in the country to do the things they're saying they're going to do,

What do we do?

My family is a bunch of Trumpers, too. I used to be a Republican. So I'm kind of the outlier in the family. And they kind of fall back on that, too. Oh, that's hyperbole. That's that. And I think Trump kind of relies on that narrative. He floats things out there, see how it kind of goes. And then a bad reaction. Oh, I'm just joking, just throwing it out there to kind of cover himself. But I think even in his lies, there's truth. And the biggest thing to me is why would any presidential candidate in America talk like that?

You can throw a rock and hear someone say, "I'm so tired of this. I'm progressive, but I'm so tired of this transgender everything." You can do whatever you want to do, but I don't need to say they/them. I can just call you by your name. I don't really need to say your pronouns. Even Democrats I'm hearing on the far left are saying they're just tired of just talking about, "Just say your name. We can move on. We don't need to do pronouns." It's so stupid.

Okay. So there was also some talk about Kamala's call her daddy interview in there, but they weren't like terribly impressed with it and most hadn't listened to it. But that first woman who listened to the whole Joe Rogan interview and thought that it was good, she'd already voted for Harris. And that last guy talking about pronouns was an undecided voter who was oscillating between Trump and Harris completely.

throughout the group. And eventually he kind of landed on Trump, although I'm not sure he was sure he was sticking with that. But he was letting himself get swayed by the conversation in the group. So what's interesting to me is you can hear in that sound how fractured the media landscape has become. And that's part of why it feels so often like the two campaigns are in their own worlds talking to their own people. The latest news stories that were mentioned in the groups that have dominated Beltway Insider, Twitter's fear. But

Can we expect anything to move the needle at this point? There's a lot of people being like, Kamala's got to go on Joe Rogan. And I don't know why neither of them has come on my podcast. But I guess you can hear in there the bifurcated nature of the media and the information people are getting. And how do you think that that is –

changing politics in general. Yeah. I mean, look, we've certainly seen that this election in terms of, you know, them focusing on these kind of niche micro targeted media sources, far more than the big traditional bullhorns of the mainstream media. As I listened to that, to me, the most important part were the Trump

curious or Trump-leaning voters who basically say you do not have to consider that he's going to do the things he says he is going to do. And I think that in many ways is a failure of the media. Maybe it's impossible to reach them given the media that they are consuming because it's just wrong. It is not a value judgment to say that that is an incorrect assumption.

First of all, the research is overwhelmingly clear. I think Thomas Patterson wrote a book about this a few years ago. You know, if a presidential candidate wins, they try to do the things they ran on. They may get stopped by Congress and the courts, but they try to do it. Donald Trump, if he is elected, will massively increase deportations unless the courts stop him. And the second reason why that assumption is wrong, and this is where I think it's a failure of the media, is

There are proposals from Trump that attach to that rhetoric in a way that we don't in the media make clear often enough. And I will give you two very concrete examples. All the attention from the John Kelly interview.

was that Trump said nice things about Hitler or Hitler did good things and he wanted the generals who were loyal, right? To me, the most important part of the John Kelly interviews with the New York Times was that John Kelly told them that as President Trump repeatedly sought to deploy the U.S. military against U.S. citizens and had to be stopped over and over again. So when he says he wants generals that will be loyal to him,

It's not like an abstract generalization about the generals. There's a very specific component to that. And not only did Kelly say that he had to be stopped repeatedly in his first term, but just think about how many separate proposals Trump has put forward.

on the record, in public, not behind closed doors, to use the military or the National Guard in a second term on U.S. soil against American citizens. He's talked about sending the National Guard into blue cities just to patrol for crime, to round up the homeless, to round up undocumented migrants,

They have talked about using the Insurrection Act against protests in the U.S. So when he says he wants generals who are loyal like Hitler, what he really means is he wants generals who will follow his orders, even if that includes deploying the military on U.S. soil.

There's policy that attaches to that. It's not like the guy said, like, oh, well, Hitler did good things. You know, he built the Autobahn. He wants generals who will do what he says and what he says includes using the U.S. military against U.S. citizens. The other example, the exact same thing, split screen, the comic book.

makes the racist joke about Puerto Rico, and it consumes our conversation for days. At the same time, I think like virtually exactly the same time, Tom Honan, you know, his former ICE guy, goes on 60 Minutes and is asked, how would Trump avoid mass family separation during mass deportation? And Honan says, well, there's an obvious solution, deport the kids too.

So just think about that. Just think about what he just said. There are four million, estimated four million U.S. citizen children with at least one undocumented parent in the Hispanic community and probably about another million others from other nationalities.

