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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. It's election day plus two and we're right on the precipice of the presidential election being called for Joe Biden by the Associated Press and Fox News, at least those two news organizations. They both have him just one state away from clinching the electoral college. Other news organizations and we'll talk about this in a minute, have him two states away because they haven't called Arizona, there's a disagreement about that, but anything could happen at any time in the states that have been too close to call. Obviously, we'll have our eye on it throughout the show.

Of course, we're also now entering the legal challenge phase from the Trump side as of now to try to flip states they've lost or might lose, where they think they can make a case in court. We'll talk about the status of those. We're in the protest in the streets phase in New York and many other cities in support of Trump or in support of counting votes or reminding whoever wins that the movement for racial justice will continue on their watch.

There's Joe Biden's apparent lack of coattails, even if he wins it, starting to look like the American people delivered a very split decision. We'll hold off to the beginning of the show. We'll see if developments warrant it by the end, inviting calls about your inner life. Like how do you feel anticipating a Biden win, compared to how you felt anticipating Hillary Clinton win in 2016. That's a little premature, but if the networks call it and only the court cases stand in the way, we'll start taking emotional stock on top of Democratic stock.

We will also do a segment later, cruising the country for interesting ballot initiatives. There are some you'll probably like and some that will make you cringe. Blue California, no matter what side of this you're on, had at least two conservative ballot question outcomes, we'll get to those. We will return to our coverage of the coronavirus today. While the election officials were counting a record number of votes yesterday, the country also saw a record number of cases, above 100,000 for the first time ever. That would be a huge story today with deaths and hospitalizations, also going up with them if it weren't election day plus two and there are more warnings about not gathering with our families on Thanksgiving and things like that. Dr. Leana Wen will be back with us later in the show.

With us now, Harry Enten, Senior Writer and Analyst for CNN Politics with a focus on poll numbers and electoral trends. Those of you who've been reading Harry for a while, know he was at FiveThirtyEight before he went to CNN. Hi Harry, you've been probably up for 72 hours I'm guessing, so thank you for doing and welcome back to WNYC.

Harry Enten: My pleasure and to correct the record I've been awake for around 73 hours, not 72.

Brian: You really are a data guy at a level of detail that's either truly admirable or truly scary, I'm not sure which. So for you, as the data guy, let me jump right into the Arizona story. Fox News and the AP have called Arizona for Biden, CNN, you guys, and the New York Times and MSNBC have not based I think on the same data. Can you explain to our listeners what's going on?

Harry: Well, I could tell you obviously, from the CNN angle, and I'm not part of the decision desk so I shouldn't say that, but essentially, we are waiting on the results from these vote by mail and the results of the drop-off absentee ballots and to see if those differ from the earlier vote by mail in Arizona. We know that Democrats were very enthusiastic to vote by mail and they returned those ballots early on. The preferences in those ballots do not necessarily seem to match the preferences in those vote by mail that was returned later.

The ballots that were returned later seemed to be more Republican leaning and there are obviously enough ballots left in Maricopa County, in the state at large, more than enough to cover for the current spread between Biden and Trump. The question is, as each different batch gets returned is how Republican are those batches going to be?

At this point, we're not confident enough to know for sure how Republican those batches will be and will they be enough to overturn the result. We don't know. We're not saying that it will, we just don't know at this point and obviously you could talk to Fox, you could talk to Arnon Mishkin, a very good guy over there who runs that decision desk. Apparently, they felt that there was enough confidence that those later returns for those absentee ballots, despite the fact that there was a cumulative total greater than the difference between Trump and Biden, Trump would not win those by enough to cover his deficit

Brian: 400,000 or so ballots yet to be counted in Arizona last I saw on your network earlier this morning. When are you expecting what from Arizona to be able to make a call from your network's end?

Harry: Sure. Again, I say I'm not part of the decision desk, but I will say we're expecting a lot more Maricopa County votes to come in later this evening. I think that will give us a pretty good idea. One thing that I do know is I've talked about these batches of ballots. Different batches have different registration advantages for the Democrats versus the Republicans. The batches that came in last night, to my understanding, seemed to be more Republican leaning than perhaps some that may either come in tonight or later on down the line.

