The Battle for Pennsylvania With Rep. Boyle and David Urban
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Hi, I'm Tara Palmieri. I'm Puck's senior political correspondent, and this is Somebody's Gotta Win. Believe it or not, we are less than a month away from Election Day, and this race has been remarkably static, with both candidates essentially tied.

Kamala Harris is slightly ahead in the popular vote, but as you all know, this matters very little. It will really come down to seven battleground states. And there's a lot of reason to believe that it will really come down to just one state, Pennsylvania, where there are 19 electoral college votes to be won. That's why this entire episode is dedicated to looking at a state where the electorate is notoriously swingy.

We'll be looking at the changing dynamics on the ground. Who are the first-time voters? Who are the remaining persuadables? Why are Latinos leaning Trump? And what to look for early in the night on election night. So naturally for this episode, I have two experts who know the state inside and out.

So we've got two regulars on the show from the great state of Pennsylvania. Congressman Brendan Boyle represents Philadelphia. He's a prominent Biden surrogate. And if Democrats win the House, which who knows, they might only takes a handful of seats.

He might be the youngest chairman of the powerful Budget Committee. David Urban is a lobbyist and senior CNN commentator, and he has been advising Donald Trump on his Pennsylvania strategy since 2016. Thanks, guys, for coming on the show. I'm sure you'll disagree on a lot of things, but just to start off, I think we can all agree that the campaigns are tied in Pennsylvania right now, right? Yeah.

By the way, Tara, it's the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. I don't want to Jake Tapper you, but it's the Commonwealth. Sorry, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. I think Pennsylvania now in every presidential general election is predestined to be either tied or within one point one way or the other. Pennsylvania is the new Iowa. So and we're pretty much in agreement that this race will come down to PA? Or are we thinking it might be a little bit more a la carte this election cycle where we might see some...

wins here and there without having to pick up Pennsylvania. The betting markets have Pennsylvania as the key state. Polymart has it as the dispositive state in the election today. So I would offer kind of another data point just to underscore this. If you play with the math to get to 270 and you don't have Pennsylvania's 19 electoral votes in your column, you have to come up with a very implausible scenario in all of the other states.

Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan. You almost either have to sweep them or you have to win four of the five in a way that is just very unlikely. So the bottom line is, like 2016 and like 2020, I think it's highly likely that whichever candidate wins Pennsylvania will win the White House. So should...

Democrats be worried right now that Scranton Joe won PA by only a point last election and Kamala Harris doesn't really have any sort of deep ties to the state. I guess I'll take that since probably a little bit more challenging for me to answer than David. Look, Donald Trump won with David's help Pennsylvania by six tenths of a percent in 2016.

Biden was able to win it by 1.2% in 2020. That might not seem like a huge shift, but I have to say, given the nature of Pennsylvania today, it really was. Joe Biden specifically overperformed in northeastern Pennsylvania, Lackawanna, where he was born and raised up until the age of about 10 or 11. It was an area that when I was in the state legislature between

2008 and 2014 was mostly Democratic and has now changed at the local level. Biden was able to marginally improve in areas like that, as well as Erie, Northampton County, combined with

bonkers numbers from suburban voters who used to be Republican leaning. That's how he was able to cobble together the one point win. I would easily and happily take that sort of math today. I think either side would. I don't see any scenario, and perhaps David would agree with me on this. I really don't see any plausible scenario in which either candidate is winning the state by two points or more. It's impossible. Listen, I agree with Congressman Boyle. I would

been doing this for a little bit since like the mid late nineties, 97, um, specifically with my former boss, our inspector. And, you know, it's interesting to watch the state of Pennsylvania has shifted over that timeframe. Right. So I'm originally born and raised in the Western part of the state, um, and Beaver County, uh,

I went to school at Temple University and University of Pennsylvania, lived in Delaware County for a while. And then when I was our inspector's chief of staff, traveled around to, you know, most, I don't know if I hit every 67 count, all the 67, but I hit a great majority of them. And so during that time frame, we saw this in the beginning of 2020.

you know, in the, in the early eighties of Reagan Democrats, right? So a lot of the folks in Western Pennsylvania were Democrats kind of like Congressman Boyle will convince him to come over someday blue dogs, right? There were a lot of working class union Democrats, Catholic guys, police, firefighters, steel workers, like my pop who are Democrats, but voted for Reagan. Um, they're pro-life pro-family pro-gun and,

But for being union members, they were, they kind of really espoused a lot of Republican views. And then there were folks who voted for my boss, Arlen Specter, who were much more, they were college educated, very socially liberal, moderate in their politics in the lower Marion township Republicans. Now all those folks have become Democrats. So we've had this kind of change in the state where a lot of Democrats have become Republicans and a lot of Republicans are now voting for Democrats.

