Monday Morning Politics: Election Day Ahead
( JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP / Getty Images )
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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. On the day before election day, fasten your seatbelts. On this final weekend of campaigning before election day, both presidential candidates were flashing their senses of humor. Did you see that Kamala Harris was on Saturday Night Live? She did a sketch with Maya Rudolph, who usually plays Kamala on SNL. Rudolph does such an amazing job, if you haven't seen her, of looking and sounding like the real thing, that it was hilarious just to even see them up there side by side.
The construct was two Kamalas at first looking in the mirror having a conversation with each other. In case you can't tell, in this clip, Maya Rudolph's Kamala speaks first.
Maya Rudolph: It's nice to see you, Kamala.
Kamala Harris: It is nice to see you, Kamala. I'm just here to remind you, you got this, because you can do something your opponent cannot do. You can open doors.
Maya Rudolph: I see what you did there. Like to a garbage truck, right?
Kamala Harris: I don't really laugh like that, do I?
Maya Rudolph: A little bit. Now, Kamala, take my palmala. The American people want to stop the chaos-
Kamala Harris: - and end the dramala-
Maya Rudolph: - with a cool new stepmomala. Kick back in our pajamalas and watch a romcomala-
Kamala Harris: - like Legally Blondala-
Maya Rudolph: - and start decorating for Christmas, falalalala, because what do we always say? Keep calmala and carry onala.
Kamala Harris: Keep calmala and carry onala.
Brian Lehrer: Kamala Harris with her sense of humor playing herself on Saturday Night Live with her sort of doppelganger Maya Rudolph. Donald Trump's sense of humor was on display too. A little different vibe, you might say, as he joked about what a would be assassin might do, and it's okay with him.
Donald Trump: I have this piece of glass here, but all we have really over here is the fake news, right? To get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news, and I don't mind that so much because--
Brian Lehrer: Yes, and you hear all the laughter there, right? Donald Trump and Kamala Harris getting laughs this weekend in very different ways. Meanwhile, early voting has now ended after shattering early turnout records just about everywhere. What can we learn from who showed up in the swing states There are some last polls, including a shocker from somewhere in the Midwest that we'll talk about.
With us first as we board the election week roller coaster is Susan Page, Washington bureau chief for USA Today and also author of bestselling books, including her latest, The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters, and previously Madam Speaker: Nancy Pelosi and the Lessons of Power and The Matriarch: Barbara Bush and the Making of an American Dynasty. Among other things, Susan has an article on the historic gender gap that's defining this election. We'll talk a lot about that and invite your calls on that in a few minutes.
Susan, we always appreciate your appearances on this show and especially today when we know you're slammed with your own team's coverage. Welcome back to WNYC.
Susan Page: Hey, Brian, it's always a pleasure to be with you, but I want to know, have you voted yet?
Brian Lehrer: Yes.
Susan Page: Me too. I mail voted.
Brian Lehrer: I mail voted as well. That means we're on Trump's fraud train, right?
Susan Page: [laughs] Well, that's according still to Donald Trump, who's very suspicious of mail-in voting, but not of the Republican Party, which is now all for it and has made some real gains in getting Republicans to vote early.
Brian Lehrer: Yes, and we'll come back to that in a little bit and who the data, and there is some data, is showing us did actually vote early in these record turnouts in many states.
Before we get too far from those clips, the assassination attempts against former President Trump were obviously very real and it's a very serious thing, but when he continually calls journalists covering his campaign the enemy of the people and now makes this "joke" about it being okay with him if assassins shoot at them and people laugh, do you at USA Today or other news organizations that you know take special security precautions when sending people out to cover Trump rallies in the environment he's created?
Susan Page: Yes, we handle things differently now than we did in campaigns before 2016, before the first Trump campaign. We're careful to keep our reporters and photographers safe. We do training, security training. We often send people out in pairs instead of alone. Yes, there are ways in which we cover this election differently because of the consistent threats against journalists.
Brian Lehrer: I see that after the Harris Saturday Night Live appearance, NBC was asked to give some kind of equal time to Trump, and they did, right. Did you see that?
Susan Page: No. Tell me.
Brian Lehrer: I would have to look up the specifics. I think they gave Trump some time on a broadcast of a NASCAR event, and one other thing. I'll get that specific as we go. Politically, I hear two conflicting analyses of Trump continuing to say violent and hateful things like that. He called Democrats demonic in that same speech in Pennsylvania. He uses profanity a lot now. One analysis is that his campaign handlers don't like this and think he's turning off potential swing voters who could be drawn to him based on his policies if he would only stick to them and not turn people off to his personality.
The other is that this is part of his appeal. This is his get out the vote strategy rather than knocking on a lot of doors, which the Democrats seem to be primed to do much more, that enough people, especially low propensity voters, non-college educated white men, could be turned on by all that, more than turned off, and it's a feature, not a bug. Does your reporting indicate one or another?
Susan Page: I think both things are true. I think Trump, who is a brilliant, instinctive politician, knows that part of his appeal to his core supporters is the fact that he is what he would call politically incorrect about things like his descriptions of his opponents and threats against the news media and his grievances generally. If you look at where his campaign has spent their money on ads, it is not on that. It is on focusing on the economy and immigration and trying to make the case that Vice President Harris is responsible for whatever people are unhappy about with the current administration. I think both things are true.
Brian Lehrer: Yes. Here's that-- From elsewhere in USA Today, it says in the notice filed Sunday, NBC said Harris appeared "without charge" on SNL. For 1 minute and 30 seconds, the broadcaster provided Trump airtime Sunday. CNN's Brian Seltzer reported giving the former president an opportunity to directly address viewers during the NASCAR 2024 cup playoff race. There's what happened there, just for the record. You have an-- [crosstalk]
Susan Page: Brian, I'm so pleased-
Brian Lehrer: Go ahead.
Susan Page: - you're reading USAToday.com more carefully than I am and finding this news I didn't know. Thank you.
Brian Lehrer: Yes, well, it comes from another desk, so it's understandable. I don't know everything that happens on every show on WNYC. You have an analysis in USA Today about the historic gender gap between men and women, if the polls have it anything close to right. Let me set this up with a clip and again refer back to the kind of vibe team Trump is putting out there. Everyone's heard about the comedian at his Madison Square Garden rally last week who called Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage.
Less covered is that another speaker referred to Harris advisors as pimp handlers, and even Trump supporter Nikki Haley felt compelled to criticize that in an interview after the rally on CNN. Here's that.
Nikki Haley: They also need to look at how they're talking about women. I mean, this bromance and this masculinity stuff, I mean, it borders on edgy to the point that it's going to make women uncomfortable. You've got affiliated PACs that are doing commercials about calling Kamala the C word, or you had speakers at Madison Square Gardens referring to her and her pimps. That is not the way to win women.
Brian Lehrer: "That is not the way to win women," said Nikki Haley on CNN. Susan, is there an explicit bromance strategy, I think she called it here, that is willing to sacrifice many women's votes in pursuit of potentially more men's votes?
Susan Page: Yes. I mean, one thing to remember about the gender gap is it doesn't necessarily favor one side or the other. For every disparity that gives Harris votes of more women, the Trump people look at the votes they're getting among more men. This gender gap is really astonishing at this point. There are different ways to calculate the gender gap, but if you calculate it as disparity between the votes of men and women to the winning candidate, which is one way to calculate it, the record was last time around 12 points in 2020.
In our final pre-election national poll, the gender gap was 16 or 17 points. We've just never seen a disparity like that before. There's just huge repercussions to this divide in the American electorate. Just one other thing. We've also found for the first time a smallish gender gap among Black voters and a very big gender gap among Latino voters. Those are both things to watch for this year.
Brian Lehrer: I see that stat. In your poll among Latino voters in Arizona, for example, obviously an important swing state, Latinas supporting Harris by an overwhelming 40-point margin while Latino men were split about 50/50. I mean, that's such a gender gap in that group. How do you explain it if it's true?
Susan Page: Well, I think we're seeing changes in the political impact of race and ethnicity where, for a long time, Democrats have counted on voters of color to side with them because race and ethnicity was the defining element, the defining factor in their vote. That no longer seems to be true, especially for men. We see men by levels of education, by class, their economic class, behaving like white men in being drawn to the Republican Party.
Now, you can think that's a difficulty for the Democratic Party. Maybe you could also look at that as maybe being good for our politics to not have race and ethnicity be the defining factor for a whole group of voters. Anyway, this is the first year we've seen this happen in a really big way.
