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I'm Henry Olson, and welcome back to the horse race. President Trump is flying around the country now that he's out of the hospital. What do his travels tell us about where the race stands? Saboteau's crystal balls. Kyle Kondik tells us this and more.

AEI's Carlin Bowman returns to tell us what key demographics are moving and which aren't in this week's poll barometer. And the essential Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report breaks down the race for control of the U.S. House for us this week. And we also have five ads of the week, all from Democratic House candidates, to get some clues on how that party is presenting itself to the voters. The horses are at the starting gate. They're off.

Well, the race is coming into the final stretch, and that means with early voting, people are making what could be their near final pleas to the American electorate to try and get people to back them. Joining me this week to talk about the state of the race is Kyle Condon, managing editor of Saboteau's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics and one of the nation's leading election analysts. Kyle, welcome back to the horse race. Thanks for having me, Henry.

Well, a executive who once interviewed me for a job said that the most important resource an executive has is their time. How is the chief magistrate of the United States of America spending his time? And what does that tell us about the state of the race? Well, you know, he's now that he's back on the campaign trail, he has been in places like

Georgia, for instance, which is a state that really is a must win for any Republican. He's going to be in Des Moines just a few hours after we're speaking. Iowa is a state that the president won by about nine points. And so if you believe, as your statement suggested, that sending –

You've got to be very disciplined with where you're sending the candidate. You know, the president is visiting places that he won pretty convincingly in 2016, which I think is probably a negative sign for his chances overall. Yeah. I mean, you got to look and you got to say Johnstown, Pennsylvania, Des Moines, Iowa, Macon, Georgia. These are the sort of places where if he were competitive, he'd already have in the back.

Yeah. And I mean, look, I think that the Johnstown visit is really interesting because that's sort of the heart of kind of used to be kind of like when Congressman John Murtha was still around in Congress, that was sort of like a, you know, blue dog Democratic area. And a lot of those places have really trended way away from the Democrats in recent years.

I think the president is dependent not only on maintaining his gigantic margins in some of those places in sort of western central Pennsylvania, but actually maybe even having to do a little bit better than he did in 2016 given the potential ground he's probably going to lose in places in Pennsylvania, for instance, in suburban Philadelphia, some parts of suburban Pittsburgh.

Frankly, it sounds like northeastern Pennsylvania, the site of Joe Biden's childhood home in Scranton. That area doesn't seem quite as strong for Trump as it was last time. As you're trying to put the math together on these states, it becomes a little difficult to figure out where he actually gets the votes to win and where he actually overperforms 2016 to make up for losses elsewhere. Yeah.

So what does Biden's travel schedule, such as it is, I'll add, tell us about what he's thinking?

Well, he has been to Pennsylvania more than any other state, which I think is telling about the importance of Pennsylvania. I think a lot of people have sort of focused on, sorry for the bad cliche here or whatever, but the keystone state is the keystone to the election, which I think is like a fair way of looking at it, that the winner of Pennsylvania or Pennsylvania may have a higher likelihood of voting for the winner than maybe any other single state. Now, maybe it's Florida, maybe it's Wisconsin like it was last time, but

But Biden also, he spent part of his childhood in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is also close to his home base in Delaware. And so it's easy for him to go there. So he's given some big speeches just across the border in Philadelphia. But Biden was just in Ohio a couple of days ago in Toledo and Cincinnati. Ohio is a state that voted for Trump by eight points. And it seems like that state is pretty close. And Ohio historically votes –

several points to the right of the decisive states from 2016, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. And so if in fact, Ohio is actually close, that probably tells us that Biden is leading in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan. And that's what most of the polling tells us as well.

So what would be the signal that things are changing, that things are tightening up? Or conversely, what would be the signal that Biden's lead has gotten to the point where a double digit win is not only a possibility, but a likelihood? Where would the candidates be going next?

In either of those scenarios. I would say in the latter scenario, you would see Biden probably booking more airtime in a state like Texas, which of all the kind of core battleground stage, which I think Texas kind of is part of now, but it's also of those states, I think the likeliest one to stick with the Republicans. If we were to see Biden visiting Texas and the Biden campaign is doing some advertising there, but if they were to sort of go big in the closing days of the campaign, it's

I think that would be telling. I'd say even more telling in the pro-Biden sense is what if he were to try to campaign in South Carolina to support Jamie Harrison in the Senate race there? And maybe that would also be an indicator that that state was legitimately competitive for president. Again, I'm not –

I don't really see that. I'm just trying to answer your question. And then on the flip side, I think that if Trump was really making a place for like New Hampshire and Minnesota, which he has visited Minnesota recently, and we saw the Trump campaign, which has been cutting a lot of its ad spending, it seems like there's some sort of cash flow problem for the Trump campaign. If they were to be doing big out –

big ad spends in some of these states that Clinton won narrowly, like Minnesota, New Hampshire, Nevada, that would be the sign that maybe they were finding their footing down the stretch. And, you know, just in terms of like the numbers, I mean, pretty clearly –

I think the bulk of the polling is pretty positive for Biden. But we also need to watch these numbers like a hawk because I think we're going to have a lot more polling down the stretch because there was kind of a dearth of polling in some of the key states late in the game in 2016. And we really, it's, I,

I think the pollsters are going to kind of run through the finish line here. And if we start to see the numbers really legitimately get tighter down the stretch, we have to be open-minded to the possibility that this race could change near the end. It's just been so stable for so long that we wouldn't necessarily expect that, but we've got to be on guard for it.

Well, I'm looking right now at Professor Michael McDonald's must-see website for the nerd in us, the 2020 general election early vote statistics. And as of 19 minutes ago, there were nearly 14.5 million ballots that have already been cast.

When I look at a statistic like that and I think of how many people are going to cast their vote early, I'm wondering whether or not next week's presidential debate on October 22nd is really the equivalent of the closing argument that you used to have to go into the last weekend for the candidate to make the closing pitch. But at the rate that people are early voting, can we say that

people will listen, tune into this debate and very likely cast their vote on the basis of a final decision made that evening.

