Who Is Going to Win the 2024 U.S. Elections? | Henry Olsen
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What's up, everybody? My name is the major graphs, and you're listening to hit in forces, a podcast that inspired res investors, entrepreneurs and the everyday citizens to chAllenge consensus narratives and learn how to think critically about the systems of power shaping our world. My guess in the episode of hidden forces is Henry olson, author of working class republican and the four faces of the republican party, his economics for the washington post, and whose the weekly podcast beyond the polls, where he speaks with the leading political journalists and analysts about american politics and its presidential and congressional races. I can be back on the podcast just a few days before the election in order to get a final tally of where the race stands.

At this moment, we discuss how each candidate is performing in the key swing states and districts that will determine this election, what we're seeing in terms of early voting and how to compares to twenty twenty, along with other key metrics that he and his fellow analysts and insiders are paying closest attention to. Henry thinks that there is a good chance this election could be even closer than the one in two thousand between George w. Bush and algo, an election that was ultimately determined by a narrow margin of just five hundred and thirty seven votes, along with a ruling by the florida supreme court to suspend any further recounts.

The country is in a very different place today, then IT was two decades ago. And how any remotely similar scenario would play out this time is truly ly anyone's guess. We also discuss the economic discussions of a trump Victory, the role of J.

D. Vance as a potentially transformative figure in republican politics, the effect that a loss on the part of the democrats would have on their party's realignment. And much more, there is no premium portion to this week's episode, which gives you the perfect excuse to go through our library of content and catch up on anything you've missed. Or we listen to some more great conversations on this and related topics.

The easiest way to do that is that hidden forces I O slash podcasts, where you can select from a number of content categories if you want to learn more about our genes, community and had to participate in our live q and with people like Henry, or join one of our many dinners that are hosted in the private dining rooms, some of the finest restaurant in the world, attended by some of the world's most successful investors, policymakers, analysts and thought leaders, and a variety of disciplines and fields. You can do that, that hidden forces that I O slash subscribe. And with fact, please enjoy this extraordinary, timely and informative conversation with my guest, Henry also. Henry olson, welcome back to hand forces but .

thank you having back to me.

Yeah, this is like the fifteen uni spoken last few weeks now that out of fifteen time. But you did A Q and a with our hidden forces community members some weeks ago. You're also at our new york city dinner.

So I had a chance to ask you many of the questions i'm going to ask you again. But up to see IT IT matters as we closer and closer to the election. So i'm just curiously, we're recording this on thursday, october first. First of all, are you getting dressed up for halloween?

I am not. I am working on some stuff that I do every two years, and I am avoiding ghost, gob, lin, vampire and Candy. Okay.

why don't know how easy that will be considering the land of worker? So you know, just because you were just a few days away from the election, are there any news, events or surprises that are impacting the race at this moment? Like, for example, the garbage comments that started as a boom for the democrats and then you, biden, did his typical gaff and turned into a positive for the republicans like this, there are anything that really matters here are, or pretty, pretty much made up their minds.

Yeah, I know. I think these are the sort of things that people seize on you when you're trying to make a point. You never want to be arguing against the narrative.

And the narrative for the last twenty four hours has been joe bindon's garbage comment. Did he mean that? Did he not mean that? Which means that everything that conal Harris was trying to say was being deflected in light of that.

And Donald trump, particularly with its garbage truck, played into that. But ultimately, almost everybody's made up their minds. The sort of person who hasn't made up their minds may preferred be catching this sort of thing you're chasing after the final few votes. And a lot of this is just noise and not signal.

So what are the important questions than analysts like you are asking themselves headed into this election?

You know, I am very date oriented as many but not all analysts are. I am looking at things like partisan affiliation, partisan turnout and breaks among different rational and ethnic demographic and educational groups.

If we believe the public polls over the last couple of years, this is going to be the first election since the great depression, that republicans have slightly more voters and democrats, many polls don't believe that that if you look at polls and have Harris up by three year four, they tend to have a modern sample, which is, say, democrats having this slightly, that matters a huge amount. If democrats do still have the small plurality of support among american voters, come on, Harris. And like seventy five percent likely to win.

But if the bulk of the public polling over the last two years is correct, that mcDonald trumps likely heard of winning much greater, to put in this way, there is a poll that came out recently that I had trump up by two nationally winning the popular vote. IT was an our plus three sample that had three points more republican. I can tell you, if it's our plus three on election day, Donald trump will win every in state.

He'll probably have a very good chance at winning a state that's not on people's targeted list. I don't offer. I'll be our plus three, there some evidence that suggests that will be is also some evidence that is suggested IT won't, but that's something i'll be looking. And then the question is, are the gains that the poll say trump is having with black voters and Harris having with the college degree real, or they pulling at a if they real, that helps trumps chances in the south, but might hurt his chances in the upper midwest where there are more White with the college degree eks compared the black. Again, i'm looking at IT, but there's no way to know until the votes were cast.