Brian Lehrer: Right. Although, of course, we should say the polls are just polls before the one that really counts. There are people who are definitely casting doubt on these men of color statistics trending more toward Trump. We'll see how it actually turns out tomorrow. I mean, another way to look at this is that we still should really be talking about race here more than gender.
I don't know if you saw the analysis in the New York Times this weekend, which reminds us that Black women voted about 90% for Biden and then Hillary Clinton before him, while Trump himself won white women overall against Clinton and white non-college educated women over Biden. I'm going to say that again because I fumbled it so badly. Black women voted about 90% for Biden and Hillary Clinton, while Trump won white women overall against Clinton and white non-college educated women over Biden.
These gaps are also 40 points, not 17, which is the gender gap that you're showing nationally in your poll. Maybe the even more crucial factor than gender per se is what white women do this year. Could that be?
Susan Page: Yes, and there are a lot of white women, so it's a really significant voting blank, and it's one that's been swinging some. Trump won white women last time out. In some polls, Harris is leading among white women, especially among college educated white women and white women in suburbs. Now, some of these are probably Nikki Haley voters who, as Nikki Haley warned in the clip that you showed, have been put off by Donald Trump's rhetoric and some of his policies. They are in play, but white non-college educated women continue to be trending, I think, toward Trump.
There's not one thing about someone's characteristics that define how they vote, but there are a couple things that have turned out to be really important divides. Race is one and gender is one, and education has turned out to be increasingly powerful.
Brian Lehrer: Yes. By the way, what do you make of Nikki Haley going on CNN unlike almost any other Republican and being willing to explicitly criticize Trump in the clip that we heard for his gendered appeal? Then, she published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend endorsing Trump with the headline, Trump isn't perfect, but he's the better choice. Obviously, anything that's being misogynist or however we would characterize it is not disqualifying to Nikki Haley. Maybe this is just her way of launching her 2028 presidential campaign, playing both sides of the Republican spectrum and the centrist spectrum.
Susan Page: That sounds very political, Brian, that description of what she might be doing. She does seem to have a foot in each camp. She's an ambitious political figure. We think she would like to run for president again. Maybe this is part of that calculation. The other interesting calculation I think about Nikki Haley is a traditional candidate, which Donald Trump has not, would have chosen Nikki Haley as his running mate because she was his strongest challenger and she opened doors to voters that he wasn't appealing to.
He didn't put her on his ticket. That's not any surprise. She's volunteered to campaign for him and he has not utilized her in that way. After we get past election day and we're looking backwards and seeing why did this person win and this person lose, if Donald Trump loses, that's going to be one of the factors that we'll be looking at.
Brian Lehrer: Listeners, our phones are open on this morning before the election day, especially on the issue of the gender gap in the presidential race. Help us report this story. Are you seeing a difference in who the men and women you personally know support? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Oh, I'm seeing a correction here, by the way, about that Nikki Haley clip. I attributed it to CNN. Apparently, that was actually on FOX. I had a clip of CNN replaying it. My apologies. That was a FOX News appearance by Nikki Haley, to give credit where credit is due.
Listeners, back to the listener question. Are you seeing a difference in who the men and women you personally know support, and is it different than in past years? White women, Black women, Latino women, Asian women, and men. Call in 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or text. Is it even in your own home, perhaps, folks? Anyone listening now voting differently from your husband or differently from your wife if you're in a heterosexual marriage, is that different from past elections for you as a couple?
There's even been reporting, and Susan, I'll get your take on if you have any indication if this is real, about stealth Harris voters within households, women who won't tell their husbands that they're voting for Harris and therefore maybe won't tell pollsters either. There's speculation that pollsters have overcorrected for their errors in the past two elections that undercounted Trump voters. That happened. Maybe this year, the theory goes, their new mathematical models are undercounting Harris voters by overcompensating for their errors in the past.
One reason might be women keeping their heads down but planning to vote for Harris not wanting their husbands to find out maybe happening to a meaningful degree or it may not. There's talk of this as a potential factor. Listeners, know anybody like this or call in and talk about anyone you know.in the context of a gender gap or for that matter, the racial gender gap among women voters? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Help us report the story of the race and gender gap.
Susan, have you heard that theory about stealth Harris voters who don't even want to tell their husbands and how that might even be affecting inaccuracies in poll results?
Susan Page: Well, it can be a factor. You look at the response rates among different kinds of voters, and there are some signs that Democrats are more likely to respond to polls than Republicans are. We thought in 2016 that there might be a stealth Trump vote, that there might be voters who were going to support Trump but didn't want to say so. I guess it's possible we're seeing that now with women. One of things now, in an election that's s close, every vote counts if you're in one of seven states.
I've seen stories about efforts in public bathrooms, in women's bathrooms to post notes that say, "Hey, women, you don't need to tell anybody who you're voting for." This is an attempt, I think, to appeal to women who have partners, who are men, who are Trump voters, and don't want them to find out they're voting for Harris. I have no idea how far reaching this is, but it's a tactic we have not seen before.
Brian Lehrer: Very interesting. We have a caller on this who is an elected official and may have an interesting take. I'm going to take that call first. This is Lori in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, but I should call her Mayor Lori in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey. Do we have her line ready? Mayor Lori, you're
on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.
Mayor Lori Hohenleitner: Hi, Brian. I was trying to be a little stealth, but they figured me out. I just got back from Butler, Pennsylvania, where I spent the weekend trying to help some folks turn out voters. I have to say it's really inspiring and impressive. The host family that hosted me my first night actually was doing that postit campaign you were just talking about. I hadn't heard of it before, but here was someone who was actually doing it. It's really the older white women, well, older all women, and the young women that are just--
I mean, I can't tell you the operation I saw out in Butler County. It's an amazing operation and it's women powered.
Brian Lehrer: Could you tell at all if it seemed different from 2020 or 2016 in the way these older women that you're talking about were planning to show up for Harris?
Mayor Lori Hohenleitner: I mean, we've had different elections in the last few years, and 2020 was a really different election. I've never seen so many canvassers on location coming and showing up. They have full shifts today all day long and they don't have in [unintelligible 00:22:05] voting there. They're tracking the vote by mail, and it's incredible. I've never seen this before and I've been canvassing since I think John Kerry.
Brian Lehrer: Interesting. All right. Mayor Lori Hohenleitner, to get your full name out there, so I don't just call you Mayor Lori for the rest of your life. Thank you very much for checking in. We really appreciate it. Feel free to call us again. Susan, any reaction to that?
Susan Page: My reaction is that you have a really elite listening audience, Brian.
Brian Lehrer: We have an upscale listening audience. We have a downscale listening audience. We have everything in between.
Susan Page: You got mayors listening in the middle of the day and calling in, and I think that is a sign of your sweep.
Brian Lehrer: Well, we'll take that as a compliment. I want to ask you about these last-minute polls that are coming out. A lot of news organizations and other polling companies put out the last polls that they have on the weekend before election day, and in general, there's not much that we can tell from these I think. For example, the final New York Times Sienna Poll from the swing states have Trump +4 in Arizona. The final Focaldata MRP poll, which is reported side by side with the Times Sienna poll on Politico, while the Times has Trump +4 in Arizona, Focaldata has Harris +1.
While the the Focaldata poll has Trump +3 in North Carolina, the Times poll has Harris +3 in North Carolina. At this point, we don't report much on polls on this show anyway, but at this point, you throw up your hands and you say we just have to start watching tomorrow night. Right?
Susan Page: It's a tie. Nationally and in these seven swing states, neither candidate has a lead outside the margin of error. This is a coin toss election, and we've never had this before. We've had elections where the polls have been wrong, like in 2016 when they said that Hillary Clinton was going to win, but we've never had jump ball polls up to the day of election. This is really extraordinary, and what it means is that either one could win.
Brian Lehrer: Yes. There is one poll that's being reported as a shocker from over the weekend, and it's the final Des Moines Register Poll, which is a very respected poll out of Iowa, obviously, and Harris is up by a few points in that poll in what is generally not considered a swing state. You were praising the sweep of what we have on this show. We were on this story in September. We had the Des Moines Register pollster Ann Selzer on the show when she first started to notice a big swing away from Trump toward Harris once Biden dropped out and Harris got into the race.
Here's a short clip of me asking Ann Selzer a question about her Des Moines Register poll in mid-September and her response. Ann Selzer, I saw you on TV last week saying your jaw dropped looking at the difference between your poll results for the Des Moines Register in June compared to just recently. Would you tell us that story?
