Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Are you ready to crack the cards and embark on a journey of endless fun?
Oh, and it's free. No strings attached. Don't miss out. Download now and start your Solitaire Grand Harvest adventure. Available on Google Play and the App Store.
It's like Mad Libs. Just throw in a noun with RFK Jr. and a verb, and it might have happened. But do we have... Okay, also, it's an island. Do we have bear cubs in Central Park? Because they can't just wander in. They have to take a bridge or a tunnel. They could escape from the Bronx Zoo, I suppose, is the thinking, maybe. But guys, I'm not
even allowed to put like food scraps in the public trash can on my corner because that's illegal dumping and has a fine associated with it.
Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk. The newly configured 2024 presidential election is taking shape. On Friday, Vice President Harris secured enough delegate votes in the DNC virtual roll call to become the nominee. And literally any minute now, we are expecting an announcement about who her running mate will be. In fact, by the
By the time you're listening to this, you, dear listener, may already know. But even if you do, this is not an episode that you want to skip. And here's why. So when Harris became the expected nominee two weeks ago, we said to wait about two weeks before you take any of the data too seriously. And we also said we'd have the polling averages back up once Harris became the nominee.
Both of those things have now happened, and today we're going to dig into those numbers. It also just so happens to be exactly three months until Election Day, November 5th.
I didn't look at any of this data when I was on vacation last week. And when I logged back on on Sunday, I was honestly a bit surprised by just how much the race appears to have changed according to our averages. Also to that end, we're going to take a look at some of what happened over the past week in the race and assess its impact.
So here with me to do all of that is senior researcher Mary Radcliffe. Welcome to the podcast, Mary. Good morning, Galen. Also with us is senior elections analyst Jeffrey Skelly. Welcome, Jeff. Good morning, Galen. And ABC politics reporter Brittany Shepard. Welcome, Brittany. Aloha, Galen. Aloha. Love the energy. So we're going to record a reaction podcast when Harris makes her announcement about her running mate. And as I mentioned, listeners may already know. But I want to give everyone a final chance
to get their word on the record before it's official. Brittany, I know that you've been following the TikTok over the weekend. Is there a clear favorite in this moment? Not exactly. I think if you look at where all the opposition reporting has come out over the weekend, there's clearly someone who is the top of mind of a lot of donors and Democratic strategists. That's Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. But I will say,
Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, and Mark Kelly, a senator from Arizona, have been really top of mind for a lot of people here in D.C. And I think those are the top three that people should be speculating about going into this potential announcement tomorrow. Does anyone want to put their credibility on the line here and say a name?
I'll do it. I'll stand 10 toes on what I said during the draft. Oh, wow. You're going walls. I'm going walls. I'm going walls to walls on this. I'm feeling it.
I it's kind of just been stunning to see as Andy Beshear, the governor of Kentucky, is kind of star is fallen in this process. Tim Walls occupy that space more and more. There was some reporting at other outlets that even Nancy Pelosi has been lobbying on behalf of Tim Walls, a former colleague in the House.
I think that there is a strong argument to be made that he can be kind of the attack dog on cable news in a way they really need, even though he might not help for the map, he might help for the message. And when I talk to people who are bullish on Walz Democrats, you know, they really see him. He has the charisma. He has the resume. But he's not somebody who is seen as like an operator just trying to become president waiting for when she's going to step aside. Got it. OK, Jeff, Mary, do you want to go on the record?
I'm not going to pick a name on the record, but I will add to what Brittany just said. You know, one of the things that I noticed over the weekend is it seems like there were a lot of people, whether within the Democratic Party or not, that were ready to dump Oppo on Josh Shapiro, which makes me think that there's probably a pretty concerted effort to move away from that direction. Now, ultimately, it's up to Kamala Harris, who she thinks she can work with and what she wants. But
I haven't seen as much negative stories coming out about the other potential candidates, really, just Shapiro. Isn't that, though, an indication that it's likeliest to be Shapiro? Because my sense of it all is that Mark Kelly is actually more to the center slash right than Josh Shapiro is. But the left has really come out sort of against Shapiro.