So they are talking about deporting potentially millions of U.S. citizen kids if they have undocumented parents. And he said, well, basically they deserve it because their parents created this problem by having kids while they were here without legal status. So, you know, I understand why the Puerto Rico joke got all the attention, but the failure to show how these attitudes work

connect to actual policies that he has and will pursue again makes it easier for people who want to dismiss the rhetoric as just boob bait for the bubba's. That is a failure on the media. Look, many of the people we're talking about would not be reading that connection anyway. But the fact is that you cannot separate a candidate's rhetoric and their promises from what they will do in office. History tells us exactly the opposite. Maybe somebody will stop them

You know, maybe John Roberts will decide that deporting U.S. citizen kids is like a bridge too far, even for him. But more likely, if they say they're going to do it, they're going to do it until somebody makes them not do it.

Yeah. Okay. Let's turn the page and we're going to start talking about the hard part. Why Trump wins. Yes. And I promise there's some Kamala hopium around the corner. So, you know, don't freak out. Everybody's tense right now, but we do have to talk about if Trump were to win, how would we explain why?

And there's a few big reasons I hear from voters about when they sort of backslide to Trump, like these swing voters who voted for Trump, then voted for Biden. And this is who I've really focused on this election season. Because if you're going to hold the Biden coalition together, right, you got to know how these people are feeling. And the truth is, we do see in just about every group, a person or two that is backsliding back toward Trump. And I want to play some sound from those people explaining why.

Yeah, I'll be voting for Trump. I'm not a huge supporter, but I feel like Kamala was put into power by people with money, not by voters. It was, I mean, they accuse Trump of doing all kinds of anti-government stuff when a literal coup happened within their own party. So I feel like we've had four years of this. I don't want four more years. I'm worse off economically and in most other ways that I can measure. I was better under Trump. So it's not who I necessarily like personally, but it's who I think will do a better job.

If I had to vote today, I think I'd vote for Trump, like holding my nose. And I just feel like we're not in a good place right now internationally with the economy, with the border. I just feel like we're not in a good place. And I just see another four years of the same if we continue. Biden has an excuse that he's 86 years old and there's a deterioration in cognitive ability. Kamala Harris does not.

When you listen to her, it sounds like she's a tossed salad, honestly. You cannot ascertain what points she's looking to make, and she just goes round and round and round. President Biden had her basically in charge of immigration, and she never went to the border for, I believe, six months.

They were calling for her to come down to the border. She never came. And I think the Republicans will just wipe her out on that issue because she's really one of the things that has really hurt the immigration process at the border.

My vote for him is about the economy. It's about let's get business back in the United States. I think if people have a pocket full of money, that usually will take their mind off of some of the foolishness that we've seen. If people don't have a pocket full of money and they're two seconds away from getting evicted, foreclosed or whatever, that's when the nonsense starts. That's the narrative that I don't want to see happen. She's been his vice president for the last four years.

And she has parroted just about everything that he says or has done. She's basically said, I approve or I like. There's never been a separation between her and what President Biden has wanted to do. And now as she is campaigning, it's still there.

You're going to have to pick between the two evils. And I'm going Republican this time around because this country needs to turn around and not put up with the bull crap and just turn off CNN and Fox for the next four years after that.

I hope that Kamala, you know, I'm real worried about her as a president, too. I don't want a crappy economy. And and so I'm in a hope that it's a glimmer of hope. But it's just for me, it's just Trump is so obnoxious that I'm going to have to go with this woman that I don't want to be president either.

So that last woman, she's voting for Harris. But I do think it demonstrates how this like Dems will take the economy or worried about the economy with Democrats, how much it gets stuck in voters heads. Like the good news here is she's so repelled by Trump that even if she thinks he's better for the economy, she won't do it.

But the guy in front of her is like the inverse example of someone who's like, Trump is repulsive, but I'm turning off the TV and I'm just going to like enjoy his economy. Look, it's not that hard to explain if Trump wins. In fact, Harris winning would be the historic anomaly in this sense. When voters are dissatisfied with the outgoing president and the economy, it is really hard for his party to hold the White House. When Truman left office in 52-

it went Republican. When LBJ left office in 68, it went Republican. When W left office in 08, it went Democratic. I mean, we only have so many cases, so you can't lock this down with mathematical certainty. But for my money, the general rule is that when an outgoing president is popular, it doesn't guarantee that his side will win. Like Eisenhower in 60, they still lost. Clinton in 2000, they still lost. But when an outgoing president is unpopular, it has been really hard

for his side to win. You know, something close to 60% of Americans say that the policies of the Biden administration have hurt them.