Ann Selzer: That story is I don't drop my jaw very often. Let me just say that at the outset, Brian. In June, when we had polled the Iowa electorate, we found an 18-point margin for former President Donald Trump, and you might think 18 points might drop your job, but Iowa has been pretty beet red for a few election cycles. In our most recent poll in September, and keep in mind June, a very different time politically from September, September, Trump's lead had dropped to four points. Only four points. Not just single digits, low single digits.
Brian Lehrer: Des Moines Register pollster Ann Selzer back in September. Is Iowa a bellwether for anything, Susan Page?
Susan Page: How great that you were on this story before other people were. I should mention that the Des Moines Register is part of the USA Today network, so it's one of our papers. The idea that Kamala Harris will carry Iowa seems quite unlikely. If she carries Iowa, she's won easily. Iowa will not be part of a coalition that gets only to 270 electoral votes. That's one reason people don't think that Trump is in fact in danger in Iowa.
This poll is so interesting because the reason you see this astounding three-point lead for Harris is because of the movement of women and especially older women and including rural women, so it very much fits into what we were talking about earlier in this hour about the importance of the gender gap and what we see happening here. I mean, this was probably an outlier-- the Trump campaign dismisses as an outlier. The one reason people take it really seriously is because Ann Selzer is an incredibly respected pollster, and no one knows Iowa better than Ann Selzer does.
We'll see what this means. This has been really a last-minute boost for Democrats who are activist Democrats who are very nervous about this election. The idea that you see this swing in a state that has some characteristics that are like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, [unintelligible 00:28:18] states that we do think are going to be crucial swing states.
Brian Lehrer: On the gender question and the stealth voting question, some interesting texts coming in. Listener writes, "Divided household. I'm a Democrat. It's really tough because I clearly cannot discuss my thoughts, frustrations with the man I am married to. I do not discuss politics at work. Too risky. Since I live in Suffolk County, I dare not bring up politics with neighbors." That's a generally Republican county, eastern Long Island, for those who don't know.
Susan Page: My first job was in Suffolk county, the Suffolk county-
Brian Lehrer: Oh yes?
Susan Page: -edition of Newsday. Yes, I worked in the Ronkonkoma bureau. I know Suffolk county really well.
Brian Lehrer: There you go. The listener concludes this text writing, "Ends up feeling very lonely with this important election. If Kamala loses, I'll mourn alone. If she wins, I'll quietly celebrate alone." Another one listener writes, "What you're missing is men who don't tell their wives they're voting for Trump because their wives would kill them. I told this to my wife and she laughed," this listener writes, "because she probably would kill me."
One more listener writes, "I've noticed older white men who voted for Trump in past elections appear to be ashamed of voting for Trump again." An interesting smattering, Susan, right?
Susan Page: Yes, and look forward to Thanksgiving this year, right?
Brian Lehrer: Oh, boy. If the election is decided by then.
Susan Page: Yes, it'll be decided by then.
Brian Lehrer: We'll continue with Susan Page in a minute and more of your calls and texts. Stay with us.
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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC with Susan Page, Washington bureau chief for USA Today, author of books, including her latest, The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters. We're talking largely about her article in USA Today on the historic gender gap that's defining this election. We have some more really interesting calls coming in on that, so let's take Warren in Philadelphia next. Warren, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.
Warren: Hi, Brian. Thanks for hosting the show. Yes, just two quick anecdotes. I was door knocking in Bucks County, which is a purple county outside of Philadelphia last weekend, and among the small handful of traditionally Republican leaning doors that I knocked on, people that I talked to, there's a lot of women who were going to vote for Kamala who traditionally vote for Republicans on behalf of their daughters and because of Trump's and the Republican Party's perspective on women's rights and reproductive rights in particular.
A second anecdote within my own family, my brother in law traditionally votes for Republicans, my sister for Democrats, but this year he decided to not vote for anyone. He didn't like Kamala, but he felt like on behalf of his daughter, my niece, he couldn't vote for Trump.
Brian Lehrer: You got the sense that some of those women who were answering the door in Bucks County had voted for Trump in the past but would vote for Harris, that these were change voters?
Warren: Yes. In fact, many said, "Next election cycle, we're going to go back to the Republican ticket. We-
Brian Lehrer: Wow.
Warren: - just can't do it this year." Only a handful, but a few different doors said it.
Brian Lehrer: Anecdotal evidence from Warren in Philadelphia. On this idea of women stealthily voting for Harrison, can't even tell their husbands, Mendez in Milwaukee, you're on WNYC. Hi, Mendez.
Mendez: Hi. Good morning, Brian. This is Mendez from Milwaukee. Actually, I don't live in Milwaukee. I'm in Jersey City.
Brian Lehrer: Okay.
Mendez: I'm [unintelligible 00:31:55] door knocking here in Milwaukee for the Harris campaign. I was telling your screener that it's fascinating to me, really. I would knock on a door, and I've done [unintelligible 00:32:08] Milwaukee Black neighborhoods, white, middle class, but especially in white neighborhoods where I would knock on the door, the lady would answer the door, or the husband. There are times, and this is really factual, I can agree with the survey where I had women, white women would give me a little look like, yes, thumbs up, and Harris.
The husband-- You can feel the unease, the fact the wife is totally in for Harris and the husband would say, "Well, I'm not sure I'm voting for." It's fascinating really, because it's not just one or two incidents because I've been here in Milwaukee for two weeks. I was in Atlanta for two weeks prior to that. Yes, it is factual. White women are comfortable telling their spouses, their husbands that they are totally in for Kamala. By the way, Susan Page, I love her work. I've read her stuff, and she's brilliant. I had to say that I'm a big fan.
Susan Page: Thank you very much, Mendez.
Brian Lehrer: Mendez, thank you very much for your call. Fascinating. Again, it's anecdotal, right? Not a scientific survey, but reports from the field.
Susan Page: Well, reports from the field, that's the best place you can be right now. Whatever we're going to learn from polls, we've already learned, right? Ignore that. Who has already voted? What are people saying when you go door to door? How enthusiastic are the people that you're talking to? I mean, those are the things that will determine an election that is as close as this one seems to be.
Brian Lehrer: Yes. We're talking about the gender gap in the presidential race. And by the way, folks, hope you remember to turn your clocks back one hour on Saturday night. We played the clips of Harris and Trump telling jokes at different appearances over the weekend. Jimmy Kimmel had a joke about the new line of Donald Trump watches being set back. Kimmel said Trump's watches come in men's and women's models. For the women, they set the clock back 50 years. Hahaha, and that's Jimmy Kimmel's politics. Susan, it is reflected a little bit in the callers that we're hearing today.
Susan Page: Well, remember this is the first presidential election since the protections of Roe v. Wade were overturned. Since then, we've seen abortion rights be a really powerful issue in the last midterm elections, and some Democrats think that it's being underestimated as an issue in this one. We've got abortion on the ballot in 10 states, and even in states including New York, and even in states that don't have abortion measures on the ballot, we're going to be watching to see if it prompts more women to turn out and for more women to turn out for Democrats than we've seen in the past because of that issue.
In our national poll, the number one issue for men and women, both sides, was the economy, but the big number two issue for women was abortion rights, and that was not an issue that resonated with men in our poll.
Brian Lehrer: Do you see Kamala Harris trying to cultivate the gender gap among women as explicitly as Trump is trying to cultivate the gender gap among men? We talked earlier about how Trump seems willing to sacrifice a good number of women's votes in order to try to really pump the turnout among men who have traditional male role based grievance. Do you think Harris is doing a similar thing among women? Explicitly, like being willing to turn off men in some respects, hoping that the female gender gap is just bigger than the male one, and women turn out generally a little more than men.
Susan Page: A fundamental part of Harris' strategy, and in some contrast to Joe Biden. Biden, a devout Catholic, never felt, I think, comfortable saying the word abortion. He had a complicated history when it came to abortion rights. That's not the case with Kamala Harris. She is very comfortable talking about this issue in a way that is really direct with women who have experiences for themselves and their family and with their friends when it comes to reproductive rights.
Although you also see Harris making some appeals designed to be reassuring to men voters. When she says that she has a Glock at home, I think that may be aimed more at male voters than female ones.
Brian Lehrer: Yes. I've seen reporting about the competition for the bro vote, and one of the little indications of that is that they're making Harris [unintelligible 00:37:27] camo baseball caps.
Susan Page: Yes. Yes. It's like you think, "What difference could that make?" Then, you think, "Gee, in Pennsylvania, maybe it'll do whatever it takes to get a few more votes there," as Warren is doing going door to door.