So I think you ve told me the past that like ability scores the most important or one of the most important metrics s how does that compared to the other metric of the percent is breakdown of people that are likely to vote republican. Democrats.

one of their correlated because republicans are likely to like trump and democrats are likely to not like trump. P, I am looking at the favor statistics as well, because you have a ninety five percent likely to voting for somebody if you like them, and continue to many people's views. Most americans like one of the two candidates.

I haven't looked at IT in a few days, but the Harris was around forty nine percent favorability in the national likely voter polls, and trump s around forty seven. And that suggests a Harris two point tly nationally, obviously, where tens of a point matter could be. It's a one point sixty that rounds to two or a two point four lead that leads down to do when those things matter.

But I can't know those because I don't have that gradual level of data, but they are impact. You know, if you have A D plus too sample, you know Harris probably at fifty or OA favorability and trump is probably forty six or below. You know that would imply a Harris one of three or four points.

Well, that's a of your sample composition. If you have an art plus two sample, you probably have trump even or ahead of Harris on favorability. That is a function of your simple composition. So I am looking at IT, but I am also looking at these other things so important .

cohorn in the twenty twenty election were actually republicans who didn't like trump and who voted for job in on a canada effect. Do we know anything about whether that group has grown or shunk since that election?

So one of the things that I do to get beyond having to choose between polls as the right is you often find that poll may come out with very different answers, but with very large sub samples like partisan I D like male, female, that actually come out pretty similar now within the range of error. So I have computed the averages of these things by partition.

And and what you find is that, a, there are slightly more people who say they are republican who will vote for como haris than who say they are democrat who will vote for nano trump. B, that number is not significantly different than I was in twenty twenty. So the answer is IT exists. There is no evidence that IT has grown.

What about excitement in energy around both campaigns that had place some role in terms of turnout? What do we know about what I mean? We I think we have a prety good idea that thump voters are pretty energized. That seems to be less the case for democrat.

We don't quite know how big of a deal it's been that I think there's been some concern about whether or not people within the african american can on your energies, which explain some of the media in campaign, upset the hairs camie n is done. But can we say anything about this? Definitively.

definitively know. But there are two points of data, and they're r in conflict. If you look at public polls, they will tell you that democrats, or as or more excited about voting in about Harris than republicans, are about time.

If you look at the early vote data, what you find is the opposite, is that compared to previous years, democratic turnout is down, even accounting for the smaller number of democrats. And in african american communities, pretty much everywhere you look, the number of early votes is significantly lower than IT was two or four years ago as a share of the early vote in that election. Now IT may very well be african americans are going to vote on elections day.

But what we can say, they're not enthusiastic enough to be voting early, whereas trump voters and Whites with the college degree are enthusiastic enough to be voting today again. So a little tea leave to look at. Those numbers are real.

Unlike the polling numbers, which are estimates substation eponyms, these are what economists called revealed preferences. No, you can tell some of you are enthusiastic, but if you actually don't go up and vote, what do you really mean? So these are things we know as of thursday, october thirty first. Again, maybe they all come out and vote today, tomorrow, saturday. You know, things can change, but as of today, IT is clear from the early voting data that republicans are more enthusiastic about voting early than democrats who are not Whites with a college degree.

T so just clarify the way that were assigning party affiliation. Early voting is depending on the districts. If the republican districts and there is more early voting, that the assumption is that there is more early voting among republicans.

IT depends on on the states. Some states have partisan registration. And we can know you know that you know in the va, for example, or azzo a, we know what the turnout rates are among registered publicans and registered democrats and other states like George or michigan.

We have to infer IT by relative turn out rates. And that's one thing with the african american communities. You can see areas you know, like georgia records.

IT doesn't record partisan tia, but IT does record race. The african american voters, twenty six percent of the people have turned out early so far on nearly three point five million. That's a couple points lower then IT was in previous years in the early vote.

The same thing is true in north CarOlina. A of you take a look at philadelphia. The same thing is true if you take a look at Virginia.

Places with high african american concentration have a smaller percentage of people who voted early then who voted early in previous election. So that's how we either infer or know things about race and partisan. So he said that .

some of those people may end up voting election, that we don't know. What do we know about the relationship between early voting and whether or not people show up on election day? Because you could also make the argument that voting early means that you're gonna have less people shop on election dc early.

Yeah well, that's the thing is what we don't have a clear relationship. You know what we have seen in the last two elections is that election day is a republican and love IT. And that's because maga.

People who distrust early voting because of what Donald trumps said, vote on election day. Well, republicans are voting early, usually in person rather than male. So no, it's trust, but verify. But they are voting at a higher rate.