It certainly could be. And from that standpoint, maybe it would be kind of like the one debate we had in 1980, which I think was like six or seven days before the election. So it was very late in the game when Ronald Reagan made his closing argument against Jimmy Carter and ended up winning that election pretty comfortably, although there were some signs that it was kind of close down the stretch. But

But yeah, I mean, in terms of real time, the last debate is 12 days before election day. However, as you noted, we've already had 14 million votes. There were 137 million votes cast for president last time. I feel very confident that number is going to be significantly

higher, but you've still got a decent chunk of votes in. And really, what's that number going to look like a week from now? It's probably going to be way higher. So it seems like there's a real disconnect in that Democrats seem much likelier to be voting by mail and voting

So is there any indication that the president is succeeding in expanding the voting universe, that the Republicans are going to catch up in certain places from the leads that the Democrats have banked?

The Trump campaign has been messaging to a core base for so long that clearly is not a majority of the electorate.

that they've almost said for over a year now that it is going to be a turnout election. Is there any indication in the data, either registration data or polling data, that that's having an effect, that maybe turnout is going to be larger among whites without a college degree, for example, or maybe black men, another group that tends to underperform at the voting booth that clearly Trump has been targeting. That could be...

the harbinger of a November surprise.

I think there are some Republicans who point to some of the trends in Pennsylvania, particularly outside of the greater Philadelphia area where Democrats have generally been able to build their voter registration base. But in much of the rest of the state, you do see Republicans gaining in terms of party registration. But the thing that kind of trips me up about that is that Democrats still have a lead statewide in terms of party registration in that state. I think it's

I think it's like six or seven points at this point, which is down from the past. But I don't think that party registration in Pennsylvania necessarily reflects reality and that I think there have been a lot of – there's the old term rhinos, Republicans in name only. Well, in Pennsylvania, they have dinos, Democrats in name only and that you've got these registered Democratic voters who are functionally Republican voters. So I just wonder how much of that is –

Are, you know, Democrats and independents deciding to join the party that they already voted for in 2016, you know, joining Trump's Republican Party? But if in fact there is a surprise in Pennsylvania, maybe those voter registration trends that have been positive for Republicans could have been a sign that maybe we should have paid more attention to.

And again, this is the sort of thing where we'll show up on Election Day because we know from all the polling that Republicans and Trump voters are substantially likelier to say they're going to vote on Election Day as opposed to voting early in person or by mail.

That's absolutely right. And there's going to be a lot of commentary, I think, during the election and after it about what the rejection rate might be for some of these ballots. I keep going back to Pennsylvania, but –

you have to put the ballot in like a security envelope and then within another envelope. And there are some people who might not be doing that. And so you wonder if some of these ballots will get thrown out. And of course, the lawyers on both sides are going to be all over these ballots, particularly if the election is very close. And so we'll have a sense as to what the rejection rate is for these absentee ballots. But what you can't necessarily track is

the voter who says he's going to, he or she is going to vote in person and then at the last minute decides not to. It's kind of hard to fit, you know, that there's not like a rejection rate for that. You know, it's just that somebody may, you know, just for whatever reason decides not to show up. And so,

you know, there are risks for the Democrats in terms of emphasizing mail-in voting and potentially there being a rejection rate for those mail-in ballots. But then there are also risks of backloading to election day because, again, you just don't know if people will actually decide to show up or not. And, you know, it's also kind of a

It's a turnout challenge because if more Democratic voters – if the Democrats already have more votes banked, they can focus their organizing attention on maybe harder to reach voters down the stretch, making sure that they turn their ballots in. Whereas if you don't have as many votes banked, the turnout operation becomes a little bit harder.

So what are you going to be looking at over the next couple of weeks, aside from the polls, to help you formulate where this race is going? I am going to be looking at – so I do a lot of stuff not just on the presidential race but also the House and the Senate. And one of the things that can be sort of telling is where are the outside groups on the Democratic and Republican sides booking their money? Do we see –

Do we see Democrats cutting further into Republican-held House districts and Trump-owned districts? We've seen a little bit of that. We've also seen Republicans booking money to sort of defend some of those seats while also trying to play offense there.

I mentioned Northeast Pennsylvania earlier. One of the districts in that state that is really interesting to me is Matt Cartwright's seat, which covers the city of Scranton and a big swath of Northeast Pennsylvania. That's a big Obama to Trump district.

And it really seemed like Cartwright was going to have a difficult race. And yet, it seems like he's doing pretty well. There's not a lot of outside spending in that district. And there's a belief that Biden – maybe he doesn't win that district, but he does better in it than losing it by about 10 points like Hillary Clinton did.

But one thing I'm curious about is, do we see some sort of late influx of money into that district? Because maybe there's some sign that Trump actually is doing okay there. And maybe Matt Cartwright is in some trouble. We don't see that now. But that's like one thing I'm looking at. And there are districts, there are other kinds of districts like that across the country. So where the money goes can be telling as well. So let's talk about the Senate for a minute. That

Republicans go in with a 53-47 advantage. Everyone says they're going to pick up the Alabama Senate seat, which Doug Jones won in 2017 special election only because of Republicans nomination of the terminally flawed Judge Roy Moore. So that means Democrats need to pick up the White House plus four Senate seats in order to have Vice President Harris break a 50-50 tie.

What are the likelihoods right now of the Democrats retaking the Senate? And which do you think is likelier, Republicans retaining control or the Democrats breaking 53 Senate seats at the end of the election? I think I'd probably say Republicans retaining control is likelier to me. There's certainly a scenario in which Democrats don't just get to 50 or 51, but they sort of expand that out because there's a

There's a large universe of seats at the crystal ball that we classify as sort of lean Republican seats, although others might call at least some of them legitimate toss-ups. But you've got the two Senate elections in Georgia. You've got Montana, Alaska, Kansas, Texas, South Carolina.