Brian Lehrer: More stories from callers. Boy, they just keep coming in. Cheryl, in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. Hi, Cheryl.
Cheryl: Hello. I'm taking it off speakerphone.
Brian Lehrer: Thank you.
Cheryl: Yes, I did call in.
Brian Lehrer: Yes, you did, so you tell us why.
Cheryl: Okay. I'm a retired librarian, public library, and my husband's a retired school teacher, New York City. We both have been voting Democrat for a long, long time, and yet in my own family, my older brother would be considered blue collar worker, retired, blue-collar work all his life, sometimes in civil service positions. Definitely has been voting Republican all his life also, voting life. The gender gap is really serious to me, this year in particular. I actually feel intimidated in many situations.
That's our background.
Brian Lehrer: What do you mean, intimidated? In what kinds of circumstances and how?
Cheryl: I feel reluctant to be very verbal or put up signs or wear a button because I'm afraid of retaliation.
Brian Lehrer: Cheryl, thank you very much for calling and telling us your story, and stay safe out there. Ann, in Westchester, you're on WNYC. Hi, Ann.
Ann: Hi, Brian. I'm in Westchester, and I campaigned here in Sleepy Hollow on Saturday, and on Sunday, I went to Hazel Township in Lucerne County, Pennsylvania. I've been in Pennsylvania probably six or seven times so far. I didn't really see a gender gap. Hazel Township has lots and lots of Trump signs. I don't think I saw a single Harris sign until one of the people we canvassed took one. Most of the people whose doors we knocked on, we didn't knock where there was a Trump sign, I think we maybe did that once, but we mostly didn't, they just were afraid to--
It struck me, it wasn't a gender gap. It struck me that they were afraid to announce their voting intentions publicly. We got a number of thumbs up, which was heartening on a very disheartening walk around town. One guy, a Puerto Rican guy, took a sign and said he was not afraid and he would proudly display it. In Sleepy Hollow, where I was sent to canvass among a largely Latino community, I was really surprised, and this is for Mondaire Jones and the Democrats and also Prop 1. I was really surprised-- [crosstalk]
Brian Lehrer: The Republican freshman, Mike Lawler, is the Republican incumbent there. Go ahead.
Ann: Correct. Correct. I was surprised that I had people who said they weren't voting. I mean, not a lot. I mean, you know, you get sent out for an afternoon, and I must have hit maybe 30 or something doors. First House, "I'm not voting." "No, it's not of interest to me." The guy who was there in the household said he was just going to trust in God, but I had others. I had a school teacher from Ecuador who said she was undecided. I was just kind of flabbergasted.
I think that what I understood, if I'm correct, is that it's the economy that caught-- Not that anyone thinks anything much of Trump, but that they feel just burdened by how expensive everything is. And so I don't know how you could say undecided, but I just think that's what it was. I could be wrong. Thoroughly unscientific, as you say, but that's my assessment.
Brian Lehrer: Interesting.
Ann: It was surprising because it wasn't gender, it was the immigrants that I thought would go for Kamala for sure. Then, I was surprisingly pleased in Luzerne, a seemingly red county, to find not overwhelming support, but quiet support. Yes.
Brian Lehrer: Funny enough, I was in Sleepy Hollow yesterday. I was on a hike north of the Tappan Zee Bridge, Tarrytown, Sleepy Hollow, Phillips Manor, and I was surprised when I was in the residential neighborhoods on that walk to see a lot of Mondaire Jones signs and a lot of Trump Lawler signs because traditionally I think it even pertained in Westchester, what you were just describing in Pennsylvania, that people put out the Trump signs, but they're afraid to put out the Harris signs. I saw a lot of both in your neck of the woods. Is that your experience?
Ann: Not exactly. Sleepy Hollow, where I was knocking on doors, these were multifamily dwellings. These were apartments, so there wasn't really an opportunity for signs. I did have to drive from picking up my list and I saw quite a few Lawler signs. The thing is, Lawler is an expert at retail politics. He said on your show. You asked him how he won. He said, "I went to seven or eight events a day." He gets out the vote. He does a lot of other things, but he knows how to connect with voters.
I think that is in part why there were so many Lawler signs. I didn't see as many Trump signs when I was driving from whatever it was, Mount Pleasant to Sleepy Hollow. In Sleepy Hollow, they weren't going to be able to put out signs really, but I don't think they would have. I mean, where I was, the apartments off of Main Street.
Brian Lehrer: Interesting.
Ann: In Luzerne, I think it was fear that you just keep it quiet. You do what you want to do. I didn't hit a single household where a woman was giving me the thumbs up and a man the thumbs down. I mean, it could have been, but they don't send us to known Republicans, known Trump supporters. They send us to undecided or Democrats, or unaffiliated. Anyway, that's, that's my two cents.
Brian Lehrer: Ann, thanks for checking in, and I love hiking the Croton Aqueduct up there, by the way. You're lucky to have that near you.
Ann: I will tell you people, you should get out there and canvas for the next day. You can enjoy beautiful foliage, so it's worth it just for that. Anyway, thanks, Brian.
Brian Lehrer: I can vouch for the foliage. Ann, thank you very much. Susan Page from USA Today, Ann raises an issue that I've been talking about a lot, and that is the question of whether Harris is selling her to-do list sufficiently to particularly Latino voters and particularly Latino men. She was talking about I think a woman in particular in the story that she told originally from Ecuador, but a lot of people who like the caller was just describing that one, don't like Trump, but they want to hear about the cost of living and who has better plans.
The question becomes, when Harris is out there saying Trump has his enemy list, I have my to-do list, is she communicating clearly enough and just with enough frequency what's on her to-do list and why she thinks she's going to be better for the cost of living for Trump? Because that seems to be where a lot of these low propensity voters, people who may not turn out at all, including disproportionately Latinos, from what I've read, but a lot of other people too who are still undecided.
Susan Page: Yes. Well, this has been a criticism of Harris' campaign, that she has not done enough to be specific to tell people what she would do for them if she got elected. There's been a debate in her campaign about the balance between talking about Trump as a threat and talking about what you would do if you were elected. The whole line about he'll have an enemy's list or have a to-do list, that is of recent vintage and reflects, I think, some of the concern in her camp that she has not done enough of that.
I mentioned our last national pre-election poll. We said, do you know enough about what Harris would do? Going directly to this point, 57% of the people in our poll said, "No, I don't know enough about what she would do," and that included one out of four people who are voting for her, people who supported her. Clearly, I think it is clear that she has not done enough to make people feel comfortable about what she would do, and she's also, I think, failed to address directly issues on which she seems to have changed position since her 2019 campaign for president.
We talked about the benefit of hindsight once we have a result. If Harris loses, I think that'll be a point that's made that she should have done a better job at. I think you do see her doing more of that now.
Brian Lehrer: Definitely.
Susan Page: Her rally speech last night, she didn't talk about Trump, she did not mention Trump's name. She talked entirely about her message and what she would do.
Brian Lehrer: Before you go, real quick, anything from the early voting data in any swing state that you think might be indicative, forget about the newspaper and other opinion polls? I've seen speculation that big early voting turnout, which we've had in all the swing states, favors Harris because historically, it's more Democrats who use early voting. I've seen in some, places parts of Georgia, for example, Republican registration voters were more numerous certainly than in the past and maybe even than registered Democrats, so I don't know.
Are your number crunchers telling you anything that they can glean from the data that is made publicly available from the early voters?
Susan Page: I think that we ought to be very cautious about drawing conclusions from the early vote because it's a whole area in such a transition. We had record early vote last time around because we were in the middle of a pandemic. This is our first post-pandemic election, and we do see Republican early turnout much higher than it was last time around. In Nevada, you look at the early vote and Republicans actually have a slight edge over Democrats.
If all that's happening is people who would vote on election day vote early, it doesn't tell you anything about the outcome of the election, right. The question is, are there people early voting who are low propensity voters who you didn't expect to vote? Will there be people who show up on election day that are surprising or who you didn't figure necessarily a likely voter? Early vote is clearly a new phenomenon in American politics, but it's one that we're still in the middle of figuring out. I think it's unwise to try to draw big conclusions from what we know so far.
Brian Lehrer: Susan Page, Washington bureau chief for USA Today, author of best selling books, including her latest, The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters. We've been talking largely about Susan's article on the historic gender gap that's defining this election that she wrote for USA Today. Susan, thank you for spending so much time with us. Good luck as we enter the vortex over the next 48 hours and who knows how much longer.
Susan Page: And to you too, Brian. Thanks.
Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Much more to come.
