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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. With the democratic convention set to begin on Monday, that's August 19th, it's remarkable to consider, isn't it, what the presidential race has been through just since the start of summer. The debate where President Biden looked so unwell was on June 27th. The Trump assassination attempt was on July 13th. Biden left the race on July 21st. Then, to many people's surprise, the party coalesced instantly around Vice President Harris as the new nominee presumptive and everything changed.

It will be just under one month of the Harris campaign when the democratic convention will begin and what a difference that month has made. Before going into that four-day television commercial, which I think we can call these conventions generally like the one the Republicans had just last month, we're going to do something now that we try not to overdo on this show as many of you know. That is, we'll talk about the polls. Our attitude, I've talked about this before, is generally that the political media obsess too much on the horse race as if politics was a sporting event and not enough on the issues.

We try to keep our issue-to-horse race ratio very high. This week, for example, we haven't mentioned the polls at all until now. Our presidential race segments have been about Tim Walz's education, about genocide when he was a geography teacher, Walz's climate record, JD Vance calling for parents to have more votes than adults without children, Vance's Forward to the new book by the Architect of Project 2025, and the comparison that we had yesterday of Harris versus MAGA conservatives over their different conceptions of freedom. If you missed the freedom one, it got a lot of response, and I wrote about it for our weekly newsletter that'll go out this afternoon.

Today, listeners, get on your saddles because we are about to do a horse race segment. We talk about campaign season polling here, when something significant seems to change or get established, or there's something we can really learn from looking at public opinion numbers on issues. We have definitely been in a period of change since July 21, when Biden dropped out. Let's assess.

We have one of America's smartest and most nuanced nonpartisan political analysts as our guest. It's Amy Walter, publisher and editor-in-chief of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter. Many of you may also know her from her weekly spot on the PBS NewsHour, but also having the rare distinction of appearing regularly on NBC's Meet the Press, CNN's Inside Politics, and Bret Baier's program on the Fox News Channel. I also saw her on MSNBC this week. If they crowned a Miss nonpartisan credibility for 2024, Amy Walter might well be it. Amy, it's always good to have you on this show. Welcome back to WNYC.

Amy Walter: Thank you, Brian. I think you set up this conversation brilliantly, as always, because you're right. The polling doesn't just have to be about the horse race. We wanted to look at not just the horse race, not just who's in front, who's behind, but to understand how we got here and to look at the kinds of people that are moving and why. Most important to your point that you made at the very beginning Brian, to understand how people viewed this crazy three-week, basically roller coaster that we've seen in politics, something that I certainly have never seen in my time covering campaigns, and to understand just people essentially, how they felt about Kamala Harris, somebody that we don't really have that much data on.

Sure, we asked in polls or other pollsters asked how they felt about her and the job she was doing, but this is somebody who, for the most part, is not as well defined as other political figures and certainly not as well defined as the two people who were on the top of the ticket, Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

Brian Lehrer: Not to bury the lead, your latest poll of swing states at the Cook political report shows Harris now leading in all but one with some really eye-popping swings in those numbers since May. Where would you start on the big picture?

Brian Lehrer: I guess I'd start on the big picture to that, which is if we go back and we look at where this race was in May, the last time that we surveyed. By the way, we have a democratic polling firm, BSG, and a republican polling firm, GS Strategy Group, doing the polling for us. These two are very, very good at their jobs and they understand political polling in such an in-depth way, a granular way.

Anyway, they went in in May, and what we found was Donald Trump ahead overall in those seven swing battleground states by three points today, as you said, Harris up by one. It's a four-point swing and Harris's advantage. Now, on its face, that doesn't sound dramatic. Four points sounds pretty small but in this current political era in which we live where presidential races for the last two elections have been decided in swing states by 10,000, 20,000 votes, a shift of four points is a really, really big deal.