You know, I think as of now, I think that Republicans are still favored in all of those places, but only very narrowly. You could have two runoffs in Georgia. We're going to have at least one and maybe two in early January next year. And so that could be sort of an outstanding question mark. But at the same time, I think that some of the

Some of the core battleground Senate races are still pretty competitive. I do think Cory Gardner is pretty legitimately behind in Colorado. I think the same is true of Martha McSally in Arizona. I also think Susan Collins in Maine is now an underdog. We've got this strange situation in North Carolina where Democrat Cal Cunningham seems pretty clear that he had an affair.

And we're sort of waiting to see if that ultimately does him damage. It seems to have hurt his favorability so far, but not necessarily his polling lead over the Republican incumbent Tom Tillis. Republican Joni Ernst also appears to be behind in Iowa, behind Theresa Greenfield. But then also, I don't think the Michigan Senate race where a Democrat, Gary Peters, is running for reelection, I don't know if that's really a done deal for the Democrats yet. And there's been some speculation

Definitely some buzz about that race based on a New York Times Siena poll, but also I think Republicans are hopeful that they really could pull that off. Although in all these races or in many of them, the presidential race is going to be important in setting the tone. And this is why I still think senators like Lindsey Graham and Steve Daines and Dan Sullivan will ultimately –

probably be okay because I still think the president's going to win those states. And we're in an era where there's more correlation between presidential and Senate voting than maybe there used to be. So let's do a fast forward. It's election night and things are not turning out the way people are thinking they're going to turn out again, that this becomes a race where either because of

polling error or because of a very high rate of rejection of mail-in ballots or something that the election day flood of votes for Donald Trump is making the election be in doubt, whereas the observers will have thought

that it was going to be a Biden victory. How do you see it transpiring from then? Is this going to be an election that will actually be decided at the ballot box as votes are counted? Or is this an election that will eventually be decided by the courts determining which ballots can be counted?

I think the latter. I think that when you have this influx of mail-in voting and a lot of people who aren't familiar with it – I mean like a state like Florida, a lot of people are used to voting by mail or some states like Colorado that are all mail-in states. So people are used to it there. But in states like Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin, those are states that really haven't historically had big mail-in voting but are going to have that this time.

And I could just imagine, again, the lawyers just swarming over these ballots and trying to determine which ones are accurate or which ones were filled out properly, which ones weren't. So it seems like the possibility of it being a very divisive sort of situation. Of course, I don't think the president would be –

cool, calm, and collected throughout that process. I think he would be probably saying a lot of outlandish things. I don't know. The Democrats, I think, probably would be shell-shocked too. I don't necessarily know how they would react. Yeah, I do think that it's a situation where you could see the courts getting involved. Look, I think that

You know, if Trump carries Florida on election night, that's a state where we should have relatively complete results on election night.

um that really throws into question some of these some of these other states uh like pennsylvania and michigan where the vote count might take a little bit longer we know historically that you know arizona takes it takes some time to finalize california usually takes a really long time to finalize but that doesn't really matter for the electoral college um so i'm you know i'm i'm sort of hoping for our own sanity that we have sort of a clear result whatever ends up happening but

It's 2020, so I wouldn't necessarily bet on it. Yeah. When my kids were young, there was a video that we watched. It's something like Elmo's Christmas. And Elmo wishes for Christmas, that Christmas could be every day. So some, I forget which mischievous, magical person grants him that wish. And Christmas does come every day. And by June, everyone's sick of Christmas. Yeah.

Yeah, that's for the election watchers getting new results every day, which probably is going to be a feature of this election, I think. It's just a question of how –

how much we know on election night. But also, you know, I mentioned that we're going to have, we may have one or two runoff Senate elections in Georgia. And also there's a decent likelihood that the Senate race in Maine will be decided by this rank choice voting system if neither Sarah Gideon nor Susan Collins get over 50% on election day. So that's another thing that will take a little time to adjudicate in the immediate aftermath of the election.

Well, maybe that's Santa's gift to us this Christmas is that on Christmas morning, we'll finally know who wins our elections. That's right. Well, Kyle, thank you for your insight and analysis as always. And I look forward to having you back on the horse race. Thanks, Henry.

Well, the polls, they move about, don't they? And here to dissect and explain the movements in the last week is Carlin Bowman. Carlin's a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and is the author of their monthly political report, which always includes the deep dives into polling about politics and culture that people like me crave to read. Carlin, welcome back to The Horse Race. Thank you so much, Henry. Delighted to be with you.

Well, what's gone on in the last week worthy of note? It looks to the untutored eye that the race might be slipping away from Trump, but it's often looked like that only to have him come back. What's your take? Well, I actually have been looking at the polls in the second week of October in the last campaign, and Hillary had a 12 percentage point lead in one, a nine point lead in another, a seven point lead in another. And I think that's

And what we have right now is Biden with a lead of anywhere between eight and 10, depending on the group that you look at in terms of the polls that they're compiling. So I would say Biden has a pretty impressive lead at this point. What we have to see is whether that lead will erode as the last two weeks of the campaign go by. So what's driving that lead? Is it

People who were kind of on the fence moving into his category, or is it more of a rising Democratic turnout that somehow is creating a sample that is more Democratic in the past but reflects facts on the ground?

Pollsters don't necessarily share with us the composition of their samples. And so it's really hard to get at that level of what's really going on. But as Gallup has said, there's been sort of a surge in Democratic Party identification over the summer, perhaps because of Trump. We know that that certainly happened in the past in campaigns that the out party tends to gain in the last few months of a presidential election year. So that's something to watch.

But interestingly, I think Biden has made some real inroads among some groups where we didn't expect him to do so. He's made some inroads among men.

And that's narrowing the gender gap overall. I mean, he's still having a very hard time with women. And yesterday in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, he implored women, women in the suburb, please, please like me, vote for me. But he has an enormous deficit in that regard. But Biden is essentially improving his position with some key groups. And I think that's the explanation for the widening lead that he seems to have at this point.

Yeah, the Trump thing. Actually, my column on Wednesday focuses on that and compares the please like me moment last night to Jeb Bush's please clap from his ill-fated 2015 campaign. It seemed pretty desperate last night. Yeah.