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[MUSIC - Marden Hill: Hijack]
Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. On the day before election day, fasten your seatbelts. On this final weekend of campaigning before election day, both presidential candidates were flashing their senses of humor. Did you see that Kamala Harris was on Saturday Night Live? She did a sketch with Maya Rudolph, who usually plays Kamala on SNL. Rudolph does such an amazing job, if you haven't seen her, of looking and sounding like the real thing, that it was hilarious just to even see them up there side by side.
The construct was two Kamalas at first looking in the mirror having a conversation with each other. In case you can't tell, in this clip, Maya Rudolph's Kamala speaks first.
Maya Rudolph: It's nice to see you, Kamala.
Kamala Harris: It is nice to see you, Kamala. I'm just here to remind you, you got this, because you can do something your opponent cannot do. You can open doors.
Maya Rudolph: I see what you did there. Like to a garbage truck, right?
Kamala Harris: I don't really laugh like that, do I?
Maya Rudolph: A little bit. Now, Kamala, take my palmala. The American people want to stop the chaos-
Kamala Harris: - and end the dramala-
Maya Rudolph: - with a cool new stepmomala. Kick back in our pajamalas and watch a romcomala-
Kamala Harris: - like Legally Blondala-
Maya Rudolph: - and start decorating for Christmas, falalalala, because what do we always say? Keep calmala and carry onala.
Kamala Harris: Keep calmala and carry onala.
Brian Lehrer: Kamala Harris with her sense of humor playing herself on Saturday Night Live with her sort of doppelganger Maya Rudolph. Donald Trump's sense of humor was on display too. A little different vibe, you might say, as he joked about what a would be assassin might do, and it's okay with him.
Donald Trump: I have this piece of glass here, but all we have really over here is the fake news, right? To get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news, and I don't mind that so much because--
Brian Lehrer: Yes, and you hear all the laughter there, right? Donald Trump and Kamala Harris getting laughs this weekend in very different ways. Meanwhile, early voting has now ended after shattering early turnout records just about everywhere. What can we learn from who showed up in the swing states There are some last polls, including a shocker from somewhere in the Midwest that we'll talk about.
With us first as we board the election week roller coaster is Susan Page, Washington bureau chief for USA Today and also author of bestselling books, including her latest, The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters, and previously Madam Speaker: Nancy Pelosi and the Lessons of Power and The Matriarch: Barbara Bush and the Making of an American Dynasty. Among other things, Susan has an article on the historic gender gap that's defining this election. We'll talk a lot about that and invite your calls on that in a few minutes.
Susan, we always appreciate your appearances on this show and especially today when we know you're slammed with your own team's coverage. Welcome back to WNYC.
Susan Page: Hey, Brian, it's always a pleasure to be with you, but I want to know, have you voted yet?
Brian Lehrer: Yes.
Susan Page: Me too. I mail voted.
Brian Lehrer: I mail voted as well. That means we're on Trump's fraud train, right?
Susan Page: [laughs] Well, that's according still to Donald Trump, who's very suspicious of mail-in voting, but not of the Republican Party, which is now all for it and has made some real gains in getting Republicans to vote early.
Brian Lehrer: Yes, and we'll come back to that in a little bit and who the data, and there is some data, is showing us did actually vote early in these record turnouts in many states.
Before we get too far from those clips, the assassination attempts against former President Trump were obviously very real and it's a very serious thing, but when he continually calls journalists covering his campaign the enemy of the people and now makes this "joke" about it being okay with him if assassins shoot at them and people laugh, do you at USA Today or other news organizations that you know take special security precautions when sending people out to cover Trump rallies in the environment he's created?
Susan Page: Yes, we handle things differently now than we did in campaigns before 2016, before the first Trump campaign. We're careful to keep our reporters and photographers safe. We do training, security training. We often send people out in pairs instead of alone. Yes, there are ways in which we cover this election differently because of the consistent threats against journalists.
Brian Lehrer: I see that after the Harris Saturday Night Live appearance, NBC was asked to give some kind of equal time to Trump, and they did, right. Did you see that?
Susan Page: No. Tell me.
Brian Lehrer: I would have to look up the specifics. I think they gave Trump some time on a broadcast of a NASCAR event, and one other thing. I'll get that specific as we go. Politically, I hear two conflicting analyses of Trump continuing to say violent and hateful things like that. He called Democrats demonic in that same speech in Pennsylvania. He uses profanity a lot now. One analysis is that his campaign handlers don't like this and think he's turning off potential swing voters who could be drawn to him based on his policies if he would only stick to them and not turn people off to his personality.
The other is that this is part of his appeal. This is his get out the vote strategy rather than knocking on a lot of doors, which the Democrats seem to be primed to do much more, that enough people, especially low propensity voters, non-college educated white men, could be turned on by all that, more than turned off, and it's a feature, not a bug. Does your reporting indicate one or another?
Susan Page: I think both things are true. I think Trump, who is a brilliant, instinctive politician, knows that part of his appeal to his core supporters is the fact that he is what he would call politically incorrect about things like his descriptions of his opponents and threats against the news media and his grievances generally. If you look at where his campaign has spent their money on ads, it is not on that. It is on focusing on the economy and immigration and trying to make the case that Vice President Harris is responsible for whatever people are unhappy about with the current administration. I think both things are true.
Brian Lehrer: Yes. Here's that-- From elsewhere in USA Today, it says in the notice filed Sunday, NBC said Harris appeared "without charge" on SNL. For 1 minute and 30 seconds, the broadcaster provided Trump airtime Sunday. CNN's Brian Seltzer reported giving the former president an opportunity to directly address viewers during the NASCAR 2024 cup playoff race. There's what happened there, just for the record. You have an-- [crosstalk]
Susan Page: Brian, I'm so pleased-
Brian Lehrer: Go ahead.
Susan Page: - you're reading USAToday.com more carefully than I am and finding this news I didn't know. Thank you.
Brian Lehrer: Yes, well, it comes from another desk, so it's understandable. I don't know everything that happens on every show on WNYC. You have an analysis in USA Today about the historic gender gap between men and women, if the polls have it anything close to right. Let me set this up with a clip and again refer back to the kind of vibe team Trump is putting out there. Everyone's heard about the comedian at his Madison Square Garden rally last week who called Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage.
Less covered is that another speaker referred to Harris advisors as pimp handlers, and even Trump supporter Nikki Haley felt compelled to criticize that in an interview after the rally on CNN. Here's that.
Nikki Haley: They also need to look at how they're talking about women. I mean, this bromance and this masculinity stuff, I mean, it borders on edgy to the point that it's going to make women uncomfortable. You've got affiliated PACs that are doing commercials about calling Kamala the C word, or you had speakers at Madison Square Gardens referring to her and her pimps. That is not the way to win women.
Brian Lehrer: "That is not the way to win women," said Nikki Haley on CNN. Susan, is there an explicit bromance strategy, I think she called it here, that is willing to sacrifice many women's votes in pursuit of potentially more men's votes?
Susan Page: Yes. I mean, one thing to remember about the gender gap is it doesn't necessarily favor one side or the other. For every disparity that gives Harris votes of more women, the Trump people look at the votes they're getting among more men. This gender gap is really astonishing at this point. There are different ways to calculate the gender gap, but if you calculate it as disparity between the votes of men and women to the winning candidate, which is one way to calculate it, the record was last time around 12 points in 2020.
In our final pre-election national poll, the gender gap was 16 or 17 points. We've just never seen a disparity like that before. There's just huge repercussions to this divide in the American electorate. Just one other thing. We've also found for the first time a smallish gender gap among Black voters and a very big gender gap among Latino voters. Those are both things to watch for this year.
Brian Lehrer: I see that stat. In your poll among Latino voters in Arizona, for example, obviously an important swing state, Latinas supporting Harris by an overwhelming 40-point margin while Latino men were split about 50/50. I mean, that's such a gender gap in that group. How do you explain it if it's true?
Susan Page: Well, I think we're seeing changes in the political impact of race and ethnicity where, for a long time, Democrats have counted on voters of color to side with them because race and ethnicity was the defining element, the defining factor in their vote. That no longer seems to be true, especially for men. We see men by levels of education, by class, their economic class, behaving like white men in being drawn to the Republican Party.
Now, you can think that's a difficulty for the Democratic Party. Maybe you could also look at that as maybe being good for our politics to not have race and ethnicity be the defining factor for a whole group of voters. Anyway, this is the first year we've seen this happen in a really big way.