winning against that kind of headwind would be the historic anomaly. Now, Biden has a lot of economic successes, job market, stock market, this incredible investment boom that is mostly benefiting red places with hundreds of million, maybe closing in on a billion dollars in investment linked to the Inflation Reduction Act and clean energy and the chip spill and semiconductors. But for most voters, that's just overwhelmed by inflation. I mean, inflation is a giant cloud

that occludes all of that. Because as the guy said, you know, if you had more money in your pocket, people said I was better off under Trump than Biden. The only reason that this is not guaranteed for Trump is that there are many voters who, as your last one, despite that, despite that sense, are unwilling to entrust him

with power again. You know, Democrats ask me all the time, how is it possible that Trump is still competitive after January 6th, felony indictments, felony convictions, civil convictions, a turn toward more openly racist, authoritarian and xenophobic language, everything, and the obvious decline in his kind of cognitive state?

you can turn it around and say, how is Harris competitive when almost 60% of voters disapprove of the president she served with? There's not historic precedent for that either. So if Trump wins, it will be because there were a few too many voters that Harris could not win back enough of the majority of voters who basically think they were better off under Trump. And, you

What we saw in 2022 was that Democrats won an historically high percentage of voters who

who disapproved of Biden or disapproved of the economy because they viewed their Trump-style Republican alternatives as unacceptable. You know, it wasn't like in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, where Democrats won those governor's races, that voters were more satisfied with the economy. They were equally unsatisfied as they were everywhere else. But when they were exposed, as we talked about before, to this full argument between the two sides, they were like, I can't go there.

So we do have recent precedent. We saw in 2022 that there are more voters than historically who will say, I am disappointed in the economy. I'm disappointed in the current administration, but I'm not willing to go to the other side because I view it as a threat to my rights and my values and maybe to democracy itself.

itself. That's Harris's pathway. Yes. Because if everybody who says they were better off under Trump, not only whites, but non-whites voted for him. She loses. She loses. That's right. She loses comfortably. Yeah.

But that's not what's happening. What's happening is that there is a thin slice of voters in every racial group who might say, I trust Trump more on the economy or Biden's policies have not improved my life or the economy was better under Trump, who, like your last focus group woman, are still unwilling to say, I will vote for him. And, you know, the race will be decided by just how many people make that calculation, probably just in those three states.

Michigan, Wisconsin, and then right at the tipping point, Pennsylvania. Maybe Georgia. Maybe Georgia too. Just hold that thought because I want to ask you about North Carolina. But first, we've got to do a word from our sponsors. Here's something I'm really looking forward to as the weather turns cooler. The holiday season, a Kamala Harris victory, and slipping into a cozy sweater from Quince.

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Look, North Carolina has been heartbreak hell for Democrats, right? I mean, they get close. Yeah, but they're like, sure, they're going to win it this time. Like, I just, or not sure, but like, they've been very bullish on North Carolina. I think if they win North Carolina, you know, they've already won Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. Yeah, the race is over. Because basically, it's important, we should have said this before. Historically, Democrats run a few points better among white voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin than they do nationally.

like consistently, not just Biden, not just Clinton, Obama. It's a consistent pattern. Fewer of them are evangelical Christians in those states. There's more of kind of a muscle memory of kind of union class solidarity, even if there isn't literally a union still in place. So North Carolina, I believe, is the second biggest rural population, shared population is rural after Texas.

Democrats are seeing the realignment that they are everywhere else in the big metros, Raleigh and Charlotte, and maybe it will be enough this time with this very extreme Republican gubernatorial candidate.

kind of looking at the late numbers there, I mean, it kind of feels like they're in their usual position of falling just short. It's like on the horizon, just glimmering just out of reach. Not inconceivable. Our mutual friend, Whit Ayers, great Republican pollster since I've known since the 80s. I think he started even in the late 70s. Just on this show. Yeah. Okay. So Whit said to me the other day, people ask me all the time, what's your gut?

And he said, well, you know, I literally make my living with data. Okay. Like data is how I pay my bills. Like, and gut doesn't pay the bills. Right. Gut doesn't pay the bills. And what the data tells me is I can't tell you, like the data is telling me that you cannot confidently say who is going to win. And, you know, I think he's right. I do think that unfortunately,

On balance, the three Rust Belt battlegrounds are better for Harris than the four Sun Belt battlegrounds. Her decline and Biden's, you know, since 2020 is centered more in voters of color, especially Latinos, than it is in white voters. And that's more damaging in the Sun Belt states because voters of color are a bigger part of the Democratic coalition and a small shift toward Trump is really hard to overcome. I think almost everyone agrees that there is a drop

There's like a tier, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. And then the next possibility for Democrats drops, you know, fairly substantially. And of the three, Pennsylvania, interestingly, looks like the toughest for her, even though Wisconsin historically has been. And the reason is not complicated. Non-college whites are, you know, eight or 10 points more of the electorate

in Wisconsin than they are in the other two and non-white voters or less. But the movement of the college whites toward Democrats in Wisconsin is pretty overwhelming. And what you might see- In the Wow counties. The Wow counties and Dane, you might just see incredible numbers. And Michigan, I think, look, unless the bottom falls out for Harris-

Michigan is probably the best of the three for her, even with the problems in Dearborn and elsewhere, then Wisconsin, and then you're left with Pennsylvania. You know, Sarah, as I said in my story, if this is an election that is really going to decide the fate, the future shape of the American constitutional system, what better place to have it decided than the state in which the Constitution was written?