That's probably because they think it's likeliest to be Shapiro. And so they want to stem it before it actually happens, because if they're actually just thinking about the left right spectrum or whatnot, they would be sending the cavalry out against Kelly. Yeah. And they're really going hard against Shapiro. I mean, I live in Pennsylvania and they're putting out stories I haven't even seen before. Stuff that did not surface in the governor's race, for example. Yeah.
He's definitely top of mind, Galen. And I think the importance of Pennsylvania is not lost on Democrats. And for all strategists who are very bullish on the map being the reason to pick whoever Harris picks, I mean, Shapiro is an obvious choice for them. Pennsylvania is kind of a must-win state. So I think that is why, like, you know, you know if people are complaining about you, you're doing something right.
I think Shapiro is still the favorite. I'm not going to put a I'm going to I'm not going to say for sure that that's going to happen. But I think just well, I mean, to the to the points that have been made here, he seems most likely perhaps because you're seeing all this opposition research coming out in an attempt, maybe knowing that he's the favorite at this point, trying to to change minds. But.
It's true that we haven't seen someone picked sort of purely for swing state reasons in a while. Like, I mean, Tim Kaine was picked in 2016. Not since Paul Ryan. Yeah, I mean, I guess you could argue Paul Ryan in 2012. Yeah, but he wasn't a statewide official, right? Right, right. So, like, the evidence is pretty mixed that picking somebody to get a boost in their state is, like, a really good reason. However, Pennsylvania is essentially a must-win.
Maybe you want to take your chances on getting a half point. Even if there is the smallest of boosts, it might be the difference in everything here. Also, the opposition research so far is something that Harris doesn't worry that much about in a general election. It's the kind of stuff that you might worry about in a Democratic primary. It's things like when he was in college, he wrote about questioning a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine, or that he was overly harsh against the campus protesters during the Gaza protests.
Things that...
in a general election, may somewhat make him seem more moderate. And that's what Harris's biggest challenge is in this race. There also is some scrutiny, though, over how he handled sexual harassment claims in his office. It's just negative press. All right. Well, one final look at the betting markets before we move on. We have, according to Polymarket, Shapiro at 66% chance, Walls at 22% chance, and Mark Kelly at a 4%.
If it is Shapiro or Walls, I think that'd be the first time Democrats have picked a governor for their ticket in a very long time.
Charles Bryan in 1924, William Jennings Bryan's younger brother. That was the last time Democrats chose a governor. Yeah, it was the VP, I should say, is the VP. Interesting. Interesting. All right, well, let's see what happens. We're going to be back with everyone once we have a name in hand. But let's move on and talk about how the numbers have changed in this race. But first, a break.
Today's podcast is brought to you by Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, or OCI. AI might be the most important new computer technology ever. It's storming every industry and literally billions of dollars are being invested. So buckle up. The problem is that AI needs a lot of speed and processing power. So how do you compete with costs spiraling out of control? It's time to upgrade to the next generation of the cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, or OCI.
OCI is a single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. OCI has four to eight times the bandwidth of other clouds. It offers one consistent price instead of variable regional pricing. And of course, nobody does data better than Oracle. So now you can train your AI models at twice the speed and less than half the cost of other clouds.
If you want to do more and spend less, like companies Uber, 8x8, and Databricks Mosaic, take a free test drive of OCI at oracle.com slash 538. That's oracle.com slash 538. The numbers, not the letters. oracle.com slash 538.
Today's podcast is brought to you by BetterHelp. When your schedule is packed with kids' activities, big work projects, and more, it's easy to let your priorities slip. Even when we know what makes us happy, it's hard to make time for it.
For me, I'd say that's probably running. But when you feel like you have no time for yourself, non-negotiables like therapy are more important than ever. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist, and switch therapists anytime for no additional charge.
Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash 538, the numbers, not the letters, today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash 538.
Today's podcast is brought to you by SimpliSafe. If you're constantly thinking about the safety of the people and things that you value most, check out SimpliSafe. Sleep better every night knowing SimpliSafe's 24-7 monitoring agents are standing by to protect you if someone tries to break in and to send emergency help when you need it most.