Brian Lehrer: Right. Although, of course, we should say the polls are just polls before the one that really counts. There are people who are definitely casting doubt on these men of color statistics trending more toward Trump. We'll see how it actually turns out tomorrow. I mean, another way to look at this is that we still should really be talking about race here more than gender.
I don't know if you saw the analysis in the New York Times this weekend, which reminds us that Black women voted about 90% for Biden and then Hillary Clinton before him, while Trump himself won white women overall against Clinton and white non-college educated women over Biden. I'm going to say that again because I fumbled it so badly. Black women voted about 90% for Biden and Hillary Clinton, while Trump won white women overall against Clinton and white non-college educated women over Biden.
These gaps are also 40 points, not 17, which is the gender gap that you're showing nationally in your poll. Maybe the even more crucial factor than gender per se is what white women do this year. Could that be?
Susan Page: Yes, and there are a lot of white women, so it's a really significant voting blank, and it's one that's been swinging some. Trump won white women last time out. In some polls, Harris is leading among white women, especially among college educated white women and white women in suburbs. Now, some of these are probably Nikki Haley voters who, as Nikki Haley warned in the clip that you showed, have been put off by Donald Trump's rhetoric and some of his policies. They are in play, but white non-college educated women continue to be trending, I think, toward Trump.
There's not one thing about someone's characteristics that define how they vote, but there are a couple things that have turned out to be really important divides. Race is one and gender is one, and education has turned out to be increasingly powerful.
Brian Lehrer: Yes. By the way, what do you make of Nikki Haley going on CNN unlike almost any other Republican and being willing to explicitly criticize Trump in the clip that we heard for his gendered appeal? Then, she published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend endorsing Trump with the headline, Trump isn't perfect, but he's the better choice. Obviously, anything that's being misogynist or however we would characterize it is not disqualifying to Nikki Haley. Maybe this is just her way of launching her 2028 presidential campaign, playing both sides of the Republican spectrum and the centrist spectrum.
Susan Page: That sounds very political, Brian, that description of what she might be doing. She does seem to have a foot in each camp. She's an ambitious political figure. We think she would like to run for president again. Maybe this is part of that calculation. The other interesting calculation I think about Nikki Haley is a traditional candidate, which Donald Trump has not, would have chosen Nikki Haley as his running mate because she was his strongest challenger and she opened doors to voters that he wasn't appealing to.
He didn't put her on his ticket. That's not any surprise. She's volunteered to campaign for him and he has not utilized her in that way. After we get past election day and we're looking backwards and seeing why did this person win and this person lose, if Donald Trump loses, that's going to be one of the factors that we'll be looking at.
Brian Lehrer: Listeners, our phones are open on this morning before the election day, especially on the issue of the gender gap in the presidential race. Help us report this story. Are you seeing a difference in who the men and women you personally know support? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Oh, I'm seeing a correction here, by the way, about that Nikki Haley clip. I attributed it to CNN. Apparently, that was actually on FOX. I had a clip of CNN replaying it. My apologies. That was a FOX News appearance by Nikki Haley, to give credit where credit is due.
Listeners, back to the listener question. Are you seeing a difference in who the men and women you personally know support, and is it different than in past years? White women, Black women, Latino women, Asian women, and men. Call in 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or text. Is it even in your own home, perhaps, folks? Anyone listening now voting differently from your husband or differently from your wife if you're in a heterosexual marriage, is that different from past elections for you as a couple?
There's even been reporting, and Susan, I'll get your take on if you have any indication if this is real, about stealth Harris voters within households, women who won't tell their husbands that they're voting for Harris and therefore maybe won't tell pollsters either. There's speculation that pollsters have overcorrected for their errors in the past two elections that undercounted Trump voters. That happened. Maybe this year, the theory goes, their new mathematical models are undercounting Harris voters by overcompensating for their errors in the past.
One reason might be women keeping their heads down but planning to vote for Harris not wanting their husbands to find out maybe happening to a meaningful degree or it may not. There's talk of this as a potential factor. Listeners, know anybody like this or call in and talk about anyone you know.in the context of a gender gap or for that matter, the racial gender gap among women voters? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Help us report the story of the race and gender gap.
Susan, have you heard that theory about stealth Harris voters who don't even want to tell their husbands and how that might even be affecting inaccuracies in poll results?
Susan Page: Well, it can be a factor. You look at the response rates among different kinds of voters, and there are some signs that Democrats are more likely to respond to polls than Republicans are. We thought in 2016 that there might be a stealth Trump vote, that there might be voters who were going to support Trump but didn't want to say so. I guess it's possible we're seeing that now with women. One of things now, in an election that's s close, every vote counts if you're in one of seven states.
I've seen stories about efforts in public bathrooms, in women's bathrooms to post notes that say, "Hey, women, you don't need to tell anybody who you're voting for." This is an attempt, I think, to appeal to women who have partners, who are men, who are Trump voters, and don't want them to find out they're voting for Harris. I have no idea how far reaching this is, but it's a tactic we have not seen before.
Brian Lehrer: Very interesting. We have a caller on this who is an elected official and may have an interesting take. I'm going to take that call first. This is Lori in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, but I should call her Mayor Lori in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey. Do we have her line ready? Mayor Lori, you're
on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.
Mayor Lori Hohenleitner: Hi, Brian. I was trying to be a little stealth, but they figured me out. I just got back from Butler, Pennsylvania, where I spent the weekend trying to help some folks turn out voters. I have to say it's really inspiring and impressive. The host family that hosted me my first night actually was doing that postit campaign you were just talking about. I hadn't heard of it before, but here was someone who was actually doing it. It's really the older white women, well, older all women, and the young women that are just--
I mean, I can't tell you the operation I saw out in Butler County. It's an amazing operation and it's women powered.
Brian Lehrer: Could you tell at all if it seemed different from 2020 or 2016 in the way these older women that you're talking about were planning to show up for Harris?
Mayor Lori Hohenleitner: I mean, we've had different elections in the last few years, and 2020 was a really different election. I've never seen so many canvassers on location coming and showing up. They have full shifts today all day long and they don't have in [unintelligible 00:22:05] voting there. They're tracking the vote by mail, and it's incredible. I've never seen this before and I've been canvassing since I think John Kerry.
Brian Lehrer: Interesting. All right. Mayor Lori Hohenleitner, to get your full name out there, so I don't just call you Mayor Lori for the rest of your life. Thank you very much for checking in. We really appreciate it. Feel free to call us again. Susan, any reaction to that?
Susan Page: My reaction is that you have a really elite listening audience, Brian.
Brian Lehrer: We have an upscale listening audience. We have a downscale listening audience. We have everything in between.
Susan Page: You got mayors listening in the middle of the day and calling in, and I think that is a sign of your sweep.
Brian Lehrer: Well, we'll take that as a compliment. I want to ask you about these last-minute polls that are coming out. A lot of news organizations and other polling companies put out the last polls that they have on the weekend before election day, and in general, there's not much that we can tell from these I think. For example, the final New York Times Sienna Poll from the swing states have Trump +4 in Arizona. The final Focaldata MRP poll, which is reported side by side with the Times Sienna poll on Politico, while the Times has Trump +4 in Arizona, Focaldata has Harris +1.
While the the Focaldata poll has Trump +3 in North Carolina, the Times poll has Harris +3 in North Carolina. At this point, we don't report much on polls on this show anyway, but at this point, you throw up your hands and you say we just have to start watching tomorrow night. Right?
Susan Page: It's a tie. Nationally and in these seven swing states, neither candidate has a lead outside the margin of error. This is a coin toss election, and we've never had this before. We've had elections where the polls have been wrong, like in 2016 when they said that Hillary Clinton was going to win, but we've never had jump ball polls up to the day of election. This is really extraordinary, and what it means is that either one could win.
Brian Lehrer: Yes. There is one poll that's being reported as a shocker from over the weekend, and it's the final Des Moines Register Poll, which is a very respected poll out of Iowa, obviously, and Harris is up by a few points in that poll in what is generally not considered a swing state. You were praising the sweep of what we have on this show. We were on this story in September. We had the Des Moines Register pollster Ann Selzer on the show when she first started to notice a big swing away from Trump toward Harris once Biden dropped out and Harris got into the race.
Here's a short clip of me asking Ann Selzer a question about her Des Moines Register poll in mid-September and her response. Ann Selzer, I saw you on TV last week saying your jaw dropped looking at the difference between your poll results for the Des Moines Register in June compared to just recently. Would you tell us that story?