Pennsylvania. And also my home state. And I have faith in us. By the way, if it's your home state, isn't there someone else whose home state it is who we haven't really seen out there? And I keep wondering if we will. Like, is one tweet all we are going to get in this election from Taylor Swift? I don't know. Wait, is Taylor Swift from Pennsylvania? I think so.

Or at least she lived there. Yeah. You know, I can't tell you how not invested in Taylor Swift I am. So I'm sorry about that. No, here's the thing, though. My producer is saying yes. Yes, she's from. I don't know where she's from. And Sarah, why are Republicans so confident Trump is going to win despite the public polling? Most Republicans, Whit Air is accepted. Like in the Trump camp, why do they think he's going to win even though the public polling is absolute dead heat, at least in those three states? And most of the polling this week have had Harris ahead in Michigan and Wisconsin.

But they are confident they're going to win because they believe that Trump will turn out a lot of the Joe Rogan listening young men.

that polls are not anticipating, and he will kind of overperform as he did in 2016 in those states. Now, the fact is that women in every age group turn out at higher rates than men, but the gap is especially wide among young women. Young women turn out at significantly higher rates than young men. And so I don't think it is crazy to assume that Taylor Swift on Sunday or Monday is

helping to turn out young women that could counter any surge. By the way, young women are a majority of the eligible voting population in that age group. You know, if Trump is counting on a surge of young men to tip the election his way,

It's not really crazy to think that Taylor Swift appearances in the final 48 hours could materially affect the turnout among young women and potentially neutralize any advantage Trump is expecting from young men. So I just throw that out there. I'm immediately going to start tweeting that out. Apparently she's from West Reading, which I did not know.

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One other common dynamic, just as we're talking about Trump and as people backslide to him, is how they expect he'll handle foreign policy. And while we hear a lot from voters that he was a clown who embarrassed us on the world stage, we also hear a lot of people say that he's like so crazy that people are scared of him and he keeps these world leaders on their toes. So let's listen to what some of these swing voters, Trump to Biden voters, have said on sort of foreign policy.

When Trump was here, everybody was like, ooh, you know, he's a little evil. Let's just not mess with him. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know. I just feel like he would go sit down with Putin and all of them and be like, listen, this is what we're doing. And he took charge. And I feel like it was seen more as like United States powerhouse versus like whatever we are right now. I don't think Putin would have even tried something with Trump, to be perfectly honest, because Trump was not predictable to Putin. So I tend to think that a lot of the stuff that we're in now, inflation,

the rising interest rates, it just would have been handled a lot differently, at least decisively. So I'm looking for more decisive leadership moving forward versus kind of the milquetoast that we've got now. I think on the international stage, the other countries, whether we want to believe it or not, still look to the United States to lead. And

I think that other countries, they don't care if you're male or female, as long as you're a human being and you can lead. And I think that with Kamala Harris,

Who knows? She may get there one day. But usually how your personality is today is usually how it's going to be tomorrow if you're of a certain age. And there's nothing that I have seen of her, whether she was the prosecutor locally in California, whether she was the attorney general. There's nothing that says to me that's the strong leader that the rest of the world is going to respect and follow.

Okay, so here's the one reason I kind of wanted to jam this in, even though oftentimes foreign policy tends to be not a thing that drives voters. I have heard from a lot of these voters when we ask about, you know, would you vote for a woman? They'll say things like,

You know, I would, but I'm just very worried about these other world leaders. They don't respect women from some of these other countries. And you hear in some of these answers, right, when it comes to foreign policy, people have this like strong, weak frame. And I think so much of it is not like an overt

I wouldn't vote for a woman to be president. It's that people say, I'm not sure she's strong enough to handle it. There's something like in their bellies that's like, I don't know. Which basically means I wouldn't vote for a woman for president, I think. You know, look, I mean, it's sort of circular, right? I mean, yes, I would vote for a woman for president, but I think a woman would be weaker. I mean, like you're in the same place. You're just assigning a different rationale to it. I mean, look, all of this is real. I mean, you know,

It's kind of like strength versus chaos. Harris has closed the gap on strong leader, at least in national polling, and she's much more competitive on that. And, you know, the debate, I think, was so damaging to Trump, largely because it reminded people of just how chaotic he is on a day-to-day basis. Most people are not watching the rallies or, you know, certainly you can't absorb all of the chaos of the rallies. But, you know, the share of voters who,

who like the results of the Trump presidency in terms of conventional measures of political output, which include the economy and the way we were interacting with the rest of the world, is significantly higher than the share that feel comfortable with Trump as president because there's a lot else that goes along with it. There's everything we saw from Madison Square Garden.