And so to the Congressman's point, you know, it is, it's going to be a very interesting race. I think that president Biden had a distinct advantage over Kamala Harris in that he was kind of almost Pennsylvania's third Senator to, to a large extent. He had an incredible great relationship. Joe Biden had a great relationship with, with governor, with then governor Casey, with governor Rendell, with everybody in Philadelphia, that the Wilmington media market is basically Philadelphia, right? The Delaware medium. Right.

You know, he had a great deal of family, friends. I mean, I used to ride the train with Senator Biden back to Wilmington with my former boss, our inspector. They were great friends. So he had this innate connection. It was, you know, to Pennsylvania that just was the natural people used to see in Joe Biden run here in his name voting for him. And, you know, Kamala Harris just isn't there yet. I think that, you know.

I just did a little program this weekend. I did some reconnaissance, another great Philadelphia, like Congressman Boyle with that with James Carville.

And I think that if Kamala Harris loses the state of Pennsylvania, she will do so because she hasn't ventured out. Right. She she hasn't gone to I jokingly said she hasn't gone to Juanita County. Right. And in the state, that's a that's a political joke because it's Juniata County. But it looks like Juanita, the word Juanita and Linneagle County.

famously went there in a campaign and said well i'm happy to be here in Juanita county and it was kind of marked the fact that she had really been out in New

You know, the Commonwealth. But so Kamala Harris hasn't been out like, you know, shaking hands and kissing babies when she was in Pittsburgh for a week. She ventured out only once. Well, she was preparing for her debate from Pittsburgh. She ventured out once. I think people in Pennsylvania, you know, they like to see, you know, taste, touch, smell, feel their candidates. And I think that if she does lose, it'll be because of the fact that she hasn't really been out there kind of on the hustings and meeting the people. Right. In Pennsylvania, the congressman knows this perfectly.

It started with John Hines and then it went on to Specter and it's kind of become a tradition that like when you're, when you're a Senator, you visit all 67 counties. Right. And so I always say to people running for president, it's like running for governor in 50 States.

And I don't think she's done a good job running for governor. Listen, she's done a masterful job of uniting the party, of energizing the base. I think that not being out doing tons of interviews is a bad thing for her. If I were her team, I'd have had her out. Because if you screw up one interview and you only do two, then you're 50%.

If you screw up one of a thousand, nobody really notices. And I think she's smart and she can connect. Maybe she makes some mistakes, but no one would have cared. I don't think if she doesn't win it because I think it's because of that. OK, but is she making up, you know, these rural voters? Is she making them up by bringing out more base voters from Philadelphia, Pittsburgh that maybe Joe Biden would have brought out?

If Congressman Boyle can answer that, right? He's the smartest guy in the United States. Nobody knows. Yeah. What are your data gurus tell you? Like who are the people that you guys look at for your models and data gurus and PA? You know, I have to say that, um, obviously I have a bit of a different perspective when you're talking about a half a point or one point, you can point to any one of 200 different demographics. I mean, left-handed firefighters who pro-choice could end up being the deciding vote. Um,

An undecided voter in our minds, we might be thinking of a suburban Philadelphia, Montgomery County, college educated woman who leans right economically and leans left on abortion. It might also be a second generation Puerto Rican voter who lives in North Philly and was socially more moderate to conservative, but economically more liberal.

The reality is all of those answers are correct and more in addition to the large working class white population that exists from my home area of northeast Philly all the way seven hours away in Erie in the northwestern part of the state, which is closer to Cleveland than it is to northeast Philly. So, you know,

You know, when we're talking about a fifth biggest state in the country, the Commonwealth of PA is more than 13 million people, six major media markets, although it's actually 10 different media markets that touch Pennsylvania from New York City to Youngstown, Ohio, to Elmira, New York, and even Washington, D.C. in one southern tier PA county. The reality is,

This is a very complicated state. And yeah, it'd be nice to do as much retail as possible.