I think the biggest shifts that we did see were in places like North Carolina, Nevada, Georgia. Places where Biden was struggling with younger voters of color especially and Harris has re-engaged those voters. In the blue states, where again, Trump was slightly ahead, now Harris is slightly ahead. Those remain incredibly competitive. I think it's the fact that she was able to bring those states that we often call the Sunbelt, the Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, back into play. That is the most I think significant of the findings

Brian Lehrer: In fact, I think even with everything you just said, you might still be underselling the severity of the swing here because looking at some of the individual states that you polled, listeners get ready for some of these numbers, which are really striking compared to, Amy, your last swing state poll in May, Arizona, from a Trump plus four to a Harris plus four. That's an eight-point swing. North Carolina, which you mentioned, from Trump plus eight to Harris plus two, that's a ten-point swing. The make-or-break state of Pennsylvania, from Trump plus three to Harris plus five. Wow. I could go on. How rare is it to see swings like this during the heart of an election campaign?

Amy Walter: Very much difficult because by this point in the campaign, the two sides, especially when it was Biden versus Trump, the two candidates are incredibly well known. I guess I would say in a race between two candidates who had 100% name recognition, opinions of them were pretty baked in, you're not going to see swings of four or five points, or eight points as the case may be here.

I think how we can answer why this happened is that Biden himself was underperforming dramatically with groups of voters who should be voting for Democrats. They weren't interested in Donald Trump. They probably weren't going to vote for a Republican down-ballot either but they just couldn't get themselves to say they were voting for Biden for whatever reason.

Mostly, I think it was because they just thought he was too old for the job or wasn't capable of doing the job, or just they simply weren't enthusiastic about having another four years of a Biden term, but they weren't interested in having four years of a Trump term. I think you're right, it is unusual but the reason that I'm tempering this movement is simply to say what I think has happened is we've gone from--

I'll put it in, say, NFL or just general football terms, which is for the last few months leading, and especially after the June 27 debate, the Trump campaign was basically a team that had every member of its squad on the field. All the members that you're allowed to have on the field, on the field, and they were in good shape and nobody was injured and they were ready to go. The blue squad, the Biden squad, the quarterback was injured and he didn't have everybody on the field. It was a lopsided conflict

Brian Lehrer: By everybody on the field, you mean the potential voters for each party from their basis.

Amy Walter: Exactly. So that the people who should be on the field cheering for and voting for a Democrat were instead on the sidelines and the quarterback was injured.

Brian Lehrer: It's notable to me, tell me if your analysis bears this out, that these comparisons in your new poll are with your poll back last May, which was before the debate that led to Biden really beginning to tank. In May, things were relatively normal compared to after the debate. The statistical comparison with just before Biden dropped out last month is probably even more striking. Is that a meaningful way to look at these numbers?

Amy Walter: I think that's fair. I think what we were seeing after June 27th was that the enthusiasm, it may not have been the actual top-line number that was shifting as much. In other words, how far Biden was down to Trump. It was that you had just so little enthusiasm, even from the people who said that they were voting for Biden, that there could have been a just catastrophic, not just for Team Biden, but for Democrats down the ballot.

The one thing that we also saw in both our May poll and these polls is that Senate candidates who are Democrats are doing better than Biden still, but they were doing better than Biden in May as well, which suggests there is a democratic vote out there that's pretty solid but if they felt like, "The presidential race isn't really happening, why should I even bother?" and they didn't turn out to vote then that hurts all Democrats down the ballot.

Brian Lehrer: Could you talk a little numerically and actually let me open up the phones for our listeners? Listeners, if you are just joining us, it's Amy Walter from the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter, who has questions, comments, or stories for her about the state of the presidential campaign. 212-433-WNYC. We've been doing issue segments so far all this week. For today, this is a horse race segment, with the polls seeming to change so much in Harris's direction just before next week's Democratic convention.

Who has questions about the numbers? Who has a story about your own change or non-change since Harris got into the race? If you're a swing voter between the parties or a member of the potential democratic base who wasn't motivated enough by Joe Biden, big group who Amy was just talking about. 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. Actually, let's take a call from Monique in Tarrytown, who's called in a few times as a swing voter this summer. Let's see where Monique is now. Monique, you're on WNYC. Hi there.

Monique: Hi. My question has more to do on the statistics. Your polling, was that for registered voters and potential voters is the first question and the follow-up is, is that changed? Is it people changing their minds or is it undecided voters that were on the fence and decided to make a decision?