Desperate's one word for it. One group that Biden has consistently showed strength among, at least since the pandemic, if not before, is seniors. Many polls show Biden doing significantly better among voters 65 and older than Hillary Clinton did in 2016. Is that something that you've seen across a number of polls? And if so, what do you think might be driving that?

This is not consistent across all polls. For example, Pew does not show a big surge among seniors for Joe Biden, and the Pew poll is highly respected overall. That said, I think we did see movement after the first debate.

where seniors just perhaps did not like the style of Trump's presentation. And I think that could have contributed significantly to their movement away from Trump. They could also be more fearful of the coronavirus, given Trump's own experience and the way that he's conducting himself on the campaign. It's really hard to isolate what's happening. But you're absolutely correct. Most polls have shown Biden with significant strength among seniors.

The converse is that there's been a lot of polls that have shown Biden doing less well among Hispanics. It's always funny to me how the media reports it as Biden doing less well as opposed to Trump doing better.

I'm sure it's a coincidence. But what are you seeing that that however one wants to characterize it, the Democratic lead is smaller among Hispanics than it has been in prior elections. And to what might you attribute that if you have seen it?

I have seen that. In fact, I think it's and in some states it's more pronounced than others. I think that has to do with the patterns of Mexican patterns of Hispanic assimilation in particular states. We know that Hispanics have been stronger for Republicans in a state like Texas over time. I think the largely dominant Mexican population.

Hispanic population in Texas has contributed to that. And also, one thing that the polls cannot capture because it's just simply too expensive to do is the views of second and third generation Hispanics. Hispanics have been voting for a while, about two-thirds Democratic and presidential races overall. Republicans need to do better with Hispanics going forward. But I think that we're seeing

and third generation Hispanics who may have different voting preferences going forward than first generation Hispanics. You also see very different patterns of assimilation in Florida, where you have generational divisions among Cuban Hispanics with younger Cuban Hispanics being less Republican than older Cuban Hispanics. And again,

Cubans in Florida are less than half of the Hispanic population in Florida at this particular point. You see other groups gaining ground, and that's probably changing the Hispanic outlook in a state like Florida overall. I think it's also important to look at some of the other states in the Sun Belt where there has been considerable Hispanic in-migration.

If you look at a state like North Carolina, you see a huge surge in the Hispanic population over time. Hispanics are moving, but the assimilation patterns are different. And I think that's something that we have to look at as well as possible generational differences going forward.

So we've got a little under three weeks before Election Day. As we've remarked with early voting, we're really talking about election. It's almost like the 40 days of Lent. You know, we start with Ash Wednesday. We end on Easter. Who knows when we're fasting? But it's all it's like a constant voting period. Mike McDonald, as I mentioned during Kyle's interview, says over 14 and a half million votes have already counted yesterday.

been counted. At what point do the polls start really incorporate or at what point are there enough people who have counted their ballots that the polls will start breaking out a have voted versus say they will vote? And how closely will you be looking at those sort of breakouts when that happens?

I think it's going to be very important in this election. Obviously, a lot of people want to vote early or absentee because of coronavirus. A lot of pollsters are asking that question already. On the question of do you intend to vote in person early?

absentee, the polls are really all over the map. I don't think we have a good handle on that from the polls at this particular point. But what I will watch going forward is the number of people who say, well, yes, I've already voted. That number is pretty low right now nationally, as you would expect with 14 million people. But that's going to get to be a bigger number going forward. And a lot of pollsters are already asking that question about, have you voted?

And that's another interesting thing is because, of course, that will be skewed in a lot of ways so that right now, according to McDonald, nearly a quarter of people who are the already cast ballots in some states like Virginia and Wisconsin are a quarter of what the turnout in 2016 were. Whereas in more Republican leaning states like Texas, it's virtually infinitesimal. So they'll have to be careful about how they report that as

when they do do that so that the reader of the poll understands that the simple timing mechanisms of which states have widespread absentees and when those votes are cast are

are themselves not representative of the country as a whole. Absolutely. And some states limit their absentee voting. You mentioned Texas, and I think you not only have to have an excuse, but you also it's limited to seniors, people in prison and a few other groups. And so it's a much smaller universe in a state like Texas. So let's fast forward then to election eve. And

In 2016, polls were showing Hillary Clinton with a lead, by and large. Most polls with a timeline had shown that the margin had increased over the prior time that the poll had been taken. And of course, we know what happened. That is one reason why there is the prevailing sentiment among many Trump supporters that the polls aren't registering anything real because, quote unquote, they didn't last time.

How would we know or how could we guess in advance that there would be polling error of the magnitude? Not that happened last time because that's debunked by anyone who seriously understands polling. But of the sort that happened in Australia in 2019, where there were two years of polls that proved

not to be predictive or the shy Tory famous election in 1992 in the UK. Are there clues that people discover after the fact about what caused polling error that the perspicacious can look at before the fact to see whether it might be happening here?

Well, here I would recommend the report, the postmortem done by the American Association for Public Opinion Research after the 2016 election. They took a very deep dive into what may have gone wrong. They touched on a number of issues, but they thought first that there were a lot of people who made up their minds before.

very late. In a state like Wisconsin, 13% of voters made up their minds very late, and they voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump. That's something that a poll taken, let's say, four or five days out from an election just can't capture. So they talked about that. They talked about the shy Trump phenomenon, and they didn't dismiss it. They said at least by one metric that they used, and that is

The fact that there were very few differences between people who answered a telephone poll with a live interview and people who answered polls online about voter preferences overall. So they dismissed that. They thought that perhaps was not a significant issue. And then the other problem, again, which is something you discover after an election's over, is that some pollsters did not weight their samples correctly in terms of the number of people without a high school degree surveyed.

excuse me, without a college degree in those industrial Midwestern states. They were using the wrong metric and the wrong weighting variable for that overall. And that's not something we could know now because pollsters don't necessarily share their internals with us at this stage of the campaign. Well, as a last question, Carlin, there's been a...