Is this canabal zing their election devote? There's data that suggests, yes, there's data that suggests now in other words, what they're doing is getting early vote from people who are not habitual voters as opposed to people who are just shifting their vote from election day. You know, georgia actually tracks that.

So what we know is that well over seventy two percent of the total early vote also voted early in twenty twenty. Somewhere around fifteen to eighteen percent of the vote did not vote in twenty twenty. And no, that will obviously include anyone who turned eighteen after the election day so they couldn't have voted in twenty twenty.

It'll obviously include new residents who have moved into the states ince twenty, twenty and those hundreds of bounds of them. And then we know the number of people who voted on election day in twenty twenty, but are voting early in twenty twenty four. And there what we see is in republican congressional districts, about eight to ten percent of the total vote today voted on election day, but are voting early this year, and about five percent in democratic areas are voting a difference.

But IT doesn't suggest vote cannibalization. IT suggests that maybe election day will be slightly less of a republican love in. Then IT was in twenty twenty. So something .

that happened twenty six cent e into a less to g in twenty twenty is that the polls, a handy capped the democrat contender verses Donald trump because of a variety factors. I know in two and sixteen, part of that was because trump voters were deemed low trust photo. They weren't willing to speak with people who would call them over the phone.

I believe that weren't people to pick up the phone from the phone calls as part of the polling process. Also, a lot of truth, voters were shy to sort of tell people how they felt because of the social stigma. What do we know about how that queue has changed twenty sixteen and how IT might be reflected in the data today?

So the biggest thing that pulsars have done, sin twenty sixteen, is wait their polls according to educational attainment, is that prior to twenty sixteen, whether you are a White with or without a college degree was not a huge determinant of your vote, independent of other factor.

So what pollsters do, since they can no longer get random samples, is they take the people that they get in calls, and then they assign them different values according to their estimated chairs of the elector. So what they did not do is weight, you know, boost the fewer people who they get who, without a college degree versus to people with a college degree. And that systematically underestimated the trump out.

They no longer do that. But this is, you know, one of the sixty four thousand hour questions of the election. We just don't know the answer to that. Different bolsters argue that they've solved the problem to different degrees and the proof will be in the putting and not just in this election is over time.

You know, if somebody has a different method that consistently produces results one or two points closer to the average, then it's not irrational to infer that they've adopted a Better solution. But right now, we do not have that answer definitively. That's why I when i'm making my predictions or projections, i'm looking at polling averages because anything else is just I run risk of confirmation bias, you know which is say, well, I think in my gut that it'll be block. So therefore i'll choose the one pull out of eleven that justifies my god. Well, that god maybe accurate, or that god maybe G, I have a secret bias that I don't want to acknowledge and improving, grabbing data to confirm my bias, rather than letting data inform my judgment.

So i'm going to ask you probably what is the most bin al question of the interview, but I think it's worth asking because my hair is Brown.

People who can.

So it's about swing states, you know, because this has changed over the years. What are the important swing states in the selection that are going to determine the outcome?

The seven states people talk about are the writing answers to that, George and north CarOlina, iron devata, wisconsin, michigan and pencils vania. There's no indication that one of the other states has changed its relationship to the national demographic partisan preferences sufficiently to bump its way into the big seven. So the way to think about twenty states is georgia is the linchpin that unlocks the map.

If trump wins georgia, then he has three different pathways to winning the election. Harris can still win the election, but if Harris wins georgia, IT becomes extremely difficult for trump to wear, not just because of the map, but because of the demographics, which is, say, that George is historically more favorable to in any of the midwest state. If georgia can't fall, why do we think the middle stern states all? So georgia is the linchpin. Know if trump unlock, George opens up three separate independent pathways for him.

So one more Christ about data and polling. Are you following this new story about Polly market and that one third of their trades are wash trades and how that impacts the the polling? Has that been an important source for you or for analysis you in this election?

No, not at all. You know the thing is that Polly, market is a market. Yeah now I will use my personal example. I um am not actively on the market this year, but in two thousand and four in two thousand eight, I was on a press market called the iow exchange which was given an exemption from the ban on this for research purposes.

And so around thanksgiving of two thousand and three, I look and I thought john Edwards, whose pulling in single digits is going to be the break out candidate who will surprise the community, which means, since I was in the markets to make money, I wanted to buy john Edwards cheap. Problem was that market was so thinly traded that if I wanted to buy john Edwards, I moved at the market so I made money, but I could not buy enough john Edwards without moving the market, and I wasn't willing to move the market and lose my rate of return. I wanted to make twenty to one.