SimpliSafe is offering 20% off their system. Just visit simplisafe.com slash 538. With the exclusive live guard protection, SimpliSafe agents can act within five seconds of receiving your alarm and can even see and speak to intruders inside your home, warning them the police are on their way.
It's no surprise that SimpliSafe has been named Best Home Security Systems by U.S. News & World Report for five years running and the Best Customer Service in Home Security by Newsweek. Protect your home this summer with 20% off any new SimpliSafe system when you sign up for Fast Protect Monitoring. Just visit simplisafe.com slash 538. That's simplisafe, S-I-M-P-L-I, safe.com slash 538, the numbers,
On Friday, we relaunched our polling averages at 538, and the headline is that this is a close race with any advantage falling within the margin of error. But if you were used to seeing Democrats down nationally and across the battleground states, you might be in for a surprise.
In the new averages, nationally, Harris leads Trump by a point and a half. In Wisconsin, the race looks similar. In Michigan, a two-point lead for Harris, and in Pennsylvania, a point lead. Turning south, in Arizona, Trump leads by two. In Georgia, he leads by one. And there aren't enough polls for averages in North Carolina or Nevada.
Big question first, Jeffrey. Is it fair based on this to say that at this very moment, three months out from Election Day, Harris is the favorite? I think it's better to just term the race as a toss up. If you think about some of the margins we're seeing in these races, they're well inside of like the bands of uncertainty in our polling averages. The best way to look at it is that I think before before
Before Biden dropped out, it did look like the race might be shifting into a landscape where Trump had a more a clearer edge and that it was maybe in a kind of leans Republican world instead of a toss up world and may have been trending further in that direction, depending on sort of are you talking about where the polls might have ended up or where they sort of were when he dropped out?
It's hard to know. But either way, now we have polling that shows the race running about even in a lot of these major swing states or Harris with even a small advantage.
At the same time, we're also operating in sort of the Trump era, and we have seen in that time that the Electoral College has tended to be more beneficial for Republicans, and that where the nation is overall is slightly to the left of where sort of the key swing states have been. Hillary Clinton won by about two points nationally in 2016, but lost in the Electoral College.
And so you might say, actually, that the polls are kind of roughly in that territory at the moment. So I think that speaks to the uncertainty here. And I think why, you know, toss up is probably the safest way to categorize it. Also.
We are reacting to what's been going on with the polls with Harris. We still have to get through the Democratic Convention. There's just a lot more movement that we could see as voters – right now there's been this positive response, but is there response bias or Democrats just more likely to answer polls right now and that's affecting the numbers a little bit at the margins? We just –
There's a lot happening. So I would say toss up is pretty safe. Well, to your point about the Electoral College, Jeffrey, one of the main reasons I was surprised when I logged back on post vacation was that Harris was up in all of the northern battleground states. And I know that if you look at polling averages at some other outlets as well, they're not all the same. So Harris isn't up in all three of the northern battleground states, for example, in the Washington Post polling averages.
But Mary, as our Pennsylvania correspondent, what should we what should we make of those slight leads for Harris in Wichigan, Wisconsin? I mean, you could combine them. I mean, Wichigan, Wichigania. What should we make of those pulling leads for Harris in Wichigania in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania?
I mean, I tend to agree with Jeffrey here that I would think this is a toss up. The polling leads, yes, she's ahead, not by very much. And in addition to potential non-response bias, I mean, one thing you have to think about also is
While it has been two weeks, at the state level, it's not like we have a lot of polls. The minimum number of polls we require to turn on a polling average in a given state is five. And then polling averages in the state level are influenced by trends on the national level. And we use those first five polls to sort of benchmark the state. How does this look compared to the national average? So we only have five or six polls in each of these states. And not all of them are necessarily polls of the highest quality. But
But ultimately, I think what we are seeing here is the burst of enthusiasm for Harris has helped her. It's pushed her maybe into a lead within the margin of error. But there's a lot of game left to play, right? Like, I don't think we should be deciding this race after the first quarter. We discussed earlier on maybe a Harris honeymoon where Democrats were super eager to respond to pollsters. You've already brought this up. So maybe...
we want to revise like from give it two weeks to, I don't know, give it a month. Just go back to our conventional wisdom of post Labor Day. Is that where we should be thinking about? No, I think we can see now after two weeks, some pretty clear changes in the race compared to where it was before Biden dropped out. I think the data tells a consistent story. And so I think it's fair to say this race is a toss up.