Amy Walter: Great, great, great questions. These are people that we consider to be likely voters, and it's that they have told the pollsters, "Yes, I am pretty sure that I'm voting in this election," or that they are engaged in voting in this election. They have to be registered and interested in voting. To your point about are they switching or are they people who are new to the process? This is really the key question and I really appreciate you asking it.

If you think about the electorate, it's really big. There are a lot of people in this country, and we talk about voters coming in and out of the voting pool or changing their mind. I think you have to think about it not just as one individual who today was voting for Trump and tomorrow said, "I'm going to vote for Harris." Think about it as a whole universe of people who may not have even been interested in thinking about politics that now are into the voter pool. Maybe a few months ago they said, "No, I'm not interested in voting. I'm probably not going to vote." Now they say, "I am interested in voting."

They were out there, but they weren't part of the conversation. The other piece, if you're just looking at the data, what seems to be very clear is there were a lot of people who earlier in the summer or in May were saying, "I'm thinking I'm going to vote third party." Or "I'm not really sure that I'm going to vote for Biden." The number one indicator of this, we looked at voters who said they voted for Biden in 2020, and in May, 85% of them said, "I'm going to vote for Biden again."

Today, August basically, 91% of Biden voters who voted for Biden in 2020 said, "I'm going to vote for Kamala Harris." In other words, what she did was take those people who were already predisposed to voting for Biden, they'd done it before, and bring them back. Now, the interesting piece of this is, where did that shift mostly come from? It came mostly at the expense of RFK junior.

Back in May, 6% of Biden 2020 voters said they were thinking about voting for RFK junior. Today it's down to two points. The undecided number also undecided. The other third parties also shrank a little bit. The Trump number, you have 3% to 4% in both May and in August saying, "You know what? I think I'm going to vote for Trump this time."

Brian Lehrer: Gary in Little Ferry, you're on WNYC. He has a question about the polling. Gary, hi. You're on with Amy Walter.

Gary: Hello. Thank you for taking my call. I think polls, if they're all saying the same thing, they're pretty accurate, but if they're all over the place, they're not. Also, they're more directional than give specific numbers. I've seen it in my lifetime. I first voted in 1976, and I remember Joe Ford was 30 points behind after Labor Day, and yet he lost by about one point. I've seen this a lot in polling.

Brian Lehrer: Another great question.

Amy Walter: Yes, it is. In 1976, and let's face it, really I guess you could go up through the mid to late '90s. I remember 1992 when there was a guy named Ross Perot who at this point in the cycle was leading both Bill Clinton and the current president of the United States in polling. We don't have those massive swings or that deep level of support or significant level of support like we saw for Ross Perot in this era in part because our politics is so much more calcified and polarized than it was then. There just simply are not as many people who are willing to go and say, "You know what, I voted for a Democrat last time, but sure, I'll vote for a Republican this time around." Or vice versa.

Brian Lehrer: Let me just go shopping and watch the debate and say, who has the better inflation policy? Who has the better immigration policy, abortion policy?

Amy Walter: Exactly. Again, I remember even back in 1998 as Bill Clinton was being impeached, he had a 60-something percent job approval rating. Why? Even people who disliked him said, "The economy is doing pretty well. I want him to keep doing whatever he's doing on the economy, even though I don't like him personally." Now, your opinions of someone personally also impact how you feel about not just what kind of job they're doing, but if you look at how people feel about the state of the economy, overwhelmingly, Republicans think it's getting worse and Democrats think it's doing pretty well.

That to me, is what makes both polling more challenging because you don't get those big swings. You don't get big events moving people. It's really now about taking people who are already pretty decided on their vote and understanding whether they're going to be engaged in this election. As I said with my football analogy before this switch with Harris, Democrats we're not that enthusiastic. We're not that energized. Now they are.

The next piece of this campaign, and this is the other reason we wanted to do this polling, is to see what are these next 80 days going to be about? Who's going to decide this election? Some of it is making sure that the partisans and the people who are already predisposed to supporting one candidate or the other, that they remain engaged. The next piece is looking a all right, who are these undecided voters? Who are these swing voters? They're now 4 or 5% of the electorate. Small but incredibly influential.