I didn't want to make a me or three to one, but if you're indifferent to that, if somebody says I know Donald trump is gone to win, so i'm going to move the market from fifty one to sixty three percent, you'll still make money. You'll just lower your rate of return. I think that's what's going on is that people say, you know making a fifty percent rate of return on mcDonald trump investment for three weeks, marking the money you know you're a map guy.

If you put money in and you make a fifty percent of return over three weeks, what you're annual aliza rate of return, well, it's bigger than you can make IT anyone, anywhere else, you know multiple seventeen hundred fifty percent and do a compounding rate of interest and it's I can retire. So I think that's what's happening in betting markets is people are in different to their rate of return for variety reasons. They're moving the markets and IT is not anything other than people with lots of money trying to make more money.

Yeah, I want to. How many people in the artist will remember john Edwards or know who he is? It's amazing. I mean, he was really a not coming, starting the democracy party, and one of the most tragic stories in politics that I can remember the last twenty years.

Well, I don't know. Tragic if you consider having an affair with the woman who's a little bit of to use a yetis term.

And while your wife is diagnosed with cancer also, I mean that this was really sad.

Yeah, no, I mean, that's the thing. Is a tragic, or is IT kind of like hubris squared or quarter.

of course, the classic tragedy, or those of tremendous fall from Grace, right?

The king is the king so .

let's talk a little bit about now let's move from polling to um I guess, more interest questions. Kala had a strategy IT seems early on which was to do as little media as possible somewhere that seems to have changed and he seems to have backtrack and started doing more. What do we know about that? What do we know about the decision making behind IT? If it's been successful? Do you have any thoughts on that?

You we don't know anything because the Harris campaign people who would know aren't talking. So we can speculate, but we can't know. My speculation is, is that this was a candidate who got into the race and unusual ways, and the campaign needed to figure out what its strategy was.

In a Normal campaign, you will do months of preparation before you ever declare, and then you get things out. So what they did was shield her from making mistakes, and then they started to roll her out once they had set her up in that way. So that's my best speculation as to why they both had the initial decision and the change.

I think they also recognize that the let's run is not had its limit. And SHE wasn't putting the election away. So they had to take some more risks, and risks meant more exposure.

So I didn't remember if we talk about this at the dinner, but I ve been fascinated by the role of alternative media this election. The the right has really embraced the new forms of media. Lot of these new forms of media are also, I think, right of center.

The left has not, at least a cal Harris, that is to say, in this selection, what has the role of media been and and more to the point, how can we regain the or assess the importance of media appearances on alternate the right when media for republicans in the sort of turnout, right? Because we we always run to this problem of like those those that are in the media kind of live in the ecosystem in this bubble. What someone says on twitter, we over describe value to, of course, trump appearance on european.

Pretty big deal. I mean, that's the biggest media platform probably in the world in some ways. So i'm curious your assessment of how the media landscape has changed in how its influences this election?

Yeah, the media landscape has changed dramatically. You know, i'm sixty three. When I was growing up, there was no such as cable television. There was no such thing as the internet phone calls were charged by distance. IT was expensive to call on.

People sounded like they were far away analog line to the further way they were, the more they sounded like they were in some kind of a tunnel.

yeah. I mean, depending on your connection that that could be the case. And what you had was the high dominant era of the gatekeeper model, which is the editors of major newspapers.

And most cities had IT would used to have competing newspapers had dropped down to a dominant paper and a satellite paper, with the exception of new york, which is large enough to support, even today, multiple daily newspapers and three major networks. So if you wanted to talk to mass numbers of people, you had to go through gatekeepers. That changed in the ninety eighties with the decision in the rain and administration, the rise that opened up radio as a format.

Cable television came and the internet came. And so what has become completely clear, the traditional media don't like IT, and then rarely, if ever, admit to IT, but they don't like IT because the gatekeepers camp control the conversation. So that's what this election really it's been coming for quite some time.

It's really quite clear that the gatekeepers of the legacy media platform still have influence, but they don't have dominance. But as far as any individual source of information, this is the flip side of fragmentation, is that joe rogan may be the biggest podcast in the world. How many views or license downloads has a gun? Three million? four? Me, no.

no. Much more than the trump. Yeah, just on the way to check right now.

But just on the that's the thing also that tough about this is that these videos fragment so people can wash little clips of them or the entire episode on a different channel. And let's see here, tell you right out. So he's at forty one million right now, just the main video. But of course, I would expect that people of millions of people have seen clips, are in this interview .

and been into the by is forty one million worldwide .

english speaking world, right?

English speaking word. You know the english speaking world includes people outside the who don't vote and right, you know they're going to be one hundred and fifty to one hundred and sixty five million votes cast in the united states yeah the question is how many people are going to be listening or one of these things who aren't seeking confirmation bias and are going to vote yeah obviously it's not going to be a tiny number, is going to be fifteen thousand.