Again, knowing the party registration doesn't necessarily tell you who these folks have voted for, but I really wouldn't be surprised if some of these later batches from Maricopa, which is where Phoenix is, are not nearly as Trump friendly. Then obviously, there are plenty of votes that come in from the Tucson area and that tends to be a pretty Democratic area. This is a long way of me essentially saying that Biden to me is in fairly decent shape, but there's still a lot of unknowns out there, certainly enough unknowns for this race, not to be called at least from my point of view.

Brian: Listeners, we can take your vote counting questions regarding any state for Harry Enten, at 646-435-7280. Anything you want to ask or say about where the presidential race or any other race and we'll get to the Senate and maybe some other things as we go, 646-435-7280. Any Pennsylvanians listening right now, still ground zero for vote counting mush and we want to know what you're seeing in Pennsylvania, help us report this story or anyone else from any state with an observation or a question, 646-435-7280, with many moving parts still moving right now, 646-435-7280. What can Harry help clarify for you or anything you want to say?

You can also tweet at me at Brian Lehrer. We'll watch our Twitter feed go by. Harry, I get it. You're not on the decision desk. You're also not a pollster, you're a journalist who reports on the polls and you were on CNN on Saturday saying for Trump to win, there would have to have been an even wider polling failure than in 2016 for how inaccurate the final pre-election polls would have to be. Trump is losing as of now, but there is still a lot of talk of an epic polling fail having taken place. How do you see it?

Harry: Look, I think that that was almost seeing ahead to the horizon in the sense that it seems like at the end of the day, at least on the state level, we got a fairly similar polling list to 2016, and the good news if you're a Democrat or you're Joe Biden is because his lead was larger than Hillary Clinton's, it was large enough to survive that type of a polling list. I think that there are real questions that are going to be asked though, two consecutive elections in which the Republican candidates were underestimated and you'll note, I don't say Trump necessarily because it was all the Republican candidates. Susan Collins up in Maine, there was not a public poll that had her ahead as far as back as I can remember and she won that seat up in Maine.

Brian: In fact, did I see that she won by seven points, Susan Collins?

Harry: I believe that the margin was in the mid-single digits. Seven points sounds right to me, six, seven points. It was not that close. This idea that you know of, it's a shy Trump people don't want to admit their affection for the current president of the United States. I don't think there's that same problem with Susan Collins. I think that we're not quite sure what exactly happened at this point, but I will say that the polling error, two in a row of a similar size, but if, again, for Joe Biden, he had a larger lead coming in so he ends up winning even if by the skin of his teeth if the leads end up pulling up for him.

Brian: In fairness to the posters, you also wrote on CNN's website on Saturday, that Biden should win according to the polls, but that only Biden's advantages in Wisconsin, Michigan, Nebraska's 2nd congressional district, which he's been called the winner of, and Pennsylvania, were five points or greater. All the others he was leading in were by four points or fewer, which would pretty much put them in the margin of error. Those were Georgia, North Carolina, Florida, and Iowa, and put that way, the polls were not too far off.

Harry: That's I guess maybe an optimistic way of thinking about it, but the reason I made those groupings was because I had 2016 in mind. I was essentially saying to myself, Okay, if we have a similar miss, then does Biden have enough support in order to get over 270 electoral votes.

The one thing I will definitely point out is, with maybe the exception of Georgia, which is a very fascinating case as far as I'm concerned, essentially, the order of the states ended up being correct. That is where Biden's leads were largest, that's where he won, and the relative order of those leads ends up being seems to be where the results have been best. Obviously, below five points, with the exception of Georgia and Arizona where the lead was essentially three or four, the largest of that group, right now Biden has a lead. It just seems like, across the board, there was this uniform swing by which the polls were off.

Brian: I'm curious if you know if there's any indication that the campaign's internal polls were any more accurate or any less accurate than the public polls. Like was Biden misled by information he was getting from his people into bothering to campaign in Ohio, as he did at the end, or Florida or Trump misled by his internal polls for campaigning in Minnesota, for example?

