[music]

Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Let me give you a little preview of what I will be covering on election night, and then dig into one of those things right now as a heads up of something you might want to watch for. At seven o'clock on Tuesday night, I'll be hosting the first hour of our national election night coverage produced by us here at WNYC. It'll be a national call-in plus early results. One of the states we might know something meaningful about in that early hour is North Carolina, where the polls close at 7:30, and where I am told they will already have counted the early votes and be able to release those numbers.

Not every state does it that way, but North Carolina was one of those Obama, then Trump states. If Joe Biden carries North Carolina, and that result is easy enough to call early on that could be a huge bellwether early in the night for a possible blow up. That of course, there's only one scenario, but it makes North Carolina in the early hours, even the early minutes of election night really interesting to watch. We'll drill down on North Carolina here in just a minute. Then for the record at eight o'clock, we'll turn to the national coverage.

We'll turn the national coverage over, I should say to NPR, and I will anchor our local results in that eight o'clock hour just for our local listeners here in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Then at nine o'clock Tuesday night, and this might be fun for some of you, I'll be a guest on the media's Election Night special on Zoom. Maybe I'll have to put on my election night on camera best. It's really funny doing TV or Zoom appearances from home during COVID. It makes sense when you're going out to an event, to put out a suit, a tie or whatever, but when I'm sitting here, just off the kitchen, in full view of my trash and recycling bins.

It's so weird to get dressed up. It's one of the lesser weirdnesses of this year, but strange nonetheless. Anyway, I think this one will be pretty informal, but I'll be joining on the media Zoom special at nine o'clock with Brooke Gladstone for about 20 minutes. Then I'll sit around at home and might have a lot of media streams going and bite my nails with the rest of you. Just for the record on where you can find me, on the radio, and on Zoom on election night. North Carolina, The New York Times Siena College poll out today finds that two-thirds of likely voters in the state have already cast ballots and that Biden has about a three-point lead.

The lead line of that story calls Biden's lead small4 but durable. We'll find out how durable. I'm sure three points is within the margin of error, so small means small, but it's big state to watch. Let's take a closer look. Joining us now is Elena Schneider, National Political Reporter at POLITICO, and a North Carolina native. One of her articles last week was called, booming suburbs boost Biden in North Carolina. Hi, Elena, thanks for coming on. Welcome back to WNYC.

Elena Shneider: Hey, Brian. Thanks for having me.

Brian: Would you give us some recent history to start out? This is a southern state

that Obama won in 2008, but lost in 2012, I believe, why did he win and why didn't they want to reelect him?

Elena: You're right. North Carolina, for a long time was seen as a solidly red state, and in 2008, Barack Obama did something pretty unbelievable at the time, which was turned it blue. He was able to do that in 2008, by cobbling together a coalition of voters, turning out young voters at rates people hadn't seen in a decade, increasing and exciting the African American vote in the state which is critical for a Democrat to win statewide, and then peeling off [unintelligible 00:04:16] split-educated, particularly white women in 2008, to get [inaudible 00:04:21] North Carolina. It also had pretty famously an enormous Geo TV.

Mobilization, canvassing effort to go door to door to get people out to vote in North Carolina, long before John McCain even thought that North Carolina was competitive. As you know, he wasn't able to win it again in 2012. He lost that state to Mitt Romney and wasn't able to pull it off and no Democrat, at least on the presidential level has been able to pull it off since. It's a really fascinating state though, where even though back in 2008 nobody's been able to repeat that victory. It's one that's gotten increasingly more diverse, it's gotten bigger, about a million people have moved to North Carolina.

Particularly, those booming suburbs around Raleigh, around Charlotte, around my hometown of Winston Salem, where there are tech jobs, there are banking jobs, and that's brought in a lot of newcomers and a lot of young people and a lot of those college-educated voters that we've talked so much about this cycle.

Brian: A fair number of people from the New York area, moving down to the Research Triangle Area, Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill. I personally have family from Long Island. I know other long islanders, who've moved down there, other people, so it's a big place for New Yorkers.

Elena: Those are my parents. They moved from New York City, I was born in New York for about six months there and then, moved down to North Carolina. My family's part of that move too.