But a lot of people are partisan and they seek things out that they agree with for entertainment or informational value. IT doesn't affect their vote. So the question is, yeah, was IT smart to appear on your rogan? absolutely. Does forty one million views indicate that twenty percent or thirty percent of the american elector has watched the podcast? no.

Does that mean that he's moved or influence forty one million votes? Are you kidding me? And it's the same thing with network news, you know like network news, you have fifteen or twenty million people watch, but most people have decided.

And so for than someone, the actual influence is for actions of what the total viewership is doesn't mean it's not important. But you have to put that in perspective. The fact is seventy percent of people are partisans.

If you're a partisan, you ve already made up your mind ninety five percent of the time, about seventy percent of so called independence or leaned partisans, they will back their party eighty eighty five percent of time. In other words, are aren't that many votes up regret? And then a third of amErica won't vote.

So how many people will? And if you're not registered to vote, except in a few states with same day registration, you can't go and vote, you know? So if you listen to joe rogan and you live in pensylvania, ia and say, well, you want to go on over down, triple, tough.

The registration deadlines pass. You can do IT in michigan. You can. You have same day registration, but you know, IT depends on your state. So again, it's important. IT is helpful, but you have to put that into perspective in light of what we know about human voting behavior and what we know about the statistics of who votes in two docs.

So given the fact that the the number of votes that are of progress is so small and that one third of the country doesn't turn out, does that make sense? Dollar for dollar actually focus on raising turnout for politicians that IT doesn't changing people's mind?

Usually, I would say no, because usually there's a larger share of people who have made up their money. You know, you're talking about five percent of americans who haven't made up their mind. That's much different than two.

We're talking about a race where probably the number of genuine and undecided voters is two percent or less. Now let's go back to that favorability yy statistic. Forty nine to forty seven equals ninety six.

You know, IT may seem weird to some people. Up in twenty, sixty two percent of americans told pulse sters. They like both trump and clinton.

So gonna some overlaps. So let's say five percent of americans either don't have an opinion or don't like both candidates. We know that third party candidates and writings will get about two to three percent of the vote. So do the man, you know, ninety five minus two and a half lives, two and a half maximum undecided in other elections that may be larger. And you then IT is worth going after those people at this point, even the closeness of the race IT is probably worth doing the things that energize your base while also having an appeal to those small undecided voters to shoot for the overlap. You don't focus on undecided voters to the exclusion of energizing your supporter base.

One more question about the rogan energy. Did you watch IT now? So I watched IT and I felt that I didn't really help hurt him. I felt when I sort of took an informal poll among friends and people on twitter just seemed a pretty much validated people's opinions whenever ver they came into the the conversation.

I did think something that was interesting that you and I ve talked about in your first appearance of the podcast when I had asked you this was some years ago whether you thought the election tup in solin or was any evidence, one where the other? I thought I was telling that in joe roan interview truck, he asked them, rogan asked them directly, something onglyza you think was IT stolen. How do you know? And he pivoted to conversation about hundred binds laptop.

And they asked him, are you ever planning on releasing any evidence around this? And again, he kind of punted. I thought that was actually rather revealing because that was a real opportunity of, in fact, delta is, for last four years, saying national stolen.

If he had some compelling case to forward, that would have been the platform to do IT in an unhurried way. So that was the one interesting thing that was worth. And I stopped watching pretty much shortly into the interview, didn't watch too much of IT.

So let's talk about let's private to something that we, you and I have talked about again at the dinner we talk about is quite a bit on the Q N A. And then we may have talked about in your most recent appearance on his enforces, actually known what that we did, which is j events. Actually we talk about liba, but he hadn't picked his political candidate. In fact, when you were on the podcast, wasn't that before trump had had the assassination attempt inst trump as well?

Yeah, was before the assassination attempt. I don't remember before picking them.

And IT was before picking vents because I member, we were talking about who he might pick. I ask your number, people. So he's picked jay events. J events also had a really Stellar performance in the vice presidential debate. How important was this pick and how important, more importantly, is j events as a figure in the republican party and as a north star for what the direction of the party is going to be in the years to come.

And so vice presidential picks typically do not matter very much. I don't think walls suspect move the middle very much. I don't think ban suspect move the needle very much. Despite attacks from artisans in the media in the early week's dances, continued Stellar performances has basically raised his favorite ability rating, so that he is now roughly identical with walls, so people can see for themselves on different things.

And this is where having diversity of media helps is helps form opinion in the stage is as opposed to in the final week of a higher ly partisan two party election. So I don't think on the margin IT helped because vanes in effective communicator, both in person and in interviews and in debates, but not hugely, you know, is that you listen to this guy, he reinforces the message that trump is using in a pursue e of way. So it's really an appliance ation of trump.

j. Evans has the potential to be a transformative figure in american politics is that historically, amErica has a dominant party in a secondary ary party, that these party coalitions are formed by transformative presidential leaders. And you then have parties follow in their wake for decades, reforming or chipping away at the coalition, but not redefining the coalition attempts to redefine the coalition like berry cold water, George, my governments fail because the times aren't right for redefinition.