But we're in a sprint now more than anything else. And I have to say, even though of late there has been this recent kind of DC media obsession with Kamala Harris and doing interviews, if you look at this week, she's doing 60 Minutes. She's doing Howard Stern, which I think is very smart and has still a significant audience and reaches people who frankly aren't like us. They're not tuning into CNN or MSNBC or Fox News or Fox Business or

Those are actually, even though some of us might yearn for the days of ABC, NBC, CBS, and the traditional gatekeepers...

That world is dead and it's not coming back. And so what she's doing right now between 60 Minutes, which is about as old school as it gets, I think the longest running national magazine show or national news show in the country, combined with alternative outlets like Howard Stern has been dominant media for decades to other sorts of podcasts, which are newer, but have a tremendous reach. I think that's very smart. And I think she's on the right path.

And then finally, I would say I really can't understand what Trump's strategy is on on his events. Made sense to go back to Butler. I think that was a pretty obvious move away for him to be triumphant. Any person who survives an assassination attempt is obviously going to look that's going to be a heroic moment for them. Right.

But beyond that, he's done some weird stops from Long Island to Montana to California that just really don't make a lot of sense. And frankly, there just haven't been many Trump appearances and visits, especially when you contrast that to how active he was in 2016. Sure. I mean, the Montana stop was to go fundraise for Tim Chi so he can put some more money in his pocket. He's trying to obviously get Chi across the line. New York is, you know, money, right? Fundraising. Yeah.

money problems. That's fundraising. Look, I agree with the congressman, you know, like the things that commoners did well, right? Unite the party, raise energized people, right? Biden had no energy. So there's money there and Trump's got to raise cash in the Commonwealth. I will tell you this. If you look at each of the stops and where we've gone in Pennsylvania, they've all been for a purpose and for a reason, right? But

Butler, you look at Johnstown, you know, the Cambria County going, you know, North Hampton County, we'll be back to Erie County. We're going to Redding, obviously big, you know, like you say, you, you alluded to it, Hispanic population, Puerto Rican population in Redding, Pennsylvania. And we're asking for all those votes. We're picking up big numbers. Like we're not going to win the Hispanic vote. We're not going to win the African-American vote, but, but we're going to get a lot more than we've had traditionally. Right. And, and, and that's the, you know,

I had a discussion with Governor Shapiro the other day about, you know, the kind of the state of the race. And I said, well, you tell me who's going to win Philly in the suburbs, not who's going to win. You tell me how bad Trump will lose Philly in the suburbs, right? Because no Republicans ever win. So if we lose by a million or less votes, we win. If we lose by a million or more votes, we lose, right? And that's kind of the

And so we're trying to nibble away, right? And that's obviously the Harris campaign's agenda as well as Congressman alluded to going on Stern. Maybe you pick up

2000 voters, right? 2000 voters matters in Pennsylvania, right? Maybe you're going on, call me daddy. You're going to get maybe a couple of, you're trying to meet people where they are. Right. And, and everybody's not watching CNN or MSNBC. Like you said, people are getting their news from Tik TOK kids, you know, or getting their news from there and, and reels and Twitter. And so it's a really, um, you know, sub stack Terry, you know, on Spotify like this. So I,

You see that as evidenced by these candidates really making an effort to get to the people and meet them where they are.

I do think there's a method to the madness on the Trump side of things, at least at least in Pennsylvania. I can't speak. You know, my world is limited to the four corners of the Commonwealth. I don't I can't. I'm a little bit myopic in that regard. Yeah, it's interesting that you brought up Hispanic voters as well. It seems like they're becoming increasingly Republican, especially in Pennsylvania. Harris only leads Trump by 14 points when it comes to Hispanics in Pennsylvania. Joe Biden led.

Trump by 33 points in 2020 in Hispanic voters and Hillary Clinton led by 38 points. So clearly there's some issues that the Democrats are having in terms of attracting these voters. What do you think it is, Congressman Boyle? So in 2020, we saw this and it was from South Florida to Central Florida to South Texas to the Puerto Rican wards in North Philly and Springfield, Massachusetts, all the way to Southern California.