Brian: There you go. Listeners, help us out with this. Our phones are open, if you are in or have a connection to or have a question about the key swing state of North Carolina, 646-435-7280. 646-435-7280 or tweet a question @BrianLehrer. If you're there, or you're from there, why is your state so close? How do you see the end game or anyone, what do you want to ask POLITICO's Elena Schneider? 646-435-7280. 646-435-7280. You point out a new piece that Obama lost white-college-educated voters by 20 points in 2008, but Biden now holds a hefty lead among white-college-educated voters in the polls. Who are those people, and where did they live? Why are they switching?

Elena: I think those are the sorts of people who we were just talking about, those young people, those young families who have moved into North Carolina because of jobs. Particularly, in Wake and Mecklenburg County, these are two urban-suburban counties where like I said, Raleigh and Charlotte, play home to Raleigh and

Charlotte. That's where we've seen enormous growth in North Carolina. Simultaneous with that, North Carolina in a lot of ways is very much representative of the experience or the regionalization of politics and the polarization of those regions where the urban-suburban areas are progressively have grown bluer and bluer, cycle over cycle in the last decade, while the rural areas have become redder and redder.

That's really what we're going to continue to see. If Trump is able to hold on in North Carolina in 2020, it'll be because he performs really well in those rural counties. The problem for Trump though, is that that's where the population loss has been seen, or in those rural counties. Biden can really lean on this growth in the suburbs that we talked about, in comparing what Obama was able to do in 2008, and how he was able to stitch together that coalition.

Biden is repeating some of that, certainly, African American voters are still hugely important and critical to Biden winning there. In fact, you can see that evidenced in these trips that both Kamala Harris and Joe Biden have taken to the state, it’s almost exclusively focused on BLACK mobilization events to North Carolina. They know that that piece of the coalition is so critical, but their coalition is a little bit older and a little bit wider than Obama's.

Like I said, he's going to be able to peel off a significant chunk of those college-educated voters that Obama was starting to get a little bit of in 2008, sort of able to hold down the margins there. Now Biden has the pictures totally flipped. He's now going to be able to pull in all of that, and that may be enough to get him over the top in North Carolina

Brian: On BLACK voters, you cite a stat in your article that estimates that BLACK voters account for about 22% of the early votes that have been validated. How would that compare as a percentage of the vote to 2016, if you happen to know?

Elena: Unfortunately, this is a problem of covering so many states, as you've got a lot of percentages floating around in your head. I think that this story is about a week old, and I think that it's basically about still at those levels in terms of early voting. North Carolina, is a state where you can declare the demographics, so we have at least a little bit of a sense of the racial makeup of what's been returned. I think in North Carolina, in 2016, it was a ticker to below that. In Obama's case in 2008, he was able to get [inaudible 00:09:39] to about 23%. [crosstalk]-

Brian: You know what Elena, hang--

Elena: -the difference.

Brian: Hang on a second, we're going to put you on hold and we're going to try to clear up your line, get you on a better line perhaps because you're breaking up a little bit here and there. I want to be as clear as possible for everybody listening right now. As we continue with Elena Schneider from POLITICO. We'll start going to some of your many calls, yes there are a lot of connections between greater New York and greater North Carolina. Ron in Harlem, you are on WNYC. Hey, Ron, thanks for calling in.

Ron: Yes, my little brother lives in North Carolina, he's been down there for a considerable amount of time. He's from the army and got out of the army, you got a job on there and he's got a six-bedroom home for $200,000.

Brian: That's a different world.

Ron: I know, and he's from the Bronx, he lives well. He just bought a Mercedes, but the cost of living is a fact and it's just much better living down there-- That's crowded and congested as New York is. Also, if the Democrats get in, the stimulus money is guaranteed. A lot of people who are Republicans who need that stimulus money are going to vote Democratic. They might as well because once Biden gets in and the Senate is Democratic, and the Congress is Democratic, they are going to pass the $600 a week for unemployment and all the things that Pelosi wants. Everybody is going to vote Democratic for the money, that's another motivating factor.