Harry: Yes, so my understanding and it's limited, is that the Democratic polls in Pennsylvania, for example, seem to have Biden up by anywhere from four and a half to seven points, pretty much matching the public polling. Biden has a fairly good shot to carry the state certainly not called by anyone at this hour, but it would seem that he came in under that average. In terms of the Trump folks, I can tell you that they were trying to sell the media on the early vote, saying we like the early vote numbers that are coming out, we're not looking at the polling to suggest that Trump has a pretty good shot.

There has been some reporting to suggest that some Republicans saw the races differently, saw that the republicans were in a better position than some of the public polling, but I don't think necessarily that was a uniformly held view. I will say, at least in this cycle, it does seem that the Republican polling had a better understanding of what was going on than the Democratic polling. But I will also note that someone like Dave Wasserman at The Cook Political Report, who was looking at a bunch of District polls, thought that Joe Biden was going to do very, very well on Tuesday, while it does seem like he is ahead in the states that is necessary to reach 270, obviously not called at this point, it was not the blowout win that I think a lot of internal pollsters were anticipating.

Brian: Paul, in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC with CNN Politics analyst Harry Enten. Hi, Paul.

Paul: Hi, so my question is rather simple. Nevada has been 6/10 of 1% now for it seems like two days, which is terrifying for those of us who are for Biden. Can you say your reasoning behind thinking those that do think it, that Nevada will in fact go to Biden or what's the thinking around Nevada because man, that's razor-close, and I don't see Biden winning the presidency without it?

Brian: That's the one that everybody's sitting on the edge of their seats waiting for it to tip because people are saying it looks like it's going to go for Biden, and it's got exactly six electoral votes, and Fox and the AP have Biden at 264, I had so if he gets six, he gets 270, bang. How do you answer Paul's question, Harry?

Harry: Sure, multiple things. One, certain states like to drip out boats. As soon as they upload them into the system, they put them out in the public sphere. Other states like to get a whole bunch of boats, a bulk of boats, and then push those out, that's much more of Nevada's thing. You basically hadn't seen them update anything, because they're waiting for more of a bulk. We should get that later on this afternoon in the east, so do expect an update from the Silver State.

What I will note is most of the vote that's remaining there is vote by mail. It's later returned vote by mail, so perhaps it will be more Republican-leaning. We don't know that than the earlier vote by mail, but of course, in pretty much all of the states, the vote by mail is more Democratic-leaning than the vote on Election Day. That's really where Trump was able to catch up in Nevada.

I think that the idea that Biden would ultimately win the state would be because the votes that are remaining tend to be are all vote by mail. More than that, there's a lot left in Clark County, which is Las Vegas so there's no reason to think at this point that the remaining ballots are more favorable towards Trump than the current margin, but it is very, very close. The one thing I will note, of course, is what, Brian, you pointed out Nevada plus Arizona gets you to 270 given Biden, at least in the CNN count is at 253, you can basically make a very easy path for Biden through just winning Pennsylvania. Nevada is not necessary, but obviously, it would you want more paths, and winning in Nevada would make it easier for the former vice president.

Brian: What do you think about the status of Pennsylvania? For people watching the returns on election night, it looked like that's really headed for Trump. Now, it seems like it's really close.

Harry: It is very close. I actually think and a lot of people who I follow and respect think this, that I would like the trend line in Pennsylvania if I were Joe Biden, and this came down you heard it, I don't know if you watch enough. If folks watch CNN, I was hinting at this very much so, is in those northern battleground states, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The vote by mail was reported later, for the most part, the Election Day vote was reported first.

We know that Democrats were much more likely to vote by mail, so essentially, what happened in Pennsylvania, which was the same thing we saw repeated in Michigan and Wisconsin, was Trump jumped out to a huge lead as the Election Day returns came in first. Then as the vote by mail came in, Biden started catching up because those were much more Democratic-leaning ballots. That's essentially what you've seen from Pennsylvania as those vote by mail ballots come in.