What I'm not as confident saying is that Harris will retain her advantage going forward. She might. She might not. Lots of things can happen. I need to learn all the different ways I could say toss up in reporting. You got dead heat, toss up. We have to think of all the thesaurus ways that we can describe coin flip. On a knife sedge. It's one of my favorites. Brittany, those are the numbers. What are some of the ways that the race has changed historically?
sort of underneath the numbers in terms of how the electorate is shifting its preferences or maybe even issue priorities. I mean, people just care a lot more, right? And like, I know we talk a lot about if things are just like chronically online, if it matches real life, but it's astounding for me to see even in just these organizing calls, guys, telethons are back with a vengeance. They're just here via Zoom now.
All of these women's for Harris, like all these micro labels for Harris, cat owners for Harris, I think happened a couple of days ago. They're raising in significant amounts of money, millions of dollars, like, you know, five million dollars from white dudes for Harris. Like people are organizing and they care in a way that's not motivated by fear or anger, which is what I haven't been seeing all Democratic messaging, which has been like, listen, your life is on the line. So if you don't vote and people get very angry.
disheartened by it. And I think we can abandon the term double hater. We've been hearing that a lot. And I think people actually care about whether it's Harris or what she represents or what they project onto the ticket. Like there's a lot more like positive affirmational relation within the Democratic Party in a way that, you know, when I was the RNC, I saw a ton of unity there. Like there was a clear like lockstep that I think is being mirrored.
Brittany, to your point about the double haters, who are folks who have a negative opinion of both of the major party candidates, so Biden and Trump, or now Trump and Harris, I
It looks like that number, if you look at the polls, has fallen significantly from about a fifth of the American electorate to something more like five to seven percent of the American electorate. And as we've talked about the double haters, we've also talked about how they resembled more Democratic voters than Republican voters, younger, more likely to be voters of color. Demographic indicators that you would expect in the normal course of an election would give some indication that they'd vote for Democrats.
Mary, what have we seen in the crosstabs underneath it all? Yeah, there's a huge change, particularly when you look at favorability numbers based on age. If you look at voters aged 18 to 29, their favorability rating of Harris improved by 15 points.
since before Biden dropped out compared to now, just looking at polls conducted since May. So 15 points is an enormous swing. You don't see anything close to that among older voters. They do have an improved opinion of Harris compared to before Biden dropped out, but not 15 points improved. So young voters really are driving some of that improvement. I also grabbed crosstabs by age looking at the top line, the horse race.
Different pollsters do this differently. So if you look at pollsters that bracket out ages 18 to 29, Harris has improved six points on the margin compared to Biden. If you look at 18 to 34, it's more like nine points. So depending on how the pollster brackets it out. But Gen Z and millennials, you can see these numbers improve in all of those. When you look at older voters, baby boomers, Gen X, actually Harris has declined a little bit compared to Biden.
before he dropped out. So this movement is among young people. And this all nets out to overall...
Harris's net approval rating improving by nine points, right? The day before Biden dropped out, she was 16 points underwater. And today she is seven points underwater, which puts her a little bit ahead of Trump, who's nine points underwater and well ahead of Biden, who is still 17 points underwater.
Okay, before we wrap up, I want to do a roundup of some of the events of the past week. And the reasons are twofold. One, it gives us a sense of what this newly incarnated campaign might look like over the next three months. Also, I was away and I need to get caught up. So y'all are going to help me do that. It's funny, in some ways, I feel like it was the least newsy week in over a month. But writing up a TikTok of it all, still quite a bit happened. We're
We're going to do a little game here where you're going to rate an event from zero to 10 in terms of how much it actually matters for the campaign. Zero is, of course, not at all. 10 is, you know, Biden dropping out or something of that caliber. So here we go. Starting on Monday, July 29th.