Brian: A lot of people in North Carolina like in New York are suffering economically because of the pandemic and it's true in a lot of states. Ron, thank you so much for that. Larry in Port Washington, you are on WNYC. Hello, Larry?

Larry: Hi, Brian. I just wanted to tell you that I am a New Yorker raised, I've been here all my adult life. I have a younger brother who moved to North Carolina and is very successful businessman and we had a big fight at my kid brother's daughter's wedding about four years ago just before the election. He's very conservative and I know he listens to a lot of Conservative talk radio, but the other day he texted me in the morning, "Did you vote yet? And I just, "Lol," quite a weird random text and we ended up chatting about other family issues and he wanted to tell me that he voted for Biden. Early voted for Biden in North Carolina.

Brian: What flipped your brother?

Larry: Well, he just knows that Trump is a crank, he's a phony, he's a conman. Of course, we who've lived here in New York have known that for many, many, many years. I thought it was really interesting that he wanted me to know. He wanted me to know that because I remember at the wedding reception it got heated and I had to walk away and I raised my hand at him and he got angry and I was angry and now I'm getting all these wonderful texts from him. He's-

Brian: It's a wonderful story to hear because we hear so many stories about family estrangement in the Trump era and you are telling us a story of family reconciliation in the Trump era around this Biden versus Trump election. Elena Schneider from POLITICO who's back with us, who knows, maybe that will be the national story after the election. The polarization will flip to a new era of reconciliation, it's probably way too gauzy and pollyannaish view, but it's what Biden says he hopes to do. Maybe it'll happen in North Carolina, maybe it'll happen elsewhere. Elena do we have you back?

Elena: You do. That's certainly what Biden hopes to communicate. It's a message that he has held to since he launched his campaign, that has been his message, restoring the soul of the nation. Like you said, some people see that as maybe a little  

pollyanna in this era, but I think that's certainly his goal and I think that that's also part of what has appealed to people both in this primary and in this general election is the sense of a return to normalcy. Even though like you said it, we may not get there, at least the goal of getting there is one that I think is certainly very appealing to people.

Brian: If you're just joining us, I guess, this is Elena Schneider National Political Correspondent for POLITICO, who's from North Carolina and has reported on North Carolina, a very key swing state whose results we might know early on election night. Their polls close at 7:30 and they do count the early ballots earlier. Early votes can be reported in that first hour on election night.

The Republican Convention was originally supposed to be in Charlotte, then in the summer, Trump made a big show of moving it to Florida to get around the large gathering restrictions that North Carolina had in place like a lot of the other states to lessen the spread of coronavirus. He took a big whack at the governor, Democrat Roy Cooper for that. Then the virus spiked in Florida as well and Trump had to cancel that too and came slinking back to Charlotte with just a few events there to stay within the law.

I'm curious Elena, if that drama itself, including Trump publicly denouncing the safety limits imposed by the City of Charlotte and the state, have a political effect that you could observe one way or the other.

Elena: His handing of the coronavirus pandemic at large has been what is driving his loss of support particularly in those suburbs particularly with those college-educated voters. In North Carolina in particular, I don't think that his response to the RNC Convention was helpful. Democrat Roy Cooper who won in 2016, it was one of the few Democratic bright spots that year, he eeked out a victory over Republican Pat McCrory. Cooper's really been praised for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. In fact, he's pretty easily riding to re-election because of the way that he's handled this crisis.

The comparison between the two certainly does not help Trump, and it also, just more broadly again, his dismissal of the safety concerns and being a responsible example of the people both in North Carolina and nationally is something that remains a major concern for voters. As much as Trump would like to change the topic and not keep talking about COVID as he said regularly on the trail in the last few weeks, that that's ultimately the issue that is still dominating voters' lives.

Brian: Let's take another caller, Pat in Ashville, North Carolina, all the way west in the foothills of the mountains there, right, Pat, near the Tennessee border?