Ann Selzer: That story is I don't drop my jaw very often. Let me just say that at the outset, Brian. In June, when we had polled the Iowa electorate, we found an 18-point margin for former President Donald Trump, and you might think 18 points might drop your job, but Iowa has been pretty beet red for a few election cycles. In our most recent poll in September, and keep in mind June, a very different time politically from September, September, Trump's lead had dropped to four points. Only four points. Not just single digits, low single digits.
Brian Lehrer: Des Moines Register pollster Ann Selzer back in September. Is Iowa a bellwether for anything, Susan Page?
Susan Page: How great that you were on this story before other people were. I should mention that the Des Moines Register is part of the USA Today network, so it's one of our papers. The idea that Kamala Harris will carry Iowa seems quite unlikely. If she carries Iowa, she's won easily. Iowa will not be part of a coalition that gets only to 270 electoral votes. That's one reason people don't think that Trump is in fact in danger in Iowa.
This poll is so interesting because the reason you see this astounding three-point lead for Harris is because of the movement of women and especially older women and including rural women, so it very much fits into what we were talking about earlier in this hour about the importance of the gender gap and what we see happening here. I mean, this was probably an outlier-- the Trump campaign dismisses as an outlier. The one reason people take it really seriously is because Ann Selzer is an incredibly respected pollster, and no one knows Iowa better than Ann Selzer does.
We'll see what this means. This has been really a last-minute boost for Democrats who are activist Democrats who are very nervous about this election. The idea that you see this swing in a state that has some characteristics that are like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, [unintelligible 00:28:18] states that we do think are going to be crucial swing states.
Brian Lehrer: On the gender question and the stealth voting question, some interesting texts coming in. Listener writes, "Divided household. I'm a Democrat. It's really tough because I clearly cannot discuss my thoughts, frustrations with the man I am married to. I do not discuss politics at work. Too risky. Since I live in Suffolk County, I dare not bring up politics with neighbors." That's a generally Republican county, eastern Long Island, for those who don't know.
Susan Page: My first job was in Suffolk county, the Suffolk county-
Brian Lehrer: Oh yes?
Susan Page: -edition of Newsday. Yes, I worked in the Ronkonkoma bureau. I know Suffolk county really well.
Brian Lehrer: There you go. The listener concludes this text writing, "Ends up feeling very lonely with this important election. If Kamala loses, I'll mourn alone. If she wins, I'll quietly celebrate alone." Another one listener writes, "What you're missing is men who don't tell their wives they're voting for Trump because their wives would kill them. I told this to my wife and she laughed," this listener writes, "because she probably would kill me."
One more listener writes, "I've noticed older white men who voted for Trump in past elections appear to be ashamed of voting for Trump again." An interesting smattering, Susan, right?
Susan Page: Yes, and look forward to Thanksgiving this year, right?
Brian Lehrer: Oh, boy. If the election is decided by then.
Susan Page: Yes, it'll be decided by then.
Brian Lehrer: We'll continue with Susan Page in a minute and more of your calls and texts. Stay with us.
[MUSIC - Marden Hill: Hijack]
Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC with Susan Page, Washington bureau chief for USA Today, author of books, including her latest, The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters. We're talking largely about her article in USA Today on the historic gender gap that's defining this election. We have some more really interesting calls coming in on that, so let's take Warren in Philadelphia next. Warren, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.
Warren: Hi, Brian. Thanks for hosting the show. Yes, just two quick anecdotes. I was door knocking in Bucks County, which is a purple county outside of Philadelphia last weekend, and among the small handful of traditionally Republican leaning doors that I knocked on, people that I talked to, there's a lot of women who were going to vote for Kamala who traditionally vote for Republicans on behalf of their daughters and because of Trump's and the Republican Party's perspective on women's rights and reproductive rights in particular.
A second anecdote within my own family, my brother in law traditionally votes for Republicans, my sister for Democrats, but this year he decided to not vote for anyone. He didn't like Kamala, but he felt like on behalf of his daughter, my niece, he couldn't vote for Trump.
Brian Lehrer: You got the sense that some of those women who were answering the door in Bucks County had voted for Trump in the past but would vote for Harris, that these were change voters?
Warren: Yes. In fact, many said, "Next election cycle, we're going to go back to the Republican ticket. We-
Brian Lehrer: Wow.
Warren: - just can't do it this year." Only a handful, but a few different doors said it.
Brian Lehrer: Anecdotal evidence from Warren in Philadelphia. On this idea of women stealthily voting for Harrison, can't even tell their husbands, Mendez in Milwaukee, you're on WNYC. Hi, Mendez.
Mendez: Hi. Good morning, Brian. This is Mendez from Milwaukee. Actually, I don't live in Milwaukee. I'm in Jersey City.
Brian Lehrer: Okay.
Mendez: I'm [unintelligible 00:31:55] door knocking here in Milwaukee for the Harris campaign. I was telling your screener that it's fascinating to me, really. I would knock on a door, and I've done [unintelligible 00:32:08] Milwaukee Black neighborhoods, white, middle class, but especially in white neighborhoods where I would knock on the door, the lady would answer the door, or the husband. There are times, and this is really factual, I can agree with the survey where I had women, white women would give me a little look like, yes, thumbs up, and Harris.
The husband-- You can feel the unease, the fact the wife is totally in for Harris and the husband would say, "Well, I'm not sure I'm voting for." It's fascinating really, because it's not just one or two incidents because I've been here in Milwaukee for two weeks. I was in Atlanta for two weeks prior to that. Yes, it is factual. White women are comfortable telling their spouses, their husbands that they are totally in for Kamala. By the way, Susan Page, I love her work. I've read her stuff, and she's brilliant. I had to say that I'm a big fan.
Susan Page: Thank you very much, Mendez.
Brian Lehrer: Mendez, thank you very much for your call. Fascinating. Again, it's anecdotal, right? Not a scientific survey, but reports from the field.
Susan Page: Well, reports from the field, that's the best place you can be right now. Whatever we're going to learn from polls, we've already learned, right? Ignore that. Who has already voted? What are people saying when you go door to door? How enthusiastic are the people that you're talking to? I mean, those are the things that will determine an election that is as close as this one seems to be.
Brian Lehrer: Yes. We're talking about the gender gap in the presidential race. And by the way, folks, hope you remember to turn your clocks back one hour on Saturday night. We played the clips of Harris and Trump telling jokes at different appearances over the weekend. Jimmy Kimmel had a joke about the new line of Donald Trump watches being set back. Kimmel said Trump's watches come in men's and women's models. For the women, they set the clock back 50 years. Hahaha, and that's Jimmy Kimmel's politics. Susan, it is reflected a little bit in the callers that we're hearing today.
Susan Page: Well, remember this is the first presidential election since the protections of Roe v. Wade were overturned. Since then, we've seen abortion rights be a really powerful issue in the last midterm elections, and some Democrats think that it's being underestimated as an issue in this one. We've got abortion on the ballot in 10 states, and even in states including New York, and even in states that don't have abortion measures on the ballot, we're going to be watching to see if it prompts more women to turn out and for more women to turn out for Democrats than we've seen in the past because of that issue.
In our national poll, the number one issue for men and women, both sides, was the economy, but the big number two issue for women was abortion rights, and that was not an issue that resonated with men in our poll.
Brian Lehrer: Do you see Kamala Harris trying to cultivate the gender gap among women as explicitly as Trump is trying to cultivate the gender gap among men? We talked earlier about how Trump seems willing to sacrifice a good number of women's votes in order to try to really pump the turnout among men who have traditional male role based grievance. Do you think Harris is doing a similar thing among women? Explicitly, like being willing to turn off men in some respects, hoping that the female gender gap is just bigger than the male one, and women turn out generally a little more than men.
Susan Page: A fundamental part of Harris' strategy, and in some contrast to Joe Biden. Biden, a devout Catholic, never felt, I think, comfortable saying the word abortion. He had a complicated history when it came to abortion rights. That's not the case with Kamala Harris. She is very comfortable talking about this issue in a way that is really direct with women who have experiences for themselves and their family and with their friends when it comes to reproductive rights.
Although you also see Harris making some appeals designed to be reassuring to men voters. When she says that she has a Glock at home, I think that may be aimed more at male voters than female ones.
Brian Lehrer: Yes. I've seen reporting about the competition for the bro vote, and one of the little indications of that is that they're making Harris [unintelligible 00:37:27] camo baseball caps.
Susan Page: Yes. Yes. It's like you think, "What difference could that make?" Then, you think, "Gee, in Pennsylvania, maybe it'll do whatever it takes to get a few more votes there," as Warren is doing going door to door.