In an interview with Laura Ingraham broadcast that night, Trump didn't back away from a line he used the prior Friday in a speech to Christian conservatives saying, quote, I love you. You got to get out and vote in four years. You don't have to vote again. We'll have it fixed so good. You're not going to have to vote. Now, some folks took this as an anti-democratic message. Others said he meant you need to turn out this one time, even if you don't usually turn out to vote.
Given January 6th and everything that happened around the last election, we are paying close attention to Democratic norm breaking and how sort of smoothly this election will or won't go. Zero to 10, where are we ranking this? I think low. I think a two.
I would say. And I think that it only moves the needle because Democrats are now choosing to message against Trump on this. They have been saying, look, he's saying that voting is ever going to happen again. I think there's a bit of an assumption baked in that he's now saying that he will be, you know, ipso facto dictator for all time, which I think if you dig into the context of these remarks, that isn't exactly what Trump wants.
is saying here when he's been pressed on it. He said, well, I was just saying I'm going to make it so good you won't have to worry about the country because under me we're making America great once again, which is what you've kind of been hearing from him this entire time. I don't think it's a radical shift. I think we've heard from Trump over the last eight years. And I think he was just trying to tell, you know, make his pitch to a certain selection of voters. Yeah, I'm going to go 0.4%.
She's Price is writing me. I agree with everything Brittany just said. This is the kind of thing that Trump says. The context makes it clear that the the interpretation being pushed by some on the left is not at all what he intended by these comments. And ultimately, I don't see this as fundamentally significantly different than this is the most important election of our lifetime, which people say every four years.
All right. Next up, we have on Wednesday during an onstage interview at the National Association of Black Journalists Convention, Trump questioned Harris's racial identity, saying, quote, she was Indian all the way. And then all of a sudden she made a turn and she became a black person, end quote, seeming to suggest that this was for some sort of political advantage. Zero to 10. How much did that matter?
I think six. And the reason I'm saying this, because there also was some new reporting out from FiveThirtyEight that black voters, especially young black voters, are kind of a new swing group. There was some new data that you guys pointed out that black voters between the ages 25 and 34 gave just about equal support to Biden and Trump. We've all heard the reporting of attrition of younger black people from the Democratic Party whose older flanks are much more, I think, expected to turn out for Democrats, no matter who the nominee is.
But frankly, up until then, I mean, alienating any sort of coalition, especially younger black people who you've just kind of maybe gotten on your side, I think is a total fumble. I think it just needs to be said on this podcast, people are biracial. I am biracial. You can be more than one race. Harris is more than one race. That's kind of an open and shut thing. And it leaves a bad taste in some Republicans' mouths. You've already seen
Republicans come out and say, you know, either I don't know what he's talking about or, you know, walking away from questioning Harris's race. It's also a distraction from trying to hit her on message, on policy.
And I could see that really turning off, I would say, the young Black voter who is curious about the Trump fans tickets for a flurry of other reasons. Six. OK, up there. Four points away from Biden dropping out of the race. I think it's impactful because it's also very easily clipped, right? The Democrats, even though Harris doesn't want to talk about it, she doesn't because I think she believes that she doesn't want to, like, quote unquote, stoop to that level.
But tons of other people are talking about it, and it fits under that new attack line from Walls and others that Republicans are weird about how they talk about race. It is a distraction, as Brittany was saying.
And I also think that one of the things about politics is that sometimes you put something out there that now maybe your base is going to go along with. But if you're trying to win over some voters who may be uncertain and there are still a lot of voters who are kind of uncertain out there. But if you say something that's just sort of just like on its face, kind of an absurd statement.
The base will like it. I mean, you can think back to Trump and before he was running for office, I know birtherism with Barack Obama and promoting the idea that, you know, he was not born in the United States. He wasn't an American. The base liked it, but...