Some of them right now say they're thinking about voting for RFK. Some of them say I'm undecided because I'm just not paying that much attention to politics right now. I have other things going on in my life and I'm going to wait. Some others may just be saying, "I don't like any of this, and at the end of the day, I'm going to stay home." I really tried to dig into what is it that these people who say, "I'm either undecided or thinking about voting for third party," what are they thinking now and how do the two campaigns appeal to those voters?

Brian Lehrer: To follow up on one of the caller Gary's points about how much the polls can swing even during a campaign, and even taking your point about how we are in relatively polarized and calcified times compared to earlier presidential elections like the one he cited, we are heading into a democratic convention week now and typically presidential candidates get a little convention bounce after their four-night TV commercials. Considering that Harris is in this unique honeymoon phase with voters if you agree with that label for it, do you think there's risk as well as opportunity, depending on how it all goes at the convention next week?

Amy Walter: Very good question. You may have more people now tuning in to this convention than you would have if Biden were still on top of the ticket. In fact, I can be pretty confident that if Biden were still on top of the ticket, this would be a [crosstalk

Brian Lehrer: Not just because Harris might be more watchable, but because Harris is so new.

Amy Walter: That's right. People want to go, "Who is this person?"

Brian Lehrer: New in this world.

Amy Walter: What is she going to say? Who is she going to bring on stage? How is she different from or the same as? To me, that's been the most remarkable piece not just of our polling, but of other polling that we've seen since she's been put on top of the ticket. Is that she's the sitting vice president, and yet she is currently seen as new, as an outsider, more than an insider.

Now, if you're the Trump campaign, you say, "That can't last forever." They are going to spend, and you're starting to see it, especially in their advertising, saying, "Don't let her fool you. If you're upset about everything the Biden administration did, she's part of the Biden administration. If you want four more years of what you had under Biden, then vote for Harris but don't think she's somebody different."

Her job is to do both things, which is to say, "Yes, I do have the experience of being in office, and here are the ways in which I'm going to be the same and different." She has one opportunity to do that on Friday when she goes and makes this economic speech in North Carolina and then, of course, the next opportunity we get to see that is next week in Chicago

Brian Lehrer: They have a pretty good prime-time lineup from viewer interest points of view I would imagine. After Biden speaks on Monday, they have Obama in prime time. On Tuesday, Bill Clinton, who however mixed feelings people have about him, has proven himself to be a really dynamic convention speaker. I think his 2012 convention speech really helped Obama get reelected. Then, of course, Kamala Harris on Thursday. That's all coming up. Love them, hate them, be ambivalent about them, they're good TV.

Certainly, the audience is likely to be there at least as a starting point for what might happen as a result. All right. Interestingly, we're getting callers from North Carolina, important swing state you mentioned before, and South Carolina. We have to take a break but Tim and Greensboro, Tom in Rock Hill, you're going to be next with Amy Walter from the Cook Political Report as we talk about the presidential campaign right after this.

Brian Lehrer on WNYC. For those of you who haven't been with us since the top of the hour, I said at the top that our attitude on this show as you know if you listen a lot, is generally that the political media obsessed too much on the horse race, as if politics was a sporting event and not enough on the issues. We've been doing issue segments all this week, but sometimes we do polling segments when they seem to be significant for one reason or another.

We are in such a moment with major swings toward Kamala Harris happening in multiple polls. We're talking about what they might mean and what they might not mean with Amy Walter, who's the editor-in-chief and publisher of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter. Tim in Greensboro, North Carolina, you're on WNYC. Hello, Tim.

Tim: Good morning. Thanks for taking my call. Great show. In North Carolina, we have at least 14 Harris-Walz offices. They came from the Biden-Harris campaign. We didn't have any in 2020, and Biden only lost North Carolina by under 75,000 votes. A comment about North Carolina, but I'd love to hear how you're thinking and talking to young people, particularly college-aged kids.

We have more HBCUs in North Carolina than any other state. How are you talking to young voters who are in two-year, four-year colleges, HBCUs, or may not even be enrolled in a college or university but what they're thinking about this as these kids all flood back into North Carolina for the start of the school year? Thanks so much for taking my question.