Brian Lehrer: More stories from callers. Boy, they just keep coming in. Cheryl, in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. Hi, Cheryl.
Cheryl: Hello. I'm taking it off speakerphone.
Brian Lehrer: Thank you.
Cheryl: Yes, I did call in.
Brian Lehrer: Yes, you did, so you tell us why.
Cheryl: Okay. I'm a retired librarian, public library, and my husband's a retired school teacher, New York City. We both have been voting Democrat for a long, long time, and yet in my own family, my older brother would be considered blue collar worker, retired, blue-collar work all his life, sometimes in civil service positions. Definitely has been voting Republican all his life also, voting life. The gender gap is really serious to me, this year in particular. I actually feel intimidated in many situations.
That's our background.
Brian Lehrer: What do you mean, intimidated? In what kinds of circumstances and how?
Cheryl: I feel reluctant to be very verbal or put up signs or wear a button because I'm afraid of retaliation.
Brian Lehrer: Cheryl, thank you very much for calling and telling us your story, and stay safe out there. Ann, in Westchester, you're on WNYC. Hi, Ann.
Ann: Hi, Brian. I'm in Westchester, and I campaigned here in Sleepy Hollow on Saturday, and on Sunday, I went to Hazel Township in Lucerne County, Pennsylvania. I've been in Pennsylvania probably six or seven times so far. I didn't really see a gender gap. Hazel Township has lots and lots of Trump signs. I don't think I saw a single Harris sign until one of the people we canvassed took one. Most of the people whose doors we knocked on, we didn't knock where there was a Trump sign, I think we maybe did that once, but we mostly didn't, they just were afraid to--
It struck me, it wasn't a gender gap. It struck me that they were afraid to announce their voting intentions publicly. We got a number of thumbs up, which was heartening on a very disheartening walk around town. One guy, a Puerto Rican guy, took a sign and said he was not afraid and he would proudly display it. In Sleepy Hollow, where I was sent to canvass among a largely Latino community, I was really surprised, and this is for Mondaire Jones and the Democrats and also Prop 1. I was really surprised-- [crosstalk]
Brian Lehrer: The Republican freshman, Mike Lawler, is the Republican incumbent there. Go ahead.
Ann: Correct. Correct. I was surprised that I had people who said they weren't voting. I mean, not a lot. I mean, you know, you get sent out for an afternoon, and I must have hit maybe 30 or something doors. First House, "I'm not voting." "No, it's not of interest to me." The guy who was there in the household said he was just going to trust in God, but I had others. I had a school teacher from Ecuador who said she was undecided. I was just kind of flabbergasted.
I think that what I understood, if I'm correct, is that it's the economy that caught-- Not that anyone thinks anything much of Trump, but that they feel just burdened by how expensive everything is. And so I don't know how you could say undecided, but I just think that's what it was. I could be wrong. Thoroughly unscientific, as you say, but that's my assessment.
Brian Lehrer: Interesting.
Ann: It was surprising because it wasn't gender, it was the immigrants that I thought would go for Kamala for sure. Then, I was surprisingly pleased in Luzerne, a seemingly red county, to find not overwhelming support, but quiet support. Yes.
Brian Lehrer: Funny enough, I was in Sleepy Hollow yesterday. I was on a hike north of the Tappan Zee Bridge, Tarrytown, Sleepy Hollow, Phillips Manor, and I was surprised when I was in the residential neighborhoods on that walk to see a lot of Mondaire Jones signs and a lot of Trump Lawler signs because traditionally I think it even pertained in Westchester, what you were just describing in Pennsylvania, that people put out the Trump signs, but they're afraid to put out the Harris signs. I saw a lot of both in your neck of the woods. Is that your experience?
Ann: Not exactly. Sleepy Hollow, where I was knocking on doors, these were multifamily dwellings. These were apartments, so there wasn't really an opportunity for signs. I did have to drive from picking up my list and I saw quite a few Lawler signs. The thing is, Lawler is an expert at retail politics. He said on your show. You asked him how he won. He said, "I went to seven or eight events a day." He gets out the vote. He does a lot of other things, but he knows how to connect with voters.
I think that is in part why there were so many Lawler signs. I didn't see as many Trump signs when I was driving from whatever it was, Mount Pleasant to Sleepy Hollow. In Sleepy Hollow, they weren't going to be able to put out signs really, but I don't think they would have. I mean, where I was, the apartments off of Main Street.
Brian Lehrer: Interesting.
Ann: In Luzerne, I think it was fear that you just keep it quiet. You do what you want to do. I didn't hit a single household where a woman was giving me the thumbs up and a man the thumbs down. I mean, it could have been, but they don't send us to known Republicans, known Trump supporters. They send us to undecided or Democrats, or unaffiliated. Anyway, that's, that's my two cents.
Brian Lehrer: Ann, thanks for checking in, and I love hiking the Croton Aqueduct up there, by the way. You're lucky to have that near you.
Ann: I will tell you people, you should get out there and canvas for the next day. You can enjoy beautiful foliage, so it's worth it just for that. Anyway, thanks, Brian.
Brian Lehrer: I can vouch for the foliage. Ann, thank you very much. Susan Page from USA Today, Ann raises an issue that I've been talking about a lot, and that is the question of whether Harris is selling her to-do list sufficiently to particularly Latino voters and particularly Latino men. She was talking about I think a woman in particular in the story that she told originally from Ecuador, but a lot of people who like the caller was just describing that one, don't like Trump, but they want to hear about the cost of living and who has better plans.
The question becomes, when Harris is out there saying Trump has his enemy list, I have my to-do list, is she communicating clearly enough and just with enough frequency what's on her to-do list and why she thinks she's going to be better for the cost of living for Trump? Because that seems to be where a lot of these low propensity voters, people who may not turn out at all, including disproportionately Latinos, from what I've read, but a lot of other people too who are still undecided.
Susan Page: Yes. Well, this has been a criticism of Harris' campaign, that she has not done enough to be specific to tell people what she would do for them if she got elected. There's been a debate in her campaign about the balance between talking about Trump as a threat and talking about what you would do if you were elected. The whole line about he'll have an enemy's list or have a to-do list, that is of recent vintage and reflects, I think, some of the concern in her camp that she has not done enough of that.
I mentioned our last national pre-election poll. We said, do you know enough about what Harris would do? Going directly to this point, 57% of the people in our poll said, "No, I don't know enough about what she would do," and that included one out of four people who are voting for her, people who supported her. Clearly, I think it is clear that she has not done enough to make people feel comfortable about what she would do, and she's also, I think, failed to address directly issues on which she seems to have changed position since her 2019 campaign for president.
We talked about the benefit of hindsight once we have a result. If Harris loses, I think that'll be a point that's made that she should have done a better job at. I think you do see her doing more of that now.
Brian Lehrer: Definitely.
Susan Page: Her rally speech last night, she didn't talk about Trump, she did not mention Trump's name. She talked entirely about her message and what she would do.
Brian Lehrer: Before you go, real quick, anything from the early voting data in any swing state that you think might be indicative, forget about the newspaper and other opinion polls? I've seen speculation that big early voting turnout, which we've had in all the swing states, favors Harris because historically, it's more Democrats who use early voting. I've seen in some, places parts of Georgia, for example, Republican registration voters were more numerous certainly than in the past and maybe even than registered Democrats, so I don't know.
Are your number crunchers telling you anything that they can glean from the data that is made publicly available from the early voters?
Susan Page: I think that we ought to be very cautious about drawing conclusions from the early vote because it's a whole area in such a transition. We had record early vote last time around because we were in the middle of a pandemic. This is our first post-pandemic election, and we do see Republican early turnout much higher than it was last time around. In Nevada, you look at the early vote and Republicans actually have a slight edge over Democrats.
If all that's happening is people who would vote on election day vote early, it doesn't tell you anything about the outcome of the election, right. The question is, are there people early voting who are low propensity voters who you didn't expect to vote? Will there be people who show up on election day that are surprising or who you didn't figure necessarily a likely voter? Early vote is clearly a new phenomenon in American politics, but it's one that we're still in the middle of figuring out. I think it's unwise to try to draw big conclusions from what we know so far.
Brian Lehrer: Susan Page, Washington bureau chief for USA Today, author of best selling books, including her latest, The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters. We've been talking largely about Susan's article on the historic gender gap that's defining this election that she wrote for USA Today. Susan, thank you for spending so much time with us. Good luck as we enter the vortex over the next 48 hours and who knows how much longer.
Susan Page: And to you too, Brian. Thanks.
Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Much more to come.
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