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Welcome to another special episode of Pod Save America. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. This is the final bonus pod I'll be hosting on Sundays in the lead up to the election. If you like these episodes, I highly recommend you sign up to get my subscriber show, Polar Coaster, by subscribing to Friends of the