And again, that there are policies attached to that kind of rhetoric, you know, that they're uneasy about the division and the level of conflict in society. One pollster told me, for example, and I think this has the ring of truth. I wonder if this is turned up in your focus group, Sarah, that even among women who respond to Trump's arguments about immigration and crime, the very ferocity of his language, which gets them to respond, also kind of causes them to step back.

Because they're like, you know, he's talking about Haitians eating pets and, you know, they're animals and they're not really human. And, you know, the divide in the country about that, whether that is an acceptable form of discourse, whether that is an acceptable way to kind of frame the choices facing the country, it really does separate substantially along the lines of education issues.

and gender. And the really important thing is that if Harris wins narrowly, obviously, or if Trump wins narrowly, obviously, half the country is still on each side of this divide. And that is ominous about where we're going in the next few years.

All right. I want to turn now to Harris and how she could win. Like if she wins, how would we explain it? And obviously sort of women's reproductive rights have been central to Harris's closing argument and the conversation all along. I mean, it's been central with Democrats ever since Roe was overturned. We taped an episode about this that I remember vividly back in the spring with a group of Trump to Biden women from Arizona who

after the state Supreme Court had reinstated that 19th century era abortion ban. Let's listen to what they had to say.

I'm strict Roman Catholic, and I have my own feelings about when life begins. I don't like to pass judgment or to, I don't know. And this one seems a little strict. Well, I'm definitely pro-life, but I do agree there are situations, circumstances way beyond people's control. And you have to have some allowances, especially for the life of the mother.

And again, this is the 20th century and not 1864. I sort of felt like Arizona was becoming like Gilead from The Handmaid's Tale. So, you know, it's very disappointing to me. And I also am Roman Catholic. You know, I don't support necessarily abortion, but I do believe there are some instances where the woman should have an opportunity to decide and not the patriarchy.

I am pro-choice. I am also Roma Catholic, but I believe that it's everybody's choice. I don't agree with an abortion per se, but that's my body and that is my choice. So that's honestly how I feel. I have daughters. I have, you know what I mean? I have a 17 year old. God forbid if my daughter goes down the street and gets raped, she's forced to have a child.

I'm a special needs mom and every pregnancy I was faced with life or death situations in my body. So I'm very close to this topic.

of if I didn't have choice, which I chose to keep all my children. That was my own personal thing. But to be alone in that room as a single mom and not have that choice, knowing the burden of a life with a child that requires way more than a typically developing definitely changed my point of view on why it should be a choice.

So I remember this group really well because, and I've just seen this type of thing over and over again, but it really highlights how conservative some voters can be and still be against the bans, especially the extreme ones. Now, you mentioned on Twitter recently that Republican governors like Brian Kemp and Mike DeWine won in 2022 despite.

passing strict abortion bans, right? Yes. In red states. Yeah. So what do you think that tells us about people's policy preferences versus like partisan loyalty and the abortion politics in 2024? Like, how do you think it's going to play? Well, first of all, if you ask how Harris wins, you can point to a very simple mathematical equation. Women are a majority of eligible voters in every swing state and nationally. They turn out at higher rates than men. So therefore they're an even larger majority of actual voters.

And if Harris wins women by as much as Trump wins men, or maybe even by one point less, depending on the place, she will win most places, almost everywhere. You know, we can call that the Celinda Lake rule. That's sort of like the Mendoza line in baseball. Like you win women by as much as the Republican wins men, you win. And, you know, there is shockingly polling varies on whether we are headed for like an unusually large gender gap.

or one that is pretty constant with what we've seen before. I mean, except for W, who had the kind of security argument, which maybe Trump has echoes of. Every Democrat has won women by, I think, 11 to 13 points in the exit polls in the 21st century. Biden pushed it up to 15. So if Harris wins, it's because she wins women by 15 or 16 points. And because Trump probably is going to win men by more than he did last time. Yeah.

And, you know, abortion is powerful, Sarah, I think not only on its own terms as a policy issue, but because what it symbolizes about the role of women in society. And as I wrote recently, all of J.D. Vance's language about childless cat ladies and Hulk Hogan at the convention, Trump is offering a very conventional definition of masculinity, hyper-masculinity that protects the little woman who needs protection.