And kind of what David alluded to earlier, to be clear, Democrats won the Hispanic vote in 2020. It's that there was a surprising drop in the margin. Now, Hillary Clinton, to be clear, 2016 had actually expanded that margin among his Hispanic voters to basically a record level.

Um, that shrunk back to more of the historic norm, which has been typically been somewhere about like 25 points, like around 62, 37, uh, somewhere in, in that range. Recent polling actually shows Kamala Harris, not too far off that. I know the one poll you're referring to that had a 14 points actually had a lot of undecided voters in that poll as, as I recall. Um, but

The one thing I'll say is long term. It's a CNN poll. Yeah, right. And that one, if you notice, actually did have a lot of undecided voters, which I think is accurate. Again, I mean, I do detect that there is a disproportionately large number of voters within the Hispanic community making up the undecided voters. Why are they undecided, though? I mean, they've got 30 days. This is getting this is getting to what I was the point I was going to make.

It's not surprising to me in the least, as someone whose father and mother's parents were born in Ireland. It's not surprising that second and third and fourth generation Puerto Ricans, Venezuelans, Colombians, Mexicans, etc., whose families now have been here for decades and many decades,

Might end up having different voting habits than the immigrant generation. That would be very similar to Italian, Polish, Irish, etc. So I've never actually been a believer. You know, 20 years ago, there was this theory that there was the emerging Democratic majority and it was all going to be based on demographics and the rising Hispanic vote.

That always struck me as A, inaccurate, because you would assume that third and fourth generation would be voting the same way as the first and second. But B, also lazy. I never believe that an election is just about mobilizing your base. It's always about persuasion. You always have to have a combination and a mixture of the two. And I think that that was actually one of the great debates, if you remember, the 2019-2020 Democratic primaries. You had some candidates...

who are saying, just run a base election, go hardcore left. And there are these mysterious voters out there who never turn out. But if you run as left as possible, they'll suddenly be energized and turn out. The Joe Biden model, which proved to be accurate, was no, much more traditional model that if we appeal, yes, you know, be proud of who we are and true to our values. But if we also attempt to win over those swing voters who were with us previously in 08 and 12,

We lost a significant portion of them in 2016 by one measure, 11% of Pennsylvania voters voted for Barack Obama and then voted for Donald Trump in 2016. It shows they're persuadable. There might not be as many of them as there used to be in previous eras, but there are persuadable voters out there. I have a few of them in my family. Yes. And they live in battleground states. There are people who have a boil for Congress lawn sign and a Trump lawn sign that

On their lawns in northeast Philly, I wonder if they've ever looked at my voting record or looked at what Donald Trump stands for to have both of those lawn signs. But the reality is voters are complex because human beings are complex. And so in my view, in the end, whether it's Hispanic voters or any other demographic slice,

You're talking about persuasion and attempting to win people over, not just focusing on the base. Okay. So who can you flip in this election? Well, I don't know if there's going to be flippable, but, you know, just to the concrete point, I think that, you know, obviously African-Americans, people of color, Hispanics, and this is a mistake that people in the kind of the chattering class make. Those groups aren't monolithic, right? Right. Right.

There are the same holds true in the gay community, right? I mean, it's like not all gays are voting for Kamala Harris, right? Just proportionate amount will, but there are, you know, gay Republicans. And so, and they're motivated by all different things, like Congressman Boyle said. And so I think the shift you do see though, and with Hispanics and some, you know, young African-Americans is, is cultural and economic, right? So there are some cultural issues, which I think that, you know, Hispanics tend to be very Catholic, heavily family oriented, right?

from the wrong way and i think economic opportunity i think they really kind of focus on that and they think that they had a better run under trump than than they will under harris and so those are the things that are motivating them and rightly or wrongly um look the economy's been doing pretty well but people at home don't feel that way right harry enton was just on the other day on uh on our net on cnn with the new poll out from cnn where it's

Kamala Harris is dangerously, the Biden-Harris administration are dangerously close to 25% and right track, wrong track, 70, almost 75% of the electorate think we're on the wrong track, right? And his piece was about how it's 28% right now. So if you get to 25%, no one's ever won, no major party's ever won with 25% approval rating, right? And so