I don't want to say break, but there have been seemingly two different patterns in the last 10 days that national polls uniformly seem to be showing a movement towards Biden. Of course, polls differ as to the nature of that or the sharpness of that.

Whereas swing state polls are not being as clear about that, that a number of swing state polls in places like North Carolina or Florida seem to be as close as they were before. And they're certainly, even if they are showing a break, tending not to show a break as sharp as national polls are seeing. So I guess I have two last questions. One is,

How much of a phenomena is that as far as the distinction between a national and a swing state poll over the last two weeks? And if there is that distinction, you know, which one do you think you're likelier to believe?

I've noticed it too, Henry, and in particular looking at the swing states overall. The swing state polls seem to be moving within a narrow range, but they are, for the most part, much closer than the big lead that Biden has nationally. I guess I'd pay more attention to the state polls at this point, and I think that should worry the Biden campaign, at least at this point, because those polls aren't showing the clear lead that the national polls are showing for him.

Again, it could be that voters in those states are just swinging back and forth a little between the two candidates. We know that the number of undecideds has been low for a very, very long time. But I think at this point, I'm watching the state polls very carefully, though the national lead continues to be impressive that Biden has. Well, to be continued, of course, I will look forward to picking up this conversation again with you next week on The Horse Race. I agree. Thanks so much, Henry. Thank you.

As we all know, there's a lot more on the ballot than the presidential race. The Democrats took control of the U.S. House in 2018, and Republicans had hoped at the beginning of the cycle that they'd be able to, if not take it back, at least dent Nancy Pelosi's majority. Well, there's one man who knows the House inside and out, and he is our guest today, Dave Wasserman, the House editor for the Cook Political Report and an NBC News contributor. Dave, welcome back to the Horse Race. Thanks for having me back.

Well, lay it on us. What's been going on? How does it look? Are Republican hopes anywhere close to being realized or is it something else?

Yeah, we're a couple weeks out from the election and Democrats are poised to expand their House majority and Republicans are scrambling to avert a Trump-driven catastrophe. There are three big problems for Republicans in the House right now, and they haven't had a shot at the majority for a while. The first is that Trump is really damaging Republican prospects in what I would call second-order suburbs. These are suburbs of

traditionally Republican metro areas where Democrats fell short of flipping seats blue in 2018, but where Trump is less popular today, much less popular than he was in 2016 on the ballot. And these are places like suburban Indianapolis and St. Louis and Omaha and Cincinnati and San Antonio and Phoenix. These are all places where Republicans are at real risk of losing seats of their own.

The second problem for Republicans is money. They're absolutely getting annihilated on TV in a lot of districts, particularly in districts they initially targeted of Democratic frontline members who flipped seats blue in 2018. Those Democrats, those freshmen, they used their Rolodex from the blue wave to build a substantial platform.

financial head start before the pandemic struck. And keep in mind that when a lot of these Republicans were trying to get their campaigns off the ground, you know, it was the spring of 2020 when it became a lot harder to ask friends for money or hold in-person fundraisers and that kind of thing. So, you know, coming out of June and we're

of course, going to get new financial reports soon. But coming out of June, the median Democrat in a targeted district had a six to one cash on hand advantage, 2.6 million to 414,000 for their median Republican challenger. And then the third advantage for House Democrats is the number of open seats. And

A lot of these Republican open seats would have been vulnerable anyway, but there are 32 open Republican seats, just 11 Democratic open seats. And Democrats have...

really good chances in about a third of those Republican open seats. They're going to pick up two in North Carolina guaranteed because of the new map there. There are three open seats in Texas that are all at different levels of risk, but where Democrats have excellent chances. There is

is one that we have in our lean D column in Georgia, which is the seventh district of Georgia outside of Atlanta, Gwinnett County. And then Democrats also have really good chances in suburban Indianapolis, on Long Island, in Virginia's open fifth congressional district, which has been one of the real surprises of

the last couple months. So it's like whack-a-mole for Republicans. And this is starting to look more like 2008 when after losing their majority in the House, Republicans suffered even more losses. Now, I don't think they'll lose the 21 seats they lost in 2008 during the Obama wave. But we could see Democrats pick up somewhere between five and 15 seats. And that would

put, in my opinion, minority leader Kevin McCarthy's job in real jeopardy. Well, there's a lot to unpack there. Let's jump to the second order seat. She's rattled off a bunch of things like Phoenix and Omaha. Pick

Pick a seat or two in that and explain to our listeners why this historically Republican seat like Arizona 6 in Scottsdale or Missouri 2 in suburban St. Louis with Ann Wagner. What is it that's turning these places that have voted Republican for a long time and even voted for Trump by substantial margins into competitive territories?

Yeah, essentially, Trump is so radioactive in a lot of these upscale suburbs that Republicans, you know, have...

some preexisting problems, but he's just compounded them to a degree that may be unsurvivable. You know, in the northern Phoenix suburbs in Scottsdale, that never used to be a competitive district, the one that Dave Schweikert holds. In fact, back in 2012, when the district was first created, the only race that mattered in that seat was a primary he faced against Dan Quayle's son when they were thrown together in the same district. Now,

He's got a number of problems. He was slapped with 11 ethics violations for misuse of official funds earlier this year.

I would say that Democrats probably erred by waiting until mid-September to go up on the Phoenix airwaves there because now the Phoenix ad market is so crowded. Nonetheless, Schweikert is absolutely dead broke from having to spend so much on legal fees and Democrats...

are really ripping into him. And it looks like Biden may be ahead in that district, even though it voted for Trump by nine last time around. So, you know, I'd put him at a less than 50-50 chance of winning another term against Hiral Tipirneni, the Democratic ER doctor who is running against him. And then, you know, in Missouri's second district,

This is a district that Republicans drew in 2011 to be a solidly Republican seat. And guess what? Now it's got the second highest proportion of college graduates of any Republican held district in the country, 48%. And the Democrat running Jill Shoup may be on track to spend north of $4 million on the race.