Pat: Yes, it's just so beautiful here. I am from West Milford, a very northern bare country in New Jersey. My daughter's here with the Marine Corps, and I came to see her in March when we had some trouble up in the New York area and I ended up staying here. [laughs] I've been here for the past seven months. Ashville is very left-leaning, but once you step towards out of the Ashville border, and you get into the

mountains, you see more Trump signs. I had done some activism with Rev. Barber's Poor People Campaign, and we went into Hendersonville.

We had gotten there and within minutes, we might have been there-- We did a car ride through the town three times around the block in front of Tom Tiller's office. Within 15, 20 minutes, people started coming out with their Trump trucks and their horns and we had already done what we came to do. We were gone, but they were pretty active. Lots of trucks, flags flying around, pretty loud pickup trucks with Trump flags.

Brian: Including in the--

Pat: When we walked around the neighborhood Biden signs were everywhere.

Brian: Pat, so interesting. That's America [unintelligible 00:18:39] in a certain way if you are in town, in the case of Ashville, and the cities you are going to see a lot of Biden signs you go outside. The further out you go you are going to see more trump signs.

Elena, Pat mentioned the presence of the trucks in the streets making noise and I saw this morning on the website of WRAL-TV in Raleigh, that Raleigh Police have been going door-to-door warning downtown businesses and neighboring areas about potential protests expected in the area tonight. I'm curious if you are in touch enough to know what we might expect to see in the streets around these election days from any political side in North Carolina.

Elena: You are certainly putting your finger on a fear that-- Look, election officials, county clerks, people who are going to be running these polling stations, they express real concern about and have been in touch with-- In our reporting in touch with law enforcement about how to handle potential voter intimidation should that happen on Tuesday. Obviously, preparing for a potential protests after the election should it not go the way that whoever shows up doesn't like-- Look, this has been a summer in which protests have really defined our experience even during a pandemic.

I think that there is, again, this expectation that we may see some reaction based on the election results, particularly if they are close. There's a sense that in certain States that people want to make sure their ballots are counted or feel like something on [unintelligible 00:20:25] is happening, even though based on all of our reporting, that's not necessarily expected, but again, this is a really tenuous moment and one that I think everyone is on higher alert and is trying to prepare for.

Brian: Also, joining us for a few minutes is Daniel Valdez, North Carolina coordinator for the Hispanic Federation engaged in a Get Out The Vote effort among Latinx people in North Carolina. Hey, Daniel, thanks for coming on with us. Hello, from New York.

Daniel Valdez: Hey, good morning, Brian. Thanks for having us.

Brian: Write your own story. What's your headline?

Daniel: The Latino vote here in North Carolina, it's going to be very, very important. Latinos make up for 4.4% of the electorate and it's only growing every election cycle and just to give you some reference in 2016, the election was won by less than 4% of the vote. I think that there's a lot of enthusiasm in the Latino community and we've seen that with the record voters that have been out there during early voting.

Brian: Elena's article on Politico the other day, refers to Democrats saying that there's a big Republican effort to suppress the Black vote in North Carolina. Do you see the same thing happening with respect to the Latinx vote?

Daniel: There's been a lot of groups on the ground here that are working to make sure that Latinos in North Carolina understand what the election process is like and get information out to communities. We definitely see that there is less knowledge about particularly early voting and mail-in voting process here in North Carolina with the Latino community as it relates to other groups and so there's a lot of local non-profits including the Hispanic Federation, making sure that Latinos are aware and understand how they can register to vote and actually go out and vote.

Brian: How hard is your Get Out The Vote effort, turning out to be so far to the extent that you can gauge it and in comparison to other years or Jorge Ramos from Univision has an op-ed in the times today, New York Times about how Democrats can get over Latinos, lack of enthusiasm for the party. How much lack of enthusiasm do you see because it is what people call Obama the deporter-in-chief in those days and all of this stuff. How much lack of enthusiasm do you see compared to 2016 and how are you working around it?

Daniel: As I mentioned earlier, we're able to see the votes that are coming in by party and by demographics, those kinds of things. Latinos in North Carolina as of yesterday over 88,000 Latinos have voted. This is compared to 45,000 from this time in 2016. We're seeing a huge uptick in the Latino vote for sure and so I think that we are well in line to a break of the record that was set back in 2016 by Latinos with 180,000 voters, we're expecting well over 200,000 Latinos to vote in North Carolina this year.