Hovering down on those numbers when people think it's the wrong track, they want to change tracks. On that New York Times Santa poll, the big poll that was out a while ago, the most recent one, 61% of people said, respondents said they wanted a major change in the Biden-Harris administration. And not surprisingly, when you kind of drill down on that, 51% thought Trump was a major change and 24% thought that Harris was.

you know, if this is about change, right? And if that's the case,

And, you know, Trump can make the case, right? Which I'm not sure he does every day that that's the case. And then, then it'll be, those people will be persuaded. But Tara, to your question, like, I'm not sure who the people are, who the persuadables are. I'm not sure there are people who are quote unquote undecided. I'd like to meet one. Like I've never met somebody who said. You should call my mom actually. Although she was very upset that Trump tweeted at me and said something nasty and called me fake news. It was very upsetting to her. Funny.

When did he do that? No, it was like two weeks ago. She was like, are you okay? Are his followers coming for you? I just, I don't know what I'm going to do though. I mean, maybe I'll vote. I think he's a liar and he's horrible, but I'm scared to vote for Kamala Harris. I don't know what to do because she's in North Carolina getting dangerously liberal ads all day long. I'm really worried about her record. What she said in 2019. Oh my God.

This is real. I'm telling you. I mean, I think she'll ultimately vote for Kamala Harris, but I think the personal attacking of your daughter is not going to help. The key to win is just to have Donald Trump go about tweeting and posting and attacking the moms of swing voters

out there in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. And frankly, he has the potential to do it. That could end up winning my side of the aisle of the election. I'll call your mom and assure. Give me her number. I'll take it. I'll make sure. Yeah, something nice about you to make up for. She found out about it two weeks later, which is hilarious. I think one of her friends at work told her and she was like, oh, why would I even tell them about it? This is so normal for Trump to call you out. It's like it's like it's like a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it.

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I do want to talk about Republicans catching up to Democrats in terms of registration. They're obviously not at the levels that Democrats are at in Pennsylvania in terms of registration, but we're starting to see it pick up. It's been happening since 2016. Who are these first-time voters? I don't know.

I have to say this is not so. It has always been the case that voter registration is a lagging indicator and not a leading indicator. David knows because he worked for Arlen Specter. Montgomery County, Pennsylvania was still majority registered Republican for about 20 years after it was voting Democratic by about 20 points. The flip side of that. Brendan, they still are, I think. Right. That's my point. I think it's pretty it's pretty close. Yeah. Yeah. Specter Republicans.

or voting for Kamala Harris. - And I think West Virginia was a majority democratic registration up until not that long ago. Beaver County, Greene County, Fayette County, all these places that have been voting two to one, Republican voter for Trump two to one, still have large democratic voter registrations.

filled with people have been voting Republican for the last 20 years. So I have to say, and teach a class part-time on campaign management and campaign elections, literally, we just covered this. I said, if you're looking, whether it's for polling or other data to try to understand an area,

never look at voter registration, look at voter performance. I would say this. I think it's significant in close places like Bucks County, right? Where Bucks County has been the, the electorate in Bucks County has been pretty fickle, right? Like, so, um, the numbers there that your point, Congressman, the performance has been really very tough, right? Both, um, you know, both Trump and Biden kind of went back and forth on it number wise, right? Clinton. And so it's a pretty, it's a pretty, you know, like, uh,

You know, we couldn't slide a pin in there. And now Republicans have kind of edged ahead a little bit. So it'll be interesting to see who wins Bucks County this election. Tara, if and I'm actually curious if they would agree with this. If you could tell me on election night, I can only look at the results top to bottom.

In two of Pennsylvania's 67 counties, the two I'd want to see are Bucks and Erie. I was living in Europe at the time in 2016. I didn't cover the race, but I had to drive through Bucks County to get to my parents' house in Jersey. And I saw the Trump signs and I said to my parents, Trump's going to win. Well, so Bucks, which is actually, I mean, it literally starts a block above my house.