Even in those counties that might seem redder, the returns in those counties are much more blue. It tends to be Democratic, and in a place like Philadelphia which runs in presidential politics, four or more, four to 1/5, 1/6 to one Democratic, we've seen some of these votes by mails come in, some of these batches, like 93, to six for Biden. At this point, there are more than enough votes for Biden to catch up. The question is, does the current trend line of how favorable those vote by mail have been providing hold up? So far, there hasn't been any lessening of that trend. Of course, we'll have to wait and see.

Brian: Tantalizing for Democrats. One more thing about that, Trump is going to the Supreme Court to try to get them to invalidate any of these mail-in votes that arrive after Tuesday, right. This whole issue of Pennsylvania law allows the ballots to be counted if they arrive by Friday, tomorrow, as long as they were postmarked by Election Day. Trump is trying to get those invalidated. Let's say he wins, how determinative could that number of ballots be with respect to the election?

Harry: I tend to think that surprisingly, it won't be. The reason I say that is the margin would have to be very, very thin, and Democrats made a real effort in the final month of the campaign telling folks get your ballots in early, early, early early. There was one report from, I believe a county board official from a fairly large County, the name of which is escaping me at this point. I think it was Montgomery, but I may be mistaken, that there were very few in the hundreds of ballots returned after Election Day. I don't think that the state will ultimately end up being that close that it would matter.

I think it's probably inconsequential, but of course, we'll have to wait and see. Maybe some other counties had some different votes, and maybe tomorrow, there are more that come in. Overall, I don't think that's the number one concern for Democrats at this hour.

Brian: Maggie in Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania, you're on WNYC. Hi, Maggie. Thanks for calling in.

Maggie: Sure, Brian, thanks so much for taking my call. I really am very grateful for you. I just wanted to share my experience voting here. We're originally from New York, but we moved out here and registered to vote, and we voted on voting day. It was actually pretty simple. We waited in line for like over an hour, but people were nice enough that there were a lot of trucks driving by like with Trump flag saying make liberals cry again. Beeping and stuff like that. [chuckles]

Brian: Obnoxious, but it's not going to--

Maggie: Obnoxious, but yes, not terrible. I would say that, in general, it feels very Trump-centered around here. There's a lot of Trump signs, and we were in a sign war with our neighbors of putting up a sign, and then they took it down and then we put it back up and then they took it down, and we have one that still has been up for a couple of days. We have hoped but all said and-- All in all, it seems pretty civil albeit Trump leaning.

Brian: We had a caller at the end of our evening special last night from New Jersey, from a place where there's a lot of Trump support. She talked about like a community in decline in disrepair. People who got along with each other in the past in a passing way sneering at each other in the supermarket kind of thing. She didn't say those words exactly but that was the feeling. Do you get that feeling or something better, where you were there in Pennsylvania?

Maggie: I think it's a mix. I think in general, a lot of the Trump support for us on a personal level, even though my wife and I have a young baby, so I think we're sort of a palatable liberal if you will, so it feels like people have been kind to us, albeit sharing what I would consider misinformation, but I think we're right over the river from Narrowsburg, New York and I think there, there's a lot more animosity because the liberal exodus to this relatively, if not poor, like struggling town, there's a couple of like, there's a bar in town that has a whole lot of signage of like a porta potty saying, liberals vote here or something, I can't remember exactly what the sign was, but it seems much more anim-- Like, much harder over there.

Over here, it doesn't feel, at again, on a personal level, people have been mostly respectful and again, at the polls, there were certainly a lot of people pro-Trump/pro-America, but didn't feel, I didn't feel any intimidation or I didn't feel any kind of, it doesn't feel hatred on a community level, it feels more global, if that makes sense.

Brian: Right. Maggie, thank you so much for checking in. Please do so again. Somebody else with a Pennsylvania story to report. Dawn in Queens, but who was volunteering in Pennsylvania down the stretch. Dawn, you're on WNYC. Hi there.

Dawn: Hi, thank you so much for having me, Brian, I'm like such a massive fan and quote you constantly.

Brian: Thank you.

Dawn: I was calling because as myself and most of my friends were out of work, Broadway actors, and have found ourselves with a lot of time on our hands and so there's been a massive coalition of us who have been phonebanking for months now. I phoned banked in Colorado, Michigan, Wisconsin and then mostly directed my personal focus and time towards Pennsylvania, specifically Bucks County and Montgomery County.