Brian: Daniel Valdez, North Carolina coordinator for the Hispanic Federation. Thanks for giving us a few minutes.

Daniel: Thank you.

Brian: Elena Schneider from Politico, anything you want to react to in that little conversation?

Elena: Certainly, I think that he makes a great point about the growth of the Latino community in North Carolina and he's right. That's a growing coalition that could present just as many opportunities for Democrats, but also some challenges. Look, Trump has had some success with Latino men in public polling and that's certainly an area of concern for Democrats, but more broadly to your point about the Get Out The Vote effort or mobilizing people to actually participate, educating them how to vote.

When I talked to democratic state legislators in North Carolina about their concerns about what keeps them up at night, a lot of them talked about how they are not able to do the in-person door-to-door canvassing that they were able to do in 2008 and that's part of their very real concern is that because there is no in-person effort that there may not be as much participation because voting is something that it requires a lot of steps to somebody to show up or cast their ballot or mail it in.

Some of that in-person canvassing can help that process along and Republicans in contrast, even though there's a pandemic going on, have chosen to do in-person canvassing to make sure that they're getting their voters out to the polls. When I've talked to Democrats on the ground there, that is something that they cite, that they are a little bit worried about.

Brian: What are these voter suppression efforts that you refer to in your article aimed at Black North Carolinians?

Elena: I think that this is a long-term challenge for North Carolina. I spoke with one of the statehouse leaders, leader Reives about who is Black himself and talked about the experiences that Black voters had had to deal with be it limiting the number of poll stations in certain Black neighborhoods or not seeing those be as well-staffed or well-equipped, but these issues have receded a little bit if they've helped somewhat by having a Democratic governor.

Ultimately, there's still a full control and the Republican legislature in North Carolina, but by having Governor Cooper there, he's presented a little bit of a track in terms of pushing back on some of those efforts. Democrats had had some victories in the court systems in North Carolina where returning ballots-- They've extended it by a number of days so if your mail-in ballot shows up after election day, as long as it's postmarked by that day, then that it can still be counted, which is something Republicans are pushing again. It's a little bit less, it's not to say that it doesn't happen, it's not to say it's not important there, but in some ways, a little bit less pronounced than it places like Georgia or even places like Texas.

Brian: Laurie in Raleigh, you're on WNYC. Hello, from New York, Laurie. Thanks for calling in.

Laurie: Hi, Brian, I'm so happy to speak to you, even though I'm here in Raleigh, North Carolina. I think the last time I called into the show my goodness, I think it was 2012. I was actually opening a charter school and you had an educator on your show that day and I called in. [chuckles] Here I am-

Brian: Do you live there now?

Laurie: Yes, 44 years, born and raised from Queens and lived in Long Island in Nashville County for 15 years and I've been here in Raleigh for now four years.

Brian: I'm so glad you're still listening and that you called in again. What are you saying? What are you doing?

Laurie: A proud sustaining member. I wanted to get that out there too.

Brian: Oh, thank you so much. What's happening?

Laurie: I will say that where I live in Raleigh, I'm in the very, very North end of Raleigh before it becomes a town called Wake Forest. I'm about 15 minutes from the Virginia border. In this area immediately, when I moved here, I didn't know it, I slowly started to find all the New Yorkers and a lot of New Yorkers from Long Island. In this area, I would say pretty affluent area, you feel that it's pretty liberal-leaning and then as you're taking a walk you will all of a sudden see someone walk past with a MAGA cap and your eyes would pop out of your head, like the emoji and you're like, "Huh," and then you realize, oh it's not what you've seen or it's not as liberal-leaning or it is but there are still little mixtures of other ideologies here.

I will say I voted back the very first week of October. I requested my ballot first time ever. Back in New York City, I always went to the elementary school back in SouthEast Queens and the elementary school around the corner from my house in Baldwin, Long Island, and so for the first time here I am with a ballot. It came and I was able to fill it out and it didn't have the extra envelope, which I thought was great, which everyone complained about. You have to sign it and then put it in another envelope and then-- None of that.