Brian Lehrer: Tim, thank you so much. Call us again. Amy

Amy Walter: It's an excellent question. What's interesting too about Harris and her ability to speak to those communities is the fact that the campaign, even long before Biden dropped out, had been putting Harris on the trail in the south, Georgia and North Carolina, speaking in front of HBCUs and speaking in front of groups who were interested in protecting reproductive rights.

She already had built this foundation on that and I think here's an opportunity to continue to build on it in a state like North Carolina. As Brian said at the beginning of the show, North Carolina is one of those states that has seen a significant shift since May. I think part of that goes to the enthusiasm factor. North Carolina has been one of these states that Democrats have gotten really, really close, whether it was Biden or--

Brian Lehrer: Obama won North Carolina.

Amy Walter: Not since 2008. We haven't had a Democrat win since 2008 but it's always very close. It's just like if you think about it as a close race but at the end of the day, the ball always goes over the line for Republicans. Now, if you talk to folks down there, I spend a lot of time, especially talking with political scientists in North Carolina who study voting patterns. Their feeling mirrors what Tim I think, the caller who just called in was saying that where Democrats have really fallen short is on generating enthusiasm and turnout, whether it's from young people or whether it's from African American voters that Obama was able to do in '08 and it just has not been replicated.

It's not to say that they didn't try, but in some cases, maybe the message just wasn't getting through. To me, what I feel is also going to be important, part of the reason that North Carolina while close, has not flipped to Democrats in the way some other fast-growing southern states like Virginia and Georgia have is that one, it's still pretty rural and two, there's not one major metro area.

Georgia has Atlanta in its sprawling suburbs. Virginia has DC's sprawling suburbs. It's much more diffused in North Carolina and the exurbs in North Carolina outside of Charlotte and Durham and Raleigh are not as democratic leaning as they are in those other places I mentioned. I'm watching those smaller suburban communities, I guess we can call them exurbs in and around those areas that they've been voting more democratic than they were, say, ten years ago, but they haven't moved as quickly there. Then you're right, it is getting that Black vote generating real enthusiasm in a way that we haven't seen since 2008.

Brian Lehrer: Tom in Rock Hill, South Carolina, you're on WNYC. Hi, Tom. Thanks for calling in.

Tom: Thank you, Brian, and good morning, Amy.

Amy Walter: Morning.

Tom: I'm fascinated by the current election, how unique it is, and how incredibly tight the polling really is even as it swings. What I'm seeing is a more recent phenomenon that's been so obvious and that is the pandering of the campaigns to specific groups of voters. For example, there's two that come to mind recently. Certainly, there was Trump's offering the service industry tax-free tips, which really, when you think of the number of service personnel in our country is enormous.

Brian Lehrer: Harris then matched that.

Tom: Exactly. Right afterwards. Now, in Trump's most recent rally, he had a huge sign, Social Security, free taxes to seniors. That's a biggie as well. Now, Amy, do these really impact the polls in discernible ways? Shouldn't the Harris campaign come out and offer free taxes for seniors on Social Security? How can they not?

Brian Lehrer: That's tax-free Social Security benefits. These days, Social Security benefits are taxed depending on your income like other income. Go ahead.

Amy Walter: That's right. This is such a great question. We could spend a whole day on this because really what we're seeing right now from Donald Trump is an economic policy that is so different from any other Republican that has come before him, what he's advocating for. Taking taxes away from tips, Social Security, this is a big deficit adder. This was going to cost a lot of money. Where that money's coming from, he hasn't specified yet. Put that on top of his pledge to continue the tax cuts that went through back in 2017, again adding more onto the deficit. Unclear where that additional revenue is going to come from.

I think back to the 2012 campaign, where you had even George W. Bush talking about things like reforming Social Security and Medicare. We can't keep shoveling this money out the door. We've got to find a way to get our deficit under control. Donald Trump is coming from a very different perspective there and then he obviously is talking too about tariffs, which would also have an impact on the economy.

I think if you look at Nevada specifically, it is a state that depends especially there in Las Vegas, immensely on the service industry and it was hurt very much so by Covid and has not really fully recovered. You're right, if you take that out of a state, if you said, "Oh, this is just going to be unique to Nevada" and made it a countrywide benefit that has economic repercussions that I don't know that we are really prepared to appreciate right now.