AmErica is overdue for that. The last time that happened was ronal dragon. These things tend to happen IT around a forty year period or so. But the thing is.

we can make an F, D, R in view. yeah. F.

D R, right? L B J, reform to the F D R coalition in the light of somebody who was trying to break IT very gold water and and what IT showed was, no, if your basic message is, let's rethink the F D R premises, which is what gold water basic message was. The L B J land sights that now we don't want to.

And what ronal ragon did was reinterpreted in a way that mix the plane field of IT was not one thousand and sixty four, but not three hundred thirty two. And that's what created the possibility of fifty, fifty politics that we have today. We are overdue for somebody to break that logjam.

And J. D. Vance, with this embrace of certain aspects of mega republicanism and his tasted departure from them in many ways, particularly, is not confrontational style, while also stoking some degree of the anger that the base feels.

You can see IT every time he gets on television. He is non confrontational. He is rational. He thinks and speaks in complete senses and paragraphs. And he demonstrates that he is a fighter that is not something anyone else can do.

And if he can continue this, he could be the person who makes the republican party the new dominant party. The democrats hope, hope obama could do IT. Didn't they keep hoping? And maybe someday, maybe i'm wrong about vans.

Maybe vans will mix up. Maybe the democrats will have somebody who can do that because it's they can do a do or not saying it's baked in the cake. But fancy's demonstrated qualities that suggest he could be the fifth great leader in american history in political sense.

Well, something that really stands out with j events is that he's very clear and direct in his message whether Harrison walls and even trump in many ways talk around certain issues. I mean, truck does have his one big idea about making amErica great again. But but advance has much more specificity and directness and clarity and consistency, and he's able to express himself in a compelling manner. And that really makes him stand out.

Yeah, really amazing. What happens when you think about politics before you enter politics?

A very good point. So speaking of that, about transformational candidates, if the democrats lose in this election, if comma Harris losses, does twenty twenty eight become there twenty sixteen? And if that's the case by three, twenty sixteen, I mean.

Are they gonna through uh ort of death and direction process the way the democratic party did? And obviously you have a Christal ball so you can answer that. How are you want or reforming the question to make IT answer able? And then if so, is that what we would expect to see the new democratic party emerging, a potential new democratic leader come out of the party.

And the thing is that parties always have factions. But what we're seeing right now is because we are overdue for your alignment and do not yet have a clear party structure. Both parties are struggling to redefine themselves.

And we've seen more of the republican redefinition, and that's what the chAllenge from nicki hai was meant. And that kind of showed no, actually some form of alliance between religious conservatives and magic conservatives is the dominant force of the republican party. The old guard has been defeated.

And then with the question in twenty twenty eight, after trump will be whether trump wins or loses, the question be, what will the form of that alliance take? Will be a winning former will? Will be a self defeated ding for the democrats have been suppressing that they have a left that you to republican years.

It's like why you guys have been running the country to the left, they think, and that basically they've been shut out of american power for decades and they want to run the ship. So what you're gonna have is the bloody under card of democratic party fights come out into the open, and you will have all flavors of anything from let's be moderate to let's be democratic socialist running and let a thousand flowers bloom. There will be carnage, political carnage, political bloodshed, political theater.

Buy your tickets, get your power, get the front row seat now and now. I don't know which side when. I don't know how they'll come out.

A lot of this is dependent on circumstance, dependent on candidate quality, dependent on a whole lot of things that you can't know four years in address. But you what you can see is this attention building, attention building. You know, it's like the energy building up underneath a fault line that eventually produces .

an IT would be fascine to see how this metastasis of woke ideology, D. L. The stuff, how this evolves.

If they do lose, and do they extinguish from the party, do they can go through a which hunt, take a rid of IT or desert for men? I'm not sure that that is the single thing that I would be most fascinated to see. I had one more question in terms of, you know, this election being very close.

I've even heard you suggest that he could be closer than the two thousand election. The two thousand election is the famous election with the florida recount. If I were that close, is there a state in which you would expect to more likely the recount or with the state where the electoral will be closest? Which state with that B M, means that so you can answer.

And i'm just curious like what would you expect to see in this country? How would that play out? Like what does that look like for people that haven't quite thought through?

So you know, I think given what I said about georgia is that if trumps georgian, north CarOlina, then he has three separate routes to the presidency, the closest partisan states that I would expect he would have that would get him over the top, or pensylvania or wisconsin. So those are the states that I would expect if we have a floor of style.