Right? - Yeah. - You know, I will be your protector. And then the new version of it, whether you want it or not. And there are women, evangelical women, some of these blue collar white women that we're talking about who are like more comfortable in that world, who kind of think that a male president is more likely to protect them.

But there are a lot of younger college single women who kind of hear that as the worst kind of out of touch throwback paternalism, especially coming from a guy who has been adjudicated to have committed a sexual assault and has dozens of other plausible allegations, serious allegations, including some that have just come out in the last couple of weeks. So.

You know, everything Trump does, you know, to try to appeal to the most culturally conservative elements of the electorate has an equal, if not greater, opposite reaction. And what I wrote about, what you cited, was that if you look in 2022,

And I wrote this the Sunday after the election. Abortion wasn't enough to move Republican leaning women away from Republican governors who signed abortion bans in red states in large numbers. Kemp won and Abbott won and DeSantis won and DeWine won. And if you look at the exit polls, they all won somewhere between, you know, 28 to 43, I think, percent of voters who describe themselves as pro-choice.

But in the swing states, it was a very different story where Whitmer and Shapiro won over 80 percent of voters who called themselves pro's choice. And Evers in Wisconsin and Hobbs in Arizona was only a little bit behind them. Again, this point life in the swing states is different than life outside of them.

him. I think you will see Harris win a higher percentage of voters who describe themselves as pro-choice or say abortion should be legal all or most of the time in Michigan, in Wisconsin, than she does say in Texas and Tennessee.

Okay, so I want to use your point about Vance and Project 2025 to transition into some sound here, because these are like abortion-adjacent facets of this campaign that could help pull Harris over the line, right? How Vance talks about women, Project 2025, and Project 2025 has become this catch-all in the groups for an extremely socially conservative agenda that Trump now insists he has nothing to do with.

And J.D. Vance has been a constant drag on this because these people are like, wait a minute, that guy does sound really socially conservative. So let's listen to what Trump and Biden voters have said about Vance and Project 2025. I assume her being a woman, she's going to be looking out for women's rights. She's not going to be throwing women under the bus, trying to put us stuck at home, cooking and cleaning. I don't know. Like y'all talking about the 2025 project. I'm like, oh man, that sounds like where that's headed.

I've heard it's just like Christian nationalism, essentially. They want to move the boundaries between church and state and they want to persecute people who buy contraceptives and that sort of stuff. What do you guys think when I mention Project 2025? Nightmare. It's the end of our constitution and our democracy as we know it. Who else? What do you think, Jeremy? Yeah, it's just back to dictatorship. It's just going back to...

old ways of thinking and getting rid of a lot of programs and ideas of things that we actually need.

You look at his running mate, J.D. Vance. He wrote the foreword on a book about Project 2025. And now they've decided not to have that published before the election. So they've held off on releasing that book. And regarding his comments on women's catalyzing, his wife is a very strong, educated woman.

So for him to make those comments is so sad to me, especially as the mom of two girls. I mean, the whole cat lady thing, honestly, you go back to his thing. I mean, he makes inciting, defamatory comments towards people, group and gender. And we don't need that in the White House anymore. When you guys hear J.D. Vance's name, what's the first thing you think about? Slimy.

Weird couches. He seems incapable of having real conversations with real people. He's got a trashiness about him too. Like he made comments the other day that the meanest person on earth are women without children. They're like cat ladies and they're evil and all this stuff. Well, that was very offensive. And he says, well, that was a long time ago. That shows me you have that mean spirited mentality. You put a narcissist like Trump with a,

a hillbilly, that's disastrous. I mean, where's the class there? Here's what is so interesting to me. The focus groups to me, what I always look for is like, what breaks through? And nothing from this cycle has broken through more than Childless Cat Ladies and Project 2025. And I swear to God, these voters have no idea really what's in Project 2025. They just know it's scary and they don't like it. How do you think that works as issues that are motivating voters?

Well, it's Project 2025 has become kind of the focal point, the lightning rod that grounds this broad concern that we were talking about before, which is that there is a majority of Americans who feel that they are not better off because of Biden. And there is a majority of Americans who aren't easy about giving Trump power again because they think of him as,

as someone who will threaten their rights and their values, divide the country, introduce a level of chaos, and for many of them, threaten democracy itself. And Project 2025 becomes the focal point, the concrete manifestation of that generalized anxiety. And that's kind of where we are. We used to talk about this as a double negative election with Biden and Trump, more voters viewing them unfavorably than favorably.