Brian Lehrer: Tom, thank you for an interesting call. Please call us again. Listener with a Philadelphia area code texts, "In Pennsylvania, 34% of respondents said they would be more likely to vote for the Democratic nominee if the nominee vowed to withhold weapons to Israel, compared to 7% who said they would be less likely." I don't know if those are real numbers, Amy. You could tell me.

Amy Walter: I don't know where that--

Brian Lehrer: It doesn't say what poll. It obviously reflects the listener's opinion. In Arizona, similar numbers that they cite, 35% said they'd be more likely. Let me take that text with uncertainty about the accuracy of those numbers and frame the question this way. The convention will be in Chicago, and there's a lot of punditry about potential perils with Chicago 1968 when police clashed with anti-Vietnam war protesters. Then the party looked divided and Nixon wound up winning the election with convention week as one of the factors.

Next week we will apparently see meaningfully sized protests over the Biden-Harris policies toward the war in Gaza. Does your polling indicate how much of a constituency might withhold their votes in swing states over this? There was the uncommitted movement in the primaries when Biden had no opponent and some percentage voted uncommitted as a protest against the war policies. I've read that the Biden campaign had considered them numerically insignificant in the fall race in terms of altering his policy too much for purely campaign reasons. Do you have any clues as to where or how much that could matter?

Amy Walter: It's an excellent question. We did not ask that question specifically in our survey. I think that this convention will be very instructive, not just in how much the protests are covered, how big they are, what kind of reception they get from the DNC delegates, but how the Harris campaign addresses this topic in her speech, number one, that she gives on Thursday night, and who she chooses to have speak potentially to this issue at the convention.

Right now, part of the reason that Harris is doing as well as she is, is that she is in some ways something of a blank slate. You can put onto her really any of your own opinions or hopes or fears that aren't necessarily based in things that she has said or done, but just perceptions that you have of her. This week in Chicago, this coming week will be her opportunity, and I think she has to show what it is that she will do on a whole array of topics. There's no doubt that this is absolutely one of those topics that is going to be addressed regardless of what the protests outside of the convention center look like. I think what she says inside is going to be as important.

Brian Lehrer: We have one minute left in the segment, and I wonder if we could use it for me to ask you to do me and everybody a favor. That is talk numerically as briefly as you can about why everybody seems to say the Democrats can't win without Pennsylvania. That last text had a Philadelphia area code. There are at least seven swing states, each with their electoral votes but I keep hearing analysts say that Pennsylvania is a must-win, especially for the Dems. Do you say that

Amy Walter: Let me put it to you this way. Let's just go through the entire map. For listeners, there's a great website called 270 to win. It's the number 270 to win. You can play with the Electoral College map yourself. All right, and turn it red or blue or leave it undecided. What you find is if I give the Harris campaign Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Virginia but I give Trump North Carolina and Georgia and just leave Pennsylvania as the only swing state, that means that she's at 269 and Trump is at 250--

Brian Lehrer: Let's say we're in Pennsylvania.

Amy Walter: Exactly. More important, if you leave just all those swing states blank that I have mentioned, and you say, "How many different pathways are there?" I think the most important and potentially the easiest is Pennsylvania. Maybe that's the better way to say that because there are different combinations you can get to. It is that Pennsylvania itself, by its political makeup and its history, should be an easier state for Harris than, say,

Brian Lehrer: [unintelligible 00:39:15]

Amy Walter: Which is bigger than Georgia, which is bigger than North Carolina, which is bigger than Arizona. It's the biggest chunk of votes on the table in the toss-up. If you want to play with it yourself, I highly recommend doing that and you can see the different pathways yourself on how to get to 270.

Brian Lehrer: All right. More on that probably in October.

Amy Walter: Exactly.

Brian Lehrer: For now, we thank Amy Walter, publisher and editor-in-chief of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter. I know you're super busy this week since your new material came out. Thank you so much for giving us all this time today.

Amy Walter: You are very welcome.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We turn the page. Much more to come.

 

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