It's within a couple thousand votes determining the winner of the presidency in one key state, those of the states, I would say IT is likely as they happen, not say, yeah, I can make an argument for arizona, I can make an argument for michigan. But I think those are the two states where existing partisan divisions and the importance to a final electoral account, this is the state that gets over the hum. I would expect those would be the two states.

What is the mechanism to create confidence around the recount or around the counting of electable votes if it's that close like .

in those two states? Yeah, that's the problem, is that we don't have those mechanisms in place is that typically what happens in amErica is not that votes are recounted, but that votes that were rejected or relitigate, and that's where the confidence measure comes in. And so for example, let's just hypothetically ally say that wisconsin is the state and it's within a thousand votes.

What will happen is lots of lawsuits. And so for that are surrounded over which votes were denied, which votes were not allowed to be counted, trying to get obviously the winner once you were addition. The leader wants that not to happen in the loser once IT to happen.

And no principle involved here. This is pure gamesmanship. You can imagine that if two states we're going to recount and what's a Harris was leading with concern and trump leading pennsylvania, trump t argue pennsylvania don't count votes, or trumpet, argue in wisconsin, t more votes and vice verse for Harris.

It's completely transaction. So there you take place in law, but IT could also take place in each county in your which is to say, you know which votes were rejected, but which no one disputes should have been counted. The sense that there's no question about validity.

They weren't rejected because of a lack of signature. They lack to post market or something. They were votes that we're valid dly cast. The person screwed up their ballot in some way.

What happens in america? Do you go back and look at the ballot and you say, what can we design? Maybe the voting machine missed a vote that should have been counted and you will go over every single vote.

There's just no way to conduct that in a highly party, an atmosphere, without raising massive distrust on whatever side loses. And that's what was going on in florida, as people are holding up ballots to see what they use punch card, to see whether or not a punch card with two pieces of the four corners of the chat. If is that counter not count that that showing in ten or not know.

Is the dimple on the chat sufficiently strong that we can infer and inter. No other country in the world would do this, but we do. And that means inherently recounts are subject to partisan interpretation.

fantastic. That's all we need in this country.

And the temptation is huge. Imagine if your, the person who is judging that you may be the most non partisan person in the world, but temptation, if you have strong feelings about the election, to infer even nearly. We hear a lot about hidden bias or unconscious bias.

A gosh, unconscious bias will come out in space in this election. Now is is the mark that has two thirds of the oval fill, but a little bit outside. Do I think that's an intent or not an intent? God, yeah.

I think same Thomas, a quintius and confucious would find this difficult. And I think Normal clerks in marathon county or so your county might find IT involving able. I know what podcast .

i'll be listening to. If that happens, it's called beyond polls because we will quite literally be beyond the post at that point and IT will all be in the counter as hands for people. Again, that didn't hear the entire of that henriot's on's phenomenal podcast.

So Henry, one of the other things we talked about at the dinner, which was about the impact of the election on the economy, national security, was trumps economic policies. And two, the most important ones are on immigration, specifically this idea that are not just stopping further immigration, legal immigration across the border, but actually mass deportations and also turfs. Let's luck go about immigration first.

What do we actually know? I mean, there's been a lot of signaling, a lot of different comments made. It's unclear. Most people are really unable to assess what trump is going to do when he is in office. So if he is in office, so if he were to be elected, what would that mean for immigration and for mass deportations? Of what can we infer from his statements?

Yeah, well, we can infer that he will be serious about shutting the order. All the biden era executive orders that allowed for people to be admitted in a prevision way pending in asylum repeal will be repealed as quickly as possible. Trump will deploy additional resources to ensure that more of the border will be the pretty rolled more adequately.

So we can expect the flow across the border to maybe not flow to a turtle, but dramatically drop. But as far as deportations are concerned, we don't know well, we can enforce that. They will come up with a serious executable plan to do as much as possible.

And beyond that, we can't know they haven't publish a specific plan. They probably been working on one. But I think what we can infer as a serious intent to devote resources, time and attention to IT, but we can't know its scope until after he's elective.

So what about terrace? Trump, as I think, suggested or stated that he wants to impose ten percent across the board terrace and sixty percent on china. Any idea sort of how serious he is on that, who his transition team in, is that we can infer.

I think he's completely serious. He certainly has many people in his orbit who are knowledgeable about this topic and are one hundred percent behind him. You know, it'll be interesting.

The president's ability to set tariff depends on a couple of laws that delegate him, the ability to do that either for national security reasons or for competitive impact reasons, which is to say finding that the nation who is being punished engaged in dumping of goods or services below cost and the tariff can then be justified. All of these things are litigated in court. You should expect those to be litigated.