Harris has pretty good personal favorables, but it's still a double negative election in the sense that most people do not consider the Biden presidency a success. And most people are at least somewhat hesitant about giving Trump the keys to the nuclear codes again. And uneasy about everything that he will set loose in American society. We have not really, and maybe it's not possible until it actually happens, but like

Just think about what is going to happen in our big cities if, in fact, we have militarized mass deportations. I mean, like the level of social conflict that we could be heading for in a second Trump term is really substantial. And Project 2025 has become a way for voters, I think, to take that abstract, generalized concern and lock it into something very tangible.

And that's why I think it is so powerful because it is a manifestation of this broader concern of what another Trump presidency could mean. Yeah. And that's how we're going to kind of close this out. Like there's sort of one final bucket of reasons that I can get bullish on Harris. And it's this, that a lot of these voters think Donald Trump is the worst human being ever to be nominated for president in America. And these faults continue to resonate with persuadable voters. So a lot of times we talk about swing voters, but,

one of the other categories I talk to a lot are two-time Trump voters who indicate that they are either out or really down on Trump. So most of the voters you're about to hear are two-time Trump voters who are down on Trump. Let's listen to how they thought about, you know, everything about Trump's character.

So when it came around to 2020, Trump hadn't really shown his jump the shark side. That's what I like to call it. It was like a couple of weeks after the election, and it was once January 6th came, certainly. And when he started to incite the people to resist the certification of the election, his demeanor changed dramatically.

from one that was, well, I wouldn't say completely presidential because he was an embarrassment in the international realm in terms of whenever he would represent the country overseas. But all of a sudden, he really jumped the shark and he created what I would call almost a shared psychosis amongst the people. If he wants to get back in the office, what's he going to do, you know?

Is he going to want to play the games that the Democrats have played and want to start trying to

tit for tat for what they've done to him. I'm a little weary of what would happen if he was to get back into office. I am happy that the jury found him guilty. And I think also now that he is a convicted felon, he's completely unfit. He can't pass a basic security clearance at this point. I'm not sure if he can vote in Florida. He may not be allowed to go to different countries as a felon. This is not appropriate. Not

knock it off Republicans, find somebody else. This seems like anybody that's really close to the guy isn't close to him anymore. And so his leadership style has to be horrible. And to think of like elevating this man to the highest point of leadership again, that is where it's a bridge too far for me. Like Mike Pence doesn't like him. His closest lawyers are stabbing him in the back. And it just doesn't seem like he has been able to hold on to any confidants.

Not only are they not supporting him, but the words that they're using, you know, not, you know, he's just not good. He's dangerous for our country. You know, to have, you know, Pence and Cheney and different people come out and say those things, you know, I'm going to heed what they're saying. I think they would prefer to be able to vote for the candidate that's, you know, with the party that they're with.

I need somebody that can be respectful and somebody that people can actually look up to. In 2019, I became a mom. And so it made me think about things like a little bit differently that, you know, like, can I really say to my kids, like I voted for this guy and he's just so disrespectful and so disrespectful to minorities and women, um,

his policies are one thing, but like just the way that he acts is what I can't handle. I'm not really excited about Kamala, but she's not Trump. So I'll vote for her. Okay. Wow. So yeah. Yeah. So most of the people you just heard were the two time Trump voters who were down on Trump while the last two you just heard were Trump to Biden voters. And

And this is where I'm like, okay, in my swing voting groups, do I see a little backsliding? I do. But then there's this whole other category of people who voted for the guy before. And I hear a lot of these groups. Like, I know these voters are out there. Do I know, like, the number of them exactly? I don't, but they're real. But here's my question I want to ask you at the close. If Kamala loses, there will be a referendum on her...

strategy here at the end to sort of stump with Liz Cheney and to try to sweep up as many of these right-leaning, independent, soft GOP voters, even former Trump voters, right? Yes. Do you think that she's making a mistake right now to focus so hard? Or do you think that's the right strategy based on the voters that are available to her to be persuaded? First of all, I would say if she loses, it's because she started in such a deep hole in

that Biden left her with 60% of the country basically disapproving of kind of the outcomes of the Biden presidency. I 100% agree with this. And that she has been, win or lose, far better as a candidate and far better than I think anybody on the Democratic side could have hoped. I mean-

Her performance at all the big moments has been A plus. The debate, the convention, the closing argument. The ellipse, right. Exactly. So I actually think she has found a pretty effective way to bridge that debate. Because as you say, in the Democratic Party, there's this

Huge argument. Do you close by emphasizing Trump's threat to rights, values, democracy, the constitutional system, which is aimed primarily at white collar voters, including most of them, I think, people who have voted Republican in the past? Or do you close by emphasizing I will fight for the middle class?