Other people didn't necessarily like it. And now, obviously, in 2016, that ended up like stopping Trump from winning. But people are a lot more familiar with Donald Trump as a president now than they were in 2016, for instance. So I just think it's just overall a distraction from the message. A lot of voters would find it just sort of absurd on its face. And so that's why I would say it's like it's just not good for the Trump campaign.
Yeah, I think even just a broader point here, it's so obvious when a politician starts talking if they spend too much time online. And being somebody who pays a lot of attention to public opinion data and what Americans actually care about, what they say affects them, what they say will affect their vote. When you start talking about things that just don't relate to normal Americans, it's really obvious. And I think this is a great example of that.
Okay, next up, also on Wednesday, a top Hamas leader was assassinated in Tehran along with a Hezbollah leader who was also killed in an airstrike, risking potentially a wider war in the Middle East. Zero to 10. And Mary, I know you have some polling on this. I think I'm going to rate this one a three. Hmm, okay. In part because...
In general, voters aren't paying much attention to foreign policy. It's just not what people are making their decisions based on. So if this was a more anodyne foreign policy story, I would give it a much lower rating like a one because there's a risk of war there.
I think that bumps it up a little bit, but still in general, I think voters aren't paying close attention to foreign policy. We had a poll out today from YouGov for University of Massachusetts at Amherst and WCVB that compared Trump and Harris, like whether voters who voters thought would be better able to handle certain issues. And they asked a bunch of things related to foreign policy. And it looks like voters don't have
a huge distinction between the two of them. So I think either candidate here really has an opportunity to define themselves. They were tied exactly 50-50 on who voters thought would be better able to handle just foreign policy in general. On Israel and Hamas, Trump had a little bit of a lead,
voters thought he would be better able to handle the issue by about eight points. But that's not a huge lead, right? We see much more significant differences on other issues like reproductive rights, economy, things like that. Wait, okay. So just to clarify here, we are saying that a potential broader war in the Middle East is half as important as
as Trump's comments at the National Association of Black Journalists. I am saying, you can say whatever you like, David. But I am saying for domestic electoral outcomes, yes. Interesting. Interesting. Okay. If we were ranking on the importance of how it might affect geopolitics, I think it'd be perhaps an 11. Yeah, correct. Yes, absolutely. All right. On Thursday, the press conference
prisoner swap. So a deal freed 15 people imprisoned in Russia and Belarus, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich. The Times called it, quote, a deal whose size and complexity has no parallel in the post-Soviet era, end quote. Zero to 10.
I think my instinct here, so I actually would actually rate the thing we just talked about maybe slightly higher because of just the risk, the war risk. So with that caveat, because I would have rated the previous thing a little higher, I would give this like a three. Competency is sort of an important thing. If you're thinking about the Biden administration and Biden getting elected in 2020 and the early part, like in 2021,
He had like a decent approval rating and like the low to mid 50s. And it was it was it was going down. And there were clearly concerns about the economy. But it really nosedived after Afghanistan and after the pullout there and suddenly sort of the like Biden's coming to the White House. Things are going to be a bit less chaotic, less there's any more competency in government.
I think the coverage of that and how it came across with the U.S.-backed government collapsing, the Taliban taking over, the stories about people getting out of there, like all of that sort of, I think, put the Biden administration's competency in question in a way that kind of hit at an important aspect of how Biden got elected in the first place.
And so for me, it's like this is sort of like a reverse thing, right? It's like a very high profile case of figuring something out and getting some people home with a lot of positive press coverage of it. And it was also an opportunity for Kamala Harris to to be involved in that discussion. Like clearly Biden as president gets a lot of the credit for this. But there were lots of stories about Harris's involvement. It's like a moment of competency, right?
Which is good for the current administration, which Harris is tied to, and good for her, especially when people maybe don't have the strongest opinions about where she is on foreign policy.
We got a few more. Friday, big-ish news day. Trump says he's dropping out of the ABC News debate and proposes one on Fox. That debate was planned for September 10th. Harris did not accept the Fox invite and said that she will be there on September 10th. So it looks like, as of right now, there may not be a general election debate between Harris and Trump. Zero to 10, how much does that matter for the campaign? I think it matters to seven, just from the Harris campaign perspective.