And Wagner, you know, she was the she's kind of the ultimate Bush Republican. She was a Bush ambassador to Luxembourg. She was an RNC committee woman. And then now, you know, she's trying to save her seat by running ads online.

chastising Shoup for a vote in the legislature that she says would have allowed sex offenders to coach youth sports. Well, Shoup is up on air chiding Wagner for voting with Trump more than 90% of the time. That may be a more damaging negative than the youth sports. So it just goes to show you the depths to which Trump has fallen.

So what are some of the bright spots for Republicans is that even usually when a party gets wiped out or loses a lot of seats, they pick up a couple. You know, like last time there was the net vote.

massive loss, but they picked up a couple of seats in Minnesota. Are there any opportunities like that that are the against the grain seats that even with these headwinds against them, Republicans have a decent shot or at least a 50-50 shot of picking up to offset one or two of their losses? Yeah, you know, probably the single most vulnerable Democrat in the House is not a freshman, but a guy who's been there for 30 years, Colin Peterson in Minnesota. And

Democrats are not liking what they're seeing in that district and Republicans are loving what they're seeing. They have Michelle Fischbach, the Republican former lieutenant governor and state senator up in the high single digits against a longtime incumbent. And this is a district that voted for Trump by 30 last time. Most of the polling we've seen shows Trump winning it by closer to 20 this time. And

You might say, well, you know, Peterson won in 2016, so he should be able to survive this. Well, he didn't really have a credible opponent in 2016 or 18. Now, Michelle Fischbach, the Republican, is raising millions from predominantly pro-life activists who she's been close to over the years. She doesn't really have much of an ag background. She grew up in the

in the Twin Cities suburbs, whereas Colin Peterson, the chair of the House Ag Committee, he has heavy, heavy backing from commodity groups like the sugar beet growers and the corn growers in Minnesota.

And yet, she is tying him to Ilhan Omar. And that is just proving extraordinarily difficult for Democrats to counter in rural Minnesota. So he may lose. And then another interesting part is that to the extent there are vulnerable Democratic incumbents,

Yes, there are a handful of freshmen, but some are really longtime Democrats who Republicans are trying to make the time for change argument against, like House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair Pete DeFazio in Oregon. So there are a few offensive opportunities, but it's kind of hard to find. And DeFazio is one of those seats that it's...

Correct me if I get the university wrong. Is it OSU or university? Is it Eugene or Corvallis that's in his district? It's both. It's both. Okay. So you've got two, you've got essentially the two biggest universities in the state that are both in Oregon's fourth congressional district. And that's where the democratic vote is. The rest of the district, this is Southwestern Oregon, is Oregon.

extraordinarily blue collar. This is a district that moved towards Trump in 2016, even though it's on the left coast. You know, Obama had carried this district by something like 20,000 votes. Trump lost it by 500 votes in 2016. And so Republicans...

got their act together in 2020. And, you know, for the last five cycles, they had nominated a pseudoscientist named Art Robinson, who believed that urine held the secret to human life extension. And this time around, they've nominated a, you know, bona fide scientist

Anti-terrorism hero Alex Scarlatos, who essentially took down the Paris train gunman back in 2015 and is only 27 years old.

but is running as kind of a more libertarian Republican. And that's a race that both parties are now taking seriously. So you developed a test that has attracted a fair amount of attention in the political junkie world, the Whole Foods versus Cracker Barrel test. Can you talk a little bit about that and why you find that to be indicative of the demographic trends that are affecting House races?

Yeah. So, you know, it was a slow news week back in 2011. And I was kind of wondering which two retail chains could be the best predictors of where Democrats and Republicans were gaining strength in the electorate. And this had been inspired by a column that Charlie Cook, my boss, had written in National Journal Magazine, where he said that if you lived closer to a Starbucks, you were more likely to vote for Democrats. And if you live closer to Republicans, you're more likely to vote for Democrats.

you were more likely to, or if you lived closer to a Walmart, you were more likely to vote for Republicans. And so I wanted to test that. And I mapped out county by county election results going back to 1992 with the

a GIS application that could map out retail chains with at least 100 locations. And Whole Foods and Cracker Barrel were the two that happened to score highest. And just to give you an idea, back in 1992 when Bill Clinton won the White House over George H.W. Bush, he carried 59% of the county's

that today have a Whole Foods and 40% of the counties that today have a Cracker Barrel. So that was a 19-point culture gap. But that gap's gone up every four years. And in 2016, Trump won the White House winning 76% of Cracker Barrels and 22% of Whole Foods. So a 54-point gap. You know, the fascinating thing about 2020 is that Joe Biden could actually roll back the clock. You know, it's possible that

Trump could roll back the clock somewhat by trying to match where George W. Bush was in 2004 among minorities. You know, Trump is clearly doing marginally better with Hispanics, although not quite up to Bush 04 levels. He's doing a little bit better with African-Americans, perhaps. But Joe Biden is doing much better than Hillary Clinton did among non-college whites. And so that could...

kind of boost the Democratic Cracker Barrel number, if you will, to a place closer to where it was in 2012. And if that were to transpire, then it would be the first time since 1988 when the Whole Foods Cracker Barrel gap actually narrowed. But of course, Trump is collapsing among the Whole Foods constituency. That is also true.

So last question here. You've got we've got two weeks to go. Things do break in the last couple of weeks, even in this world of early voting. There is still, according to Mike McDonald's site, something like 95 percent of expected turnout has yet to vote.

What sort of things are you looking for to determine a race that breaks in the last two or so weeks? And do you see any trends that while you're not calling them, you think that based on your political experience in a week or two, you will be calling changes in a particular direction? You know, in this environment,

There are bound to be a handful of surprises, and it's hard to say right now which races are good candidates for that. But what I'll be looking at is all.

what are the voters watching on the airwaves in these districts and, you know, which challengers are actually up on TV? And, you know, an example would be, I was looking at the competitive on TV in the Erie, Pennsylvania market this past week. And, and, you know, mostly because of the presidential race there. And I want to see what the, what the messages of the, of the candidates and the outside groups were and,

there because I do consider it ground zero for Pennsylvania's electoral college race. But Erie also has a House district that was a four-point race in 2018. Congressman Mike Kelly held off a Democrat, a longtime attorney there, actually Muhammad Ali's former attorney named Ron DiNicola.