Brian Fitzpatrick, you have a popular Republican congressman. And you have, I was thinking woman, because you recently have a Democratic majority at the local government level, which was also very closely decided just last election. Joe Biden won it by six points, but you have a lot of Republican state reps and state senators. It is the swingiest election

of the swing counties and if i could know on election night how they voted from top to bottom combined with erie which again is about six seven hours away in the northwestern part of the state more blue collar whereas bucks county is a mix lower bucks you have blue collar central bucks you have white collar upper bucks you even have rural and you're starting to get out of the philadelphia area

If I could just know the results of those two counties, I would feel pretty good in predicting both where the White House is going in Pennsylvania, but also the race for the state legislature and the U.S. House. Bucks County, I think you're right. It is incredibly diverse state.

economically, like geographically, spiritually, you drive around Bucks County, it is not one thing. You go to New Hope, it's completely different than, you know, Ben Salem. It's like a whole different world, right? So,

And to your point, that's, that'll come in early. So it'll be an interesting kind of data point to watch if you can get kind of behind the numbers or ahead of the numbers. Yeah. I was going to ask you that what to watch for in terms of early return. So bucks, is there anywhere else that you would pay attention to? Yeah, obviously like North Hampton is one of those double switcheroo counties, right? North Hampton and Erie were one of the 25 counties that went, you know, Obama and Clinton, right. I'm assuming the Obama than Trump, um,

Um, you know, Nordic, I, I think, um, I'd rather watch Bucks than Northampton, right? This time. Uh, I just think Bucks is a little more swingy, um, you know, uh, more urban, uh, Northampton is a little more ex urban. I would say then, then that you don't get as much, you know, Phil, you do get some Philly commuters, but not as many, um, where Bucks County, you get a lot of still Philadelphia, uh,

vibe in Bucks more so than Northampton. Yeah, I do want to talk about after the election or getting to a result. Pennsylvania is an interesting state in that both sides, they really find the issue of democracy to be top of mind. For Republicans, they believe the last race was stolen. For Democrats, you know, obviously they're upset about

the attacks on election workers. There's a lot of friction and heat over why it took so long to count the votes. It was the first time in 2020 that you could mail in ballot, right? And so there were a lot of issues. Some of the ballots had to be returned, etc. So

You know, Trump obviously said recently they cheated in this race, especially in Philly. And Wall Street Journal called Pennsylvania ground zero for litigation over election results and skeptics who will still question the legitimacy of the 2020 results.

How long do you think it will take before we know who won the election? Yeah, so I do have some information on this. First, I have to say the irony of Trump's attacks on Philadelphia, as well as Milwaukee and Detroit in 2020, allegedly costing him the election. The irony, as David knows, is Trump did better

in philadelphia detroit milwaukee in 2020 than 2016 it was actually the suburbs uh that sunk him but he wanted to beat up on geez i wonder why i picked philadelphia detroit milwaukee uh given given their populations so um the good news is that in terms of when we will find out a winner

Um, this time we're not having a presidential election in the middle of a once in a century pandemic. And so most voters like myself who were actually voting by mail for the first time ever in 2020, most will revert back to voting in person. And that was the case in 2022. Um, I fully expect that to, to continue. So that just means there'll be a lot fewer vote by mail ballots to be counted, but let's be clear. Um,

The state legislature, the Republican controlled state legislature, has created a situation in which Pennsylvania looks like there's some chicanery going on because it's slow to count the vote by mail compared to states like North Carolina and Florida. The reason why is in those states you are allowed to begin what's called pre canvassing and the counting of ballots before Election Day.

The Republican state Senate has blocked that from happening in Pennsylvania, even though the county commissioners want it, the election boards want it. It would solve the problem. Um,

Unfortunately, that has not been solved. It was very cynical on their part. It makes it easier for those who don't have the purest motives to say, oh, see, we don't know results. Something must be going on. But even with that, there should be far fewer people voting by mail in 2024, which means that we will have a result much sooner. But this gets to my final point. Depends on what the margin is. I mean, if we're talking about a tenth of a percentage point, two tenths of a percentage point,

Florida was 537 votes famously in 2000. We didn't know for more than 30 days. So a lot really comes down to what that final margin will be. And that's an unknowable until we actually have the election and start counting the ballots. I agree with Congressman Boyle. I think it is ridiculous that in our country, in the United States of America, that we don't know on election night who the winner is. I think it's bad for democracy. I think it's bad for

It's bad for our citizenry. People lose faith because they go to bed. They don't know what's going on. It allows conspiracy theories to flourish. I think it's terrible. If I had a magic wand, I'd make election day one day be a national holiday. You'd have a limited absentee ballot. You'd have an ID. You'd take away all the boogeymen. You'd eliminate all the boogeymen that people have. We'd have much more transparent elections. I think that