She wants it that she nailed him. She got it. She prosecuted the case of her to her frame. We've heard over and over and over again in the last few weeks there. So they were very eager for the Biden Trump split screen, by the way. It didn't work out in Biden's favor, but the Biden campaign was pushing for that. And there's a similar eagerness here. And I think if they're not able to get that,
They're only going to basically be able to picture he said, she said versus what's my record, here's how I am versus here's how he is. And a lot of people have short memories, right? You know, if people who are in the middle, independent, someone who hadn't really been paying attention at all, they might need that split screen to better inform them how they might want to vote in November.
Yeah. And Harris didn't have a primary. So she has really limited opportunities to put herself before a big national audience. And this is one of the big ones. So to take it off the table could be pretty challenging for her.
All right. Also on Friday, a jobs report shows hiring is down and unemployment is up. So according to the AP, employers added just 114,000 jobs in July, 35% fewer than expected, and unemployment is now at 4.3%, the highest since October 2021. As we speak, relatedly, the headlines across all of the major news sites is that markets are plummeting. That broader picture of the economy, 0% to 10%.
How much does it affect the campaign? So, you know, this one reminds me a little bit of the like we're having the foreign policy discussion there. And like if like things turn toward like American involvement in the Middle East conflict, it's like an eight, you know, or something very high.
One economic report, especially because many recent economic reports were like above what they were expecting. It probably doesn't mean much. But since it is something related to the economy and we know that voters care a great deal about that, I'm going to be cautious and just say it's a five because it could be like a 10 or a nine or something. And it could just be like a two. And so it's just sort of a question of how do people respond economically?
Well, this reminds me of some polling from Morning Consult that really stuck out last year, which was they asked, in order to address inflation, would you rather that prices go down or your income go up? Two thirds of Americans said they would rather have prices go down than their income go up versus only a third saying their income go up.
For most economists, they would say, actually, that's not good. Like for the economy, just take the raise, accept the increased prices and move on. Deflation is not good. Yes. Now maybe we will, you know, get a sense of interest rates begin to fall rapidly and Americans feel like things are cheaper. The gas prices are obviously falling as well as the price of oil falls.
So we will get a sense of whether Americans were being serious when they said, keep the raise. We just want prices to fall. And, you know, to that point about interest rates, I'm not an economist, but from what I have seen... You have a PhD in math, Mary. Come on, don't cut yourself short. Not economics!
But I think from what I've seen, folks are expecting that rates will get cut. And so we had this day of downturn in the stock market. I mean, check back in on the stock market the day the rates are cut.
Finally, on Saturday, Doug Emhoff acknowledged that he had an affair that contributed to the breakup of his first marriage. So as you discussed, there wasn't a primary process. A lot of potential opposition on Harris and her circle has not had that much room to breathe in the news cycle in just these two weeks. This was, I would say,
probably rank relatively minor scandal in terms of scandals, especially because it pertains to her husband before they met. But nonetheless, zero to 10. How much does this matter? I say zero because I feel like affairs don't really move the needle like they used to. People don't get like riled up about about an affair these days in 2024. Like,
Like you said, it was before Harris was even in the picture. I think it would have been different if it was in her own marriage. We see how that has obviously animated a nation. Totally. And he and his ex-wife seem to have worked through this. They reportedly are now friends. She endorsed Kamala Harris. So it's not like you've got the embittered ex running to the tabloids with a bunch of juicy details. It doesn't sound like that's going to happen. All right. Well, we're going to leave things there. In the end,
quite a newsy week for a week that felt like a reprieve from the chaos that started in late June. But thank you so much for joining me today, Jeff, Brittany, and Mary. Thank you, Galen. Thanks for having us. Thanks, Galen.
My name is Galen Druk. Our producers are Shane McKeon and Cameron Tretavian, and our intern is Jayla Everett. You can get in touch by emailing us at podcasts at 538.com. You can also, of course, tweet at us with any questions or comments. If you're a fan of the show, leave us a rating or review in the Apple Podcast Store or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening, and we will see you soon.