And now, you know, the DCCC is essentially written off the race. They, you know, it's a Trump plus 20 district from 16. So they didn't think they could win it. But there's a Democratic single mom and teacher named Christy Ginebis, who actually managed to beat Mike Kelly, the incumbent to the airwaves. And so, you know, you always kind of take note when something like that happens and

It's a small media market. And it's those types of places, the small markets where candidates without millions can still make an impact that you watch to see, you know, can an upset happen?

Well, Dave, I always look forward to chatting with you. I look forward to following you on election night. But you'll be off Twitter that on election night because you're doing, as I understand, desk work for NBC News. So those of us in the community will miss you. But those watching NBC News will surreptitiously benefit from your wisdom. Maybe surreptitiously monitoring you on election night and what you're saying. So thank you.

Oh, thank you. I, uh, I have to figure out, uh, how to navigate Twitter's new rules, uh, on the, on the calling or not calling races. Uh, but yes, I will be live on Twitter. Uh, thank you very much. And I hope to have you back after the election on the horse race. Okay. All right. Take care.

Well, Dave just told us about how the Democrats are looking good in their control for the House. That looks like they're going to be picking up seats rather than losing them and that Nancy Pelosi or someone else will be coming back as speaker. How are the Democratic candidates, however, presenting them to the voters in the key districts that might add or retain their majority?

We've got five examples of positive ads from Democratic candidates in key races from around the country, and I'd like to point out both how they differ and how they have some similar characteristics to give an idea of how broad the Democratic coalition is and also the different audiences that they have to attract in order to be a majority party. We're going to start with

A commercial from New York's 24th congressional district, which is currently held by Republican John Katko. This is Dana Balter's positive ad. I'm Dana Balter. This election is about one thing above all else. Who are we as a country?

Are we going to respect each other? Or let one man divide us for his own gain? John Katko has made it clear where he stands. John's been with Trump in Congress, and he's supporting Trump for re-election. I'm with Joe Biden. In fact, I was the first House candidate to be endorsed by Joe Biden. I approve this message because together, we can bring America back.

Well, this ad is one that has what's called to direct to camera, that the video is the person, the candidate speaking directly to the camera with a nice background that's not really attracting a lot of attention.

Dana has her name on the screen for much of the first few seconds of the ad, which helps, again, to establish a mnemonic device, reminds the person who may not recognize this candidate who this person is, but it doesn't have any party identification. The most important thing about this is how the message is subliminally partisan, despite the fact that there's no mention of her party, both in her spoken script or in the visuals.

When she says one man, the picture that comes up is Donald Trump holding a Bible in front of St. John's Church here in Washington, a visual that etched itself in the nation's consciousness this summer, along with the violent faces of the Unite the Right neo-white supremacist protesters at Charlottesville from a couple of years ago.

That's meant to establish who she's against, that man. Then she ties herself to Joe Biden, both with words and also with a picture of Joe Biden. Now, why would she be doing this? It's understandable why she would be campaigning against Trump, but there's a lot of seats where Democrats are trying to win, where Joe Biden is likely going to lose. Well, this isn't one of them. John Katko holds the most Democratic

Democratic seat that a Republican currently holds. It is one that Hillary Clinton carried. It is one that Barack Obama carried by larger margins in 2012. And clearly what she's trying to do is message to Democrats, I'm one of you. I don't like Trump. I like Joe Biden and Joe Biden likes me. So if you're going to vote for Joe Biden, vote for me, Dana Balter. Don't split your ticket for John Katko. That

That's the essential message that she needs to portray. And this ad is very quiet, but is very effective at conveying that. The second ad that we're going to take a look at is from another Democratic district. But this is a different situation. This is from Washington 10th's congressional district, where because of that stakes are

primary system, two Democrats are facing one another. So Marilyn Strickland is on a ballot with another more progressive Democrat. And let's hear how she is presenting herself to the electorate in this Tacoma-based district.

When I became mayor of Tacoma, our city was struggling. But the worst part? Only 55% of our students were graduating high school. Maryland Strickland brought our community together. Business leaders, teachers, parents, community groups. And inspired everyone. Today, 89% of Tacoma students graduate.

In Congress, I'll fight for resources families and educators need to learn during the pandemic because we'll recover faster with better education and opportunities for everyone. I'm Marilyn Strickland, and I approve this message. Well, like Balter, she too is doing a direct-to-camera, at least to start, and has her name on the screen.

She, however, is not focusing on a partisan message. She's focusing on a message that attracts voters across the spectrum, education. This ad is focused on her allegedly successful effort as mayor of Tacoma to increase the city's school system's graduation rate. The pictures includes racial groups that are numerous in the district. There's Blacks, there's Asians, and there's whites.

There's also a shot of remote learning towards the end when she's talking about getting us the resources to educate our children and recovering from the pandemic. Rather than a classroom, she's showing a kid who's learning over a laptop. That's what most parents are experiencing, and particularly all parents in Washington, where the schools remain closed. Now, this ad is one that doesn't drive a partisan point because as the more moderate of the Democrats,

She is trying to appeal to both moderate Democrats and to Republicans that Republicans are going to come to the voting booth and they're not going to have a Republican to take a look at. If she can establish herself as a calm, reasonable person, the Republicans just might prefer her to the other person who is presumably putting a more partisan message in trying to attract the Democratic base.

This, too, is a subtle but effective ad that establishes her name identification with a popular issue that is likely to appeal to the elements of the electorate most open to voting for her.

The third ad takes us into different territory. This is a suburban and urban Cincinnati seat. It combines parts of the city of Cincinnati with parts of the suburbs. And this is a Democrat challenging a Republican incumbent to take that seat, a seat that did not flip in the wave of 2018. Let's listen. Your life changes when you get a diagnosis. I survived cancer because I had insurance that covered my treatments.