as a way of trying to appeal to primarily people living paycheck to paycheck, which include a lot of non-white voters, as well as those non-college white women. I thought, starting with the CNN town hall, the line that she unveiled there, which became the centerpiece of the ellipsis speech,

is actually a pretty elegant bridge. It's that Donald Trump will come back into office with an enemies list and I will come into office with a to-do list focused on the middle class. And like whoever wrote that should get a bonus because that is about as elegant a way to bridge

twin messages that I've seen in a while. And it also, you know, it's synergistic. It really kind of underscores each one. It reinforces each one. You know, and look, where is she going to grow votes? Well, I mean, if you're going to talk about where she's going to improve over Biden in 2020, it is most likely in white collar suburbs, racially diversifying suburbs among white collar voters of all races who, as your focus group,

participants rather eloquently said, you know, got off the bus after January 6th and after Dobbs. Maybe there's a little growth in non-college white women, as you talked about around Dobbs. I think the goal among non-white voters is try to just stay cold as close as you can to where you were. Any losses among men offset by gains among women, that is not likely to happen among Latinos.

Maybe among black voters, she could keep it down. But, you know, we're talking about what Lynn Vavrick and John Sides call the calcification of the electorate. There isn't big movement. And I personally think the appearances with Liz Cheney were precisely targeted both in place and message.

at the voters who are most available to her to improve on what Biden did in 2020. It is hard for me to imagine that she can win even Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin without running at least a little better than Biden did in those big inner suburbs. But again-

Not a science fiction assignment. That's exactly what happened in those places in the governor's races in 2022. So there is a path for her. It's not an easy path. It might have been easier if Josh Shapiro was her running mate. You know, I hold to that unpopular opinion. I hold to it pretty hard, too, as my listeners will attest, because I get the most hate mail about it. And I get the most hate tweeting about it. But if you can pick the most popular politician in the state that you most have to win, that is also the most difficult for you to win.

Not picking that person is a consequential choice. But leaving that aside, it's hard to imagine that Trump isn't going to run at least a little better in Trump country against a mixed race woman who they have been pounding as a cultural liberal than he did against the old white guy four years ago.

And it is easy to imagine that Trump will make at least some inroads in the core central cities, heavily non-white central cities like Milwaukee, Detroit and Philadelphia because of economic dissatisfaction. And that guy who said before, you know, I had more money in my pocket when Trump was president.

So how does Harris overcome that? Well, she overcomes it first because she has a cushion. Biden won these states, these three states by 250,000 combined votes. But also, I think indispensable is squeezing a few more points out of Montgomery, Delaware, Chester and Bucks, Oakland and Kent, the Wow counties and Dane.

If she can do that, she might be able to survive what will probably be some losses on the other two front. And I think those states remain. Yeah, you can imagine a Sunbelt path of Harris winning either North Carolina and Georgia plus either Arizona or Nevada, making up for losing one of those. But as Carville said to me late last year when Biden was still the nominee, he said, and this is a good way to end. He said, you know, as a Democrat in the modern Democratic map,

He said, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin are the ball game. And everything else is lanyard, which is a Cajun word for just a little something extra. So I think James, as often as the case, hit it right here in these final days. He also said, if she sweeps those three, she wins. If she doesn't win any of them, she's scrambling. And I actually think that's where we finish.

Yeah. Well, I will finish with my own version of Lanyap, which is to quote Billy Seward, William Seward, who's the Secretary of State for Lincoln, who said,

sometimes none to spare, but still enough to meet the emergency. And that's what I'm hanging on to. You know, I didn't know he went by Billy. I thought it was more of a William guy. I think he went by William. But he and I are close because I quote him constantly. You keep him alive. Hey, by the way, along the William Seward line...

Since the Civil War, Michigan and Pennsylvania have diverged in who they voted for three times. That's it. That's so interesting. In the last 84 years, it's only happened once when Gerald Ford was on the ballot. Michigan obviously stuck with the favorite son. Pennsylvania went for Carter. Other than that, they have voted the same way in every presidential election since 1940. They split in 1940. They split in 1932. And that is it since the Civil War. So

Prior results, no guarantee of future performance and all that. But it will be something if Harris wins Michigan and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania is the bridge too far. It could happen. Obviously, it could happen. Pennsylvania is a little tougher. But there's a lot of history that points toward these states ending up in the same place.

Land Yap. Land Yap. Ron Brownstein, thank you so much for joining us. And thanks to all of you for listening to another episode of the Focus Group Podcast. Listen, guys, we probably aren't going to have a show next week, but we will be putting out just endless bulwark live streams and content. So look for that. But I don't think we're going to need a Focus Group Podcast next week because we're going to be figuring out what's happening with this election. Until then, I hope this week and every week we've given you a sense of what's going on.

of where the puck is going this election, if not flat out predictions. No matter what happens, we will see you soon.