Governor Shapiro and

the Secretary of State there and others have put a real effort into making this transparent and try to make it as transparent as possible. I've had some discussions with the governor about how to try to eliminate some of those things so that when they come up, we've got to whack them down. You know, I think there should be some rational, reasonable voices on both sides that can address the things. And I hope to be able to add my voice to that as we move forward. I've never said once that Donald Trump did not win. He lost the state of Pennsylvania. I explained to him

um how we lost i guess you know you can go county by county i can explain to them i explained to my one and twenty i explained to him how we could excuse me i wanted 16 i explained my theory the case for 20 and uh you know we fell short in in a variety of areas hopefully that won't be the case this time as the congressman says

you know but again this is going to be 75 000 votes so maybe not be one person you know it may not be two percent it's going to be in that one percent range though i still suspect i don't think i find it hard to believe it's going to be a blowout in either direction so look a blowout two percent in pennsylvania right that's a blowout right um so you know i suspect that you're in that hundred thousand voter under range in pennsylvania which still makes it pretty pretty squeaky and uh

And we'll see. I mean, I hopefully, you know, it'll go smoothly. We'll be able to get the votes counted. Like you said, Congressman, I wish it was like Florida. You press the button on election night. We can this. We knew it just makes it easier. It's a much smarter way to proceed. But we've got 67 counties. Each of the counties have their own rules. Makes it a little quirky, too, on what they can do in terms of curing and.

ballot harvesting. So it's a little wacky in the state. Okay, but David, how are you feeling about Trump's get out the vote effort? I know that the RNC has mainly outsourced it to super PACs like Elon Musk's. I've written about this at Puck. And, you know, he hired the people who did the DeSantis never back down super PAC, which was a huge failure costing $6,700 per vote. And they still came in 30 points below

below Trump in Iowa. I mean, do you think that the Republicans are okay? And I leave this to you, David, and not to Congressman Boyle, because I know Democrats have a very sophisticated ground operation. Yeah, so listen, if I am not going to lie to you and say I understand everybody who's out on the ground because there's so many disparate groups, right? So that's kind of part of the issue too, right? There are a wide variety of different people doing it. So I'm hopeful that some of those groups overlap, right, Daraa?

I do know the campaign does have the Trump force captains kind of outright. It's almost like a multi-level marketing kind of thing where you're not asked to boil the ocean. It's kind of precinct level. You've got 25 people you're assigned. You got to go knock and drag them. Make sure those get voted. There are close to 10,000 of those folks who have their 25 or 100 or 50, whatever their time is.

commitment, whatever they could afford. And so just on that level, that's been incredibly successful. People are very motivated. But, you know, the issue for me is not necessarily that it's much more of, you know, I'm much more concerned that like, you know, 12% of people attend Trump rallies.

aren't registered to vote. That's part of the ground operation though. That is. No, but we're, we're, listen, we got people with clipboards getting names and emails and getting people registered. Right. I mean, huge amount of gun owners and pets may have registered to vote. Right. And so that's, that is part of the ground operation, but you gotta get, you know, you gotta get people to get the ballots and get it to them and get them to return them. I mean, it is, uh, if it was that easy, right. It'd be, it'd be, uh,

be done. And so my concern is much more the people who, you know, are very vocal or young people, right? Like my son, or I make sure my son just moved from California, moved to Florida after graduation. And so he's confused, got to figure out like, can he vote? Tell him to vote in California, David. I want him voting in California if he's like his dad. He might vote for one of those, you know, congressional seats that'll take the... Oh, wait a minute. Yeah, you're right. Never mind. Let me know

I went to Santa Clara university there in San Jose. I'm pretty sure that's a safe democratic seat. Yeah. Okay. Scratch that. The question is like, you know, he just says like a young person question, right? I have a California driver's license. I have a temporary address here in Florida. What do I do? Right. So how many kids like that across America? I mean, in Pennsylvania, you can vote at your, now you can vote at your Penn state student. You can vote at Penn state. Right. So how many of those kids actually turn out? I mean, that's, that's still.

A lot of people are motivated, but are they going to show up on election day? I mean, it's the whole game. That's why we have elections and not just polls. Right. So, yeah, I've got one last question for Congressman Boyle, because, you know, everyone already is saying that if Kamala Harris loses this race because of Pennsylvania, they're going to be saying she should have picked Governor Shapiro as her running mate. What do you think about that?