But today, too many families can't afford to get sick. I'm running for Congress to change that. We need to expand health care access, lower prescription drug costs, and protect pre-existing conditions. For me, this fight hits home. And it's not okay to play politics with people's lives. I'm Kate Schroeder, and I approve this message.

This is yet another ad that produces that venerable start with a direct-to-camera. While there does cut from different side or candid shots, most of the ad is direct-to-camera. And, of course, it's her voice, Kate Schroeder's, that's narrating it throughout. What's interesting here is a couple of things. One is the thing she talks about directly ties into a personal crisis, her circumstances.

survival from cancer, but ties into Democratic themes about rising costs of health care, prescription drug costs, and pre-existing conditions. These are the elements of health care reform that unite Democrats and Republicans, and consequently is a constant theme that Democrats use in swing districts like this. This is a district that Donald Trump carried by a few points in 2018,

16. It's one that people think he will lose this time, but not by a large margin. And the swing voter here is a Republican voter who lives in the upper income parts of the city and in the suburbs. The pictures tend to play that.

together. Most of the pictures are her in front of her suburban house and other pictures of people in suburban settings. But it also includes a number of African-Americans. See that the part of the urban district that's in her area is an African-American community. And that's one reason that while her name is on the screen, mostly with just her name for Congress, there's one scene in the beginning where it says Democrat for Congress. Very subtle.

But it's meant to be an ad that unites the Democratic base with moderate Republicans who are disenchanted for Trump, who can find her as an acceptable alternative to the incumbent, Steve Shabbat, whose name she never mentions. The fourth alternative.

And the fourth set of ads is a district that is more Republican than this one. And it's not a suburban district. Let's see if you can figure it out from the ad and its narrative. She's not going to take it. Not a chance. Not a dime. No, Diane Mitch Bush is refusing money from corporate special interests. No to health care companies, drug companies. No to them all.

Because in Congress, Diane will look out for us. She'll protect coverage for pre-existing conditions, including the coronavirus, lower the cost of prescription drugs, and cap how much we pay out of pocket for health care. With Diane, those special interests don't stand a chance. I'm Diane Mitch Bush, and I approve this message. Now, a lot of the clues here come from the visuals, which you can't see, rather than the words. The words, again, the names on the screen for some of the ad,

This is one ad where everything the candidate says is being mentioned on screen so that the words of everything you hear is being repeated on the screen. But the visuals tell us that this is a different story, that even though she's talking about

corporate interests and not taking money. And there's pictures of her throwing away ads, supposed campaign checks from big pharma or drug companies. Most of the pictures are in a rural setting that this is a rural Colorado district. And so consequently, she's an informal dress throughout. There's a lot of candid shots where she's meeting with people in the district. And there's one shot where she's standing on a pickup truck

doing a campaign rally with flags on the back of the truck and also people who are masked. So this is a message that talks about patriotism, talks about through visuals and through words. This is a person who's one of us. And with the masks also kind of sends a signal to the people who are concerned about coronavirus.

who are also mainly partisan Democrats, that she's one of them. This is another ad that does a nice job of conveying crossover appeal while also subtly messaging towards the partisan Democrats. That's the coalition that Diane Mishbush needs in this 52-42 Trump district from 2016 if she's going to pull off the upset.

And then the final ad is from another one of those rural districts that went for Trump heavily. But this one is a Democratic incumbent, Sushil Torres-Small, who has been a recurring feature on Ads of the Week because, frankly, her television ads regularly are cut above. Let's see how she's presenting herself to her district's voters in the waning days of the campaign.

I've said it before, Washington doesn't get us. That's especially true when it comes to oil and gas. When some in Congress tried to cut energy workers out of the coronavirus relief plan, I said no and fought to get them the support they deserve. So if Washington or members of my own party try to ban fracking, they'll have to come through me. I'm Xochitl Torres-Small. I approve this message because I'll always stand up for New Mexico.

Torres Small is talking about energy, and that's important in a district that is bordering Texas and, in fact, has portions of the district that are so like western Texas, its nickname is Little Texas. She talks about bipartisan appeals. She talks about bucking her own members of her own party. And on the screen flashes a headline about AOC, which

Wanting to frack and she's saying that she'll go against that. This is one of those rare instances where a Democrat brings up AOC. Usually she's the subject of a Republican ad trying to tie the Democrat to the extreme progressive and saying, I'm not that person.

She is also talking direct to camera for a lot of the ad, but there's also a lot of cam shots of her walking up and down, talking to energy workers, suitably masked, of course, on or around oil derricks and other energy equipment. The visuals make it clear this is a person who understands and respects the vital energy industry in New Mexico's second congressional district.

She also has her name on the screen, but with a twist. Unlike the other candidates, she has a very attractive, colorful logo. It's not just her name. It's her name with kind of a rising sun in the lower left-hand corner that's reminiscent of the rising sun or the enchanted sun that is part of the New Mexico state flag. It's not identical, but it's reminiscent. And it's another mnemonic device that helps you feel good about something.

Sushil Torres-Small. She's also dressed in blue jeans and a blue denim shirt throughout. Again, informal, meant to convey one of us.

She may lose. Her polls show that her race is neck and neck with her Republican opponent. But no one's going to blame her campaign for that fact. She's doing the best job she can of presenting the bipartisan image that a Democrat needs in order to win over former or crossover temporary Republican votes to eke out a victory, much as she did in 2018.

All of these ads show that from partisan Democrats to moderate Republicans to switch voters who can be still reached in this partisan age, Democrats have a wide coalition that they have to attract. They do it through similar tactics, but different types of messages that unite rather than divide. And that's why these five ads are this week's ads of the week.

That's it for this week's Horse Race. Join me next week as we set the stage for what could be the race's defining moment, the October 22nd presidential debate. I'm Henry Olson, and I'll see you in the winner's circle.