In my month of calling and then in my in-person canvassing over the last week, I was really scared and terrified by the degree of low information voters that I came across, many of whom would site Facebook or Fox News, others such sort of fringy, news outlets, Democrats, who would say combo name in a mean way, and when I would, where did you learn about this? It was frequently Facebook.

I've been tinkering around with the idea that perhaps in the polling, going forward, it would be a worthwhile follow up survey question to find out where these people are getting their information from because my impression was, it would really- the opinions would swing, even in my chaser calls with some of the same folks, the opinions would swing based on what they read on Facebook.

Brian: That's an interesting report from the field. Harry Enten from CNN, does your reporting back that up?

Harry: Well, I will say this much, I think that we're going to have to see after the election, which variables correlate best with perhaps getting the polling more in line with what actually occurred. I'm, I would be open to a whole slew of things to see because at this point it's clear that there has-- It could be low social trust is something I've heard very frequently that people with low social trust are less likely to pick up, answer the poll, and it could be that some of those people might in fact use Facebook, and they're, they don't trust mainstream media, for example, So I could see that definitely being a variable that is correlated with making the polls more accurate, of course, I have to wait and see on that.

Brian: Dawn, can I ask you something? As somebody who is obviously for the Democrats, I guess liberal in your politics and you described yourself as a Broadway actor, do you have any identification with the open up faster movement, if movement is the right word, on the grounds that, hey, let us try to do it in a safe way with limited audiences, filtration, et cetera, and not be the lockdown party talking to your own party?

Dawn: It's interesting you say that because my brother is actually a Broadway music director and he's in Australia right now putting up Pippin, I don't know if you remember that revival that was on Broadway a few years ago. It's pretty painful for him because obviously, Australia's doing a wildly better job than we have, but their, it's their percentage, I can't quote the exact numbers.

Brian: Yes, they don't have much [crosstalk] there.

Dawn: Yes, yes and so they are fully masked, they're fully everything, but they do sing without the masks on, and it's been a month and so far so good. It's just been a very, it was a very emotional, it's been an emotional time for him obviously, and so far as like open up faster thing, no, I mean, I feel like my community is working really hard to be creative in the way that we're performing.

Like I just moved to Queens and outside my window on Long Island City, there's concerts, dance performances every night, and I think we have a very strong dedication, of course, to the public and we're very public oriented and minded and we are, we tell stories for a living and we don't want to be sending the wrong message out that like, everything's fine. I think that it's been an opportunity for us to--

It's been hard, it's been brutal and certainly, not getting more help [inaudible 00:26:29] then was definitely a talking point to me and I used as an entry point to try to connect with Trump voters saying like, I understand I'm out of work and I really empathize with that. It's really hard. Here's where I'm coming from, why I support a more tier based whatever on opening up, these are the ways that my communities have tried to adjust and, so no, I guess the open up faster thing, I don't really, I don't want to go too far into it, but I do work at a school, a college that is partially reopened and we've had cases that are breaking out, and so I get to see firsthand where how bad singing is in person and so that's where I'm at and at least my friends in the community feel that way.

Brian: Dawn, thank you so much for your call and your thoughtfulness, I appreciate it. With Harry Enten from CNN, How are you? You've got a little Tweet blowing up this morning with over 1200 likes before we went on the air, maybe you've got thousands of likes by now, I don't know, and it's not a snarky tweet and it has no cute puppies, it just says, "Would be quite something if Senate Control came down to runoffs in the same state in January." So Harry, might we be looking at that scenario?

Harry: I think it looks pretty likely at this point. Democrats need a net gain of three if Biden wins the presidency, obviously he's ahead in the necessary states to get 270 electoral votes, and if you need that net gain of three, the Democrats picked up Hickenlooper in Colorado, they lost in Alabama, that brings them back to zero, but they gained at this point, if Mark Kelly holds on to win in Arizona one, that means they need two seats. We know that the Georgia special election is heading towards a runoff and right now, that second, the regular election, David Purdue, the incumbent Senator is hovering right around 50% and with the remaining vote by mail, my guess is he'll come under barely under that 50% mark, which means it's a runoff in Georgia because you need at least 50% of the vote plus one, in order to win outright and that means two runoffs on January 5th, in Georgia, to determine Senate Control.