I think that she could end up winning Pennsylvania and there will be still some people asking this question, obsessed with this question. You know, I might be the only person actually who can say that he served with both Tim Walls

and Josh Shapiro. I served with Josh in the state legislature. We represented neighboring state rep districts. And I served with Tim Walls for four years. He was my coach. You might remember me telling you Tara on the congressional football team and happened to like both of them. Either of them would have been great picks. I go back to what I said when we had this conversation before. No one votes for vice president. The only times in the last 50 years

that vice presidential picks have maybe made a difference. I can point to two and they were both on the downside. Eagleton in 1972, uh,

who had to be yanked for unfortunate reasons and really hurt George McGovern as he lost something like 49 states. And then the other one was Sarah Palin, who I remember being out there knocking on doors in a very competitive state rep race with some Hillary Clinton Democrats who were not on board with Barack Obama. These were middle class white women, former teachers in Northeast Philadelphia, middle class neighborhood. The moment Palin was picked,

Suddenly they were no longer on the fence and they started supporting Obama in a strong way. Those were the only two times I've seen. And one of them was a little bit before I was born. But the only two times really in the last 50, 55 years, a VP pick has mattered. People are going to make their decisions. Ninety nine point nine nine percent of them based on Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. OK, maybe that point one percent, though, would move the needle, though.

However, just like Brendan Boyle, there are a lot of people in Pennsylvania that have Trump Shapiro signs. And in a race that's one percent or less, I think it would have been good to scrape up those 50 or 70 or 5,000 votes that Tim Walz is going to leave on the table. We shall see. But this is the ringer. So you have to make a prediction. I want to know how you think this race is going to go out. And I want to know down to the percentage point how it's going to go down half of like even to the half percentage point. Well, Terry, you know my answer. I.

I'm sticking with this going back to last last Christmas when we had Biden on the ticket. Yeah. Well, it shows you how intractable Pennsylvania is. I'm still sticking. I can't remember the exact percentage. You might have it. You said half a percentage point. Yeah, I'm going Kamala Harris wins by roughly a half a percentage point. What's that number? Fifty thousand votes. Now, I'd be less than that because seventy seven. Eighty thousand was one point two. So I would say roughly forty forty five thousand behalf appoint.

That was a 16, Trump 16 margin. So that's a percent. I say it's going to be in the 50 to 75,000 range is my sense. And I obviously say I'm obviously picking my guy, right? But I think it's in that 50 to 75,000 vote range. A little bit.

a little bit more than 16, but less than 20. Well, thank you both for having a civilized conversation on a podcast. This is fun. We should talk Pennsylvania every week. That's the lesson. Well, because because interestingly, Tara, in the state of Pennsylvania, in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Republicans and Democrats generally get along because you guys switch it up just like your senator, Arlen Specter, right? Democrat, Republican, Democrat.

Because people, you know, there used to be a rule back in the day in Pennsylvania that you didn't run again. It was a very civilized place, right? The congressional delegation used to have lunch with one another. And no, no, there was a rule where you could not incumbents, incumbent congressmen and senators would not campaign against fellow incumbent congressmen and senators. So if, you know, Congressman Boyle was there and somebody was running against him,

his Republican counterpart wouldn't help the candidate against him. It was a really civilized kind of place. Gentile and so it's kind of maintained a lot of that. Except the Eagles fans. They're crazy.

And that's, that's speaking of one of them, that's my base you're talking about, but I was rooting for the Steelers against the Cowboys. I was disappointed to see that, that result, but great game until the last play right now in my area. And it's all about the Phillies playoff run, go Phillies all the way to the world series. Yeah. I'll second that. Cool. Cool. Well, thank you both for your time. I really appreciate it. This was a great conversation.

That was another episode of Somebody's Gotta Win. I'm your host, Tara Palmieri. I want to thank my producers, Christopher Sutton and Connor Nevins. If you like the show, please subscribe, rate it, share it with your friends. If you like my reporting, please go to pup.news slash Tara Palmieri and sign up for my newsletter, The Best and the Brightest. You can use a discount code Tara20 for 20% off a subscription at PUP. I'll see you again on Thursday.