I simply put it in the mailbox and literally I was having it tracked by a system that the election board here was using called BallotTrax. I was able to see when the postman got it, it says the postman has your ballot. Then I got another email to let me know when it got to the election board and it says it's been received. Then I got another email saying, "Your ballot has been accepted." It's all within, I put in the mailbox on a Friday and it was accepted by that following Tuesday, Wednesday.

Brian: Then you exhaled.

Laurie: Absolutely.

Brian: Laurie, thank you so much for the story and keep calling us. Don't let it be another eight years. Elena Schneider from POLITICO helped me get ready to anchor this first-hour of national coverage on Tuesday night, the polls closed in North Carolina at 7:30 and how will they announce the results of votes like Laurie's that have come in by mail or other early votes that have been received by election day?

Elena: Well, so to Laurie's story, I think it's important to note to note too that more than 1.4 million voters of North Carolina requested a mail-in ballot. That's more than six times as many who did it in 2016. Only about 800,000 as of yesterday have actually been returned so far. When you're asking about what we might see as soon as those polls are closed, those mail-in ballots and whether or not we see the rest of those 800,000 returned are going to be key to our understanding of what North Carolina looks like.

Look, Democrats are expected to have a huge lead in mail-in ballots. Democrats in polling and self-declared said that they prefer to do mail-in ballots than Republicans. It's going to start out with an edge, but if it's an edge for Biden that is so large and so insurmountable, it's going to be really, really important for Biden to build that in those  

mail-in ballots so that he can hold off any losses that he'll see on election day.

Again, I would hesitate to make any declarations just based off of those mail-in ballots that we're going to get mail-in and early voting that we're going to get right when the polls close so that we can get a sense from some of the experts on the ground as to how much Biden needs to build that lead in order to hold off Donald Trump, who's expected to see a surge on election day.

Brian: Based on some of what you've said in our conversation today, it doesn't sound like it should be so close as a 3% margin in the polls that the latest New York times Sienna college poll reflects and that's pretty consistent with other recent polls, about 3%, which is small and really within the margin of error of most polls. Maybe we should call it a statistical tie. You were describing a 20 point swing compared to a decade ago in white college-educated voters likely to go for Biden, so many points more than they did even for Obama. You described rising African-American turnout, rising Latino turnout. People disenchanted by Trump's approach to the virus in their state. Why is it close?

Elena: Well, because we ultimately don't actually know if we're going to see African-American Latino turnout hit the totals that Democrats need. Like I said, those were critical, and that they're hitting an early voting just below where they need to be compared to 2008. That number has steadily ticked down as early voting has gone on and that number could get overwhelmed. Look, we're still waiting to see how Republicans perform on election day, but we've also seen an early voting as that has gone on that the composition of who has shown up is much more reflective of the state at large, which is about a third registered Republican, a third registered Democrat, and a third registered unaffiliated.

The hard thing is, and why it's hard to make these predictions, even though we do have clues from public polling, obviously we have modeling and a sense of modeling from inside the campaign themselves. We don't know ultimately how those unaffiliated voters are necessarily going to break and that's a key constituency. Some of those are certainly those college-educated voters that we've talked about that are now moving into the suburban areas, but that's not necessarily a guarantee that they're going to either show up in the numbers that Biden needs or that they're going to break for Biden over Trump.

I realize that a little bit of PTSD coming from 2016 of not wanting to over-interpret over-read the polls, overread this data before we actually know what the full dataset is because we don't have it yet. I think that it's important to still see this as a close state, as you said, in public polling, it's been locked within a margin of error and even though Biden has been consistently on top I am not ready to-- Far from declaring victory. Let's just put it that way.

Brian: Elena Schneider, national political correspondent for POLITICO on one of the key swing States to watch that we might have a very early as their polls close at 7:30 indication of on election night and a lot of early votes being tabulated now and to be announced at that time. I'll be anchoring in that 7:00 o'clock hour, a national election coverage special here on WNYC on Election Night. We will see, and we will be on it.  

Elena Schneider, Thank you so much.

Elena: Thank you for having me.

Copyright © 2020 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.