Brian: NPR's Mara Liasson, was talking on Morning Edition about the conflicting sentiments in Democrat world. Assuming Joe Biden does seal it, the conflicting sentiments are of having succeeded and failed at the same time. Again, assuming he wins, they would have won the presidency, but not by a landslide, and as Mara put it, Biden had no coattails. Did Biden have no coattails or even reverse coattails when it comes to congressional races?

Harry: The way I would look at it is if you look across all the Senate races, I believe the only race at this point in which Biden is ahead and the Democratic Senate candidate did not win is in Maine. The Senate race has pretty much matched the presidential races for the most part, obviously the margin is differ in some states. I would not say that there was reverse coattails, I wouldn't say he had no coattails, I'd say he had about the amount of coattails you might expect for a Democratic presidential candidate getting the vote margin that he did.

Now, obviously you can argue one way or another whether or not he should have performed more strongly than he did, but in terms of his performance, I think that the performance of the Senate Democrats is not really all that surprising.

Brian: Didn't they lose 12 seats in the House?

Harry: Yes. They did lose a number of seats in the House and that was quite surprising. Most forecasters had Democrats gaining seats in the House, they in fact lost seats in the House, but many of those were in fact in red districts, they were districts that flipped in 2018, districts that Donald Trump won. Again, that is not out of line with what we generally saw. It was not the fact that there was any reverse coattails or that Biden lacked them, it was just where he won, the Democrats in Congress won, where he lost, the Republicans in Congress won. It seemed to match up pretty much how you might expect in today's polarized day and age.

Brian: Interesting, and 12 seats wouldn't be enough to flip the House, Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats would still have control. We'll talk in just a minute with Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, who's one of Nancy Pelosi's main deputies in the House and represents Brooklyn and Queens about that and other things. Hakeem Jeffries coming up in just a couple of minutes. He's on the House Judiciary Committee and is a lawyer. We'll talk to him about the Trump election lawsuits as well.

Harry, before you go, I think it's possible that if Biden does actually win, the basic theory of the case of his campaign applies, a return to normalcy, or at least a partial one. One version of normalcy in America is not utopia, it's just normalcy. It would be the sociopath authoritarian conman president who rules by divide and conquer, as many people see him, would be out. He really was an aberration and the American people as landlords of the White House did not renew his lease in this scenario, but we are a divided nation with big unresolved issues, and that's actually normal.

Obama, Bush Clinton, Reagan, Nixon, we're talking 50 years now, all had some form of divided government, them and Congress to varying degrees. People elected a president of one party but put a check on him by giving at least one House of Congress to the other party so neither one goes too far, too fast, and that may not be ideal if you want to make change. It doesn't make racial injustice stop or halt the pandemic in its tracks or anything else, but it is actually a return to something that is quite within the bounds of normal, if it's without Donald Trump. That's at least one way of looking at it. How much do you buy that as where we might be headed if Biden wins?

Harry: It could be the case. I think it's going to be very interesting to see whether Biden's theory of the case with his relationship with Congressional Republicans hold true. Can, in fact, he make at least a few deals? Obviously, they're not going to hold hands and sing Kumbaya together, but maybe they could get some functioning government together. Maybe they can come up with a package to help send out money to folks during the pandemic.

I think that it's going to be a wait and see, but certainly, nothing so far suggests that we're heading towards something even more ridiculous or something even more outside of the historical norm than we've seen over the past four years with President Trump, who his supporters may love him for acting unpresidential, his opponents very much didn't. I think that the Biden presidency at this point looks to be off on a more normal footing, if in fact, he does win. Again, we'll have to wait and see, but I think that your theory of the case, at least at this point, has nothing to go against it.

Brian: Harry Enten, Senior Writer and Analyst for CNN Politics with a focus on poll numbers and electoral trends. Harry, we really appreciate it. Thanks so much.

Harry: Thanks, Brian. Great to be with you. 

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