You are particularly like it's one thing to say the president is saying that a country that is generally opposed to us and foreign policy and is recognizes the only military threat to the world, there's a national security threat to allowing them to dominate the economy. The reason bring a reason of arms witchland. We should put a ten percent tariff on switzerland for national security reasons.

I think there is a real problem, possibility that even the supreme court would say, you know, hey, you know, we on did joe violence environmental policy saying that these were an overreach? This is what congress should decide. Yeah, despite what democratic partisans say about the court. The fact is, the six republican appointed disagree on a lot.

And you see IT come out the cases, but they are united on the idea that the constitution has been several over the last under the years, by reducing the role of congress and making the policy decisions and laws that actually effect americans, and that giving that authority to unelected or indirectly elected bodies in the executive branch needs to be curb and reduced. I would expect a six member majority to apply that to donal trump. I don't think trump expect IT, but I do.

And so the question is, how much of this will actually. Will be sustained absent congressional approval. And then the third thing i'd say is, yes, trump has always been in favour of cafs.

That's one of the few consistencies over his forty years of public comments on politics. But trump is also in favor of leverage. Trump likes to find something that causes his negotiating partner pain. So he has something to give up in order to get something in return.

And the example of that is mexico and immigration, that in twenty eighteen or twenty nine, there were lots of people come across the border and the president mexico didn't want to use mexican troops to stop people who had to transit mexico in order to cause the border from getting to the american border. And trump, sit, please do this and he said, no and so trump s said, okay, we'll i'll violate u sc. a.

And levy at ten percent tariff on goods cosi mexico. Well within ten days, president mexico change his mind and the terrorist or reduced, and the mexican troops started to interdict people before the border, IT was leverage. So i've telling european and diplomats, yeah, he might do that.

What does he want from you? You know, that is in front for trump. You most politicians form long term relationship for trumpets.

All transaction, all transactional. He does one off. He does deal. He doesn't build relationships. And so once you realize that the question is okay, we're not gonna a long term relationship with Donald trip. What we're going to do is do individual deals and comprehensive framework. So i've been telling european diplomat jah expect into levy chairs and then gave him something that he wants to get a return. What do you think he wants that you're willing to give him deal?

So hendering, what do you do after, let's say, the election day comes and goes? We know who the president is, old girl. How is beyond the polls, begin to focus its attention? Where do you, as henriot, you know, focus your attention. What are you be good to be doing in the day's afterwards?

Yeah, well beyond the polls will focus .

you take a big vacation.

Well, i'm onna. Go to muni E. I was invited after the election to talk to germans about the elections. We'll be there for week, and then thanksgiving week will be on a pure vacation in south america.

But beyond the polls will pave IT to having people talk about the divisions within the parties, the out party. It'll be more of a civil war discussion, you know and because obviously that's what either out party is going to be going through. The in party will be talking about how do you manage the factions underneath being able to set the agenda.

And then we will be doing a data base, look at various issues you are talking about, issue polling as opposed to candidate polling. But then once we get to twenty twenty six amid terms will start coming up, they'll be a couple of state elections in twenty twenty five. I will talk about new ujo, sey and Virginia, maybe mississippi.

I think mississip is coming up in twenty twenty five. Probably not, but depends. So I will have a month or five weeks where we're concentrate on two states that are having important elections.

And then but then in twenty twenty six, start shifting to the mid terms. And there's always interesting international elections. So I would expect the german elections will be next year.

I expect it'll do something on the german elections because that's so important. Canada, I might do because there are bored neighbor and and IT looks like if the pollard to be believed, theyll be a historic Victory for the right in canada. That's worth episode or to, but that's where the polls will be going. I would like to write a book and in december all start putting that proposal together. And I won't talk about IT yet, but I will start putting my proposal together and shopping IT to publishers and see what transpires in the I am so .

excited to keep falling you I was so impressed, and I spoke to my members about this. I was like, Henry also is what happens when you take someone who who's like a hybrid e very smart. And you you give him more than forty years of, just like focusing and obsessing on a particular topic, knowledge of politics.

He goes beyond the united states. I was so impressed. We spoke about at the dinner, we spoke about greek political coalitions and greek politics.

And you're understanding of that was just, just so surprising. We talk about argentina. We talked about germany.

So I highly recommend your podcast on this podcast and when I speak with people. So everyone should go check IT out again. Thank you so much. This is really wonderful.

Thank you every back to my dream.

If you want to listen in on the rest of the s conversation, head over to hidden forces that I O slash subscribe, join our premium feed. If you want to join in on the conversation and become a member of the hidden forces genius community, you can also do that through our described page. Today's episode was produced by me and edited by Steven osc law. For more episodes, you can check out our website at hidden forces that I O you can follow me on twitter at cov, and you can email me at info at hidden forces that I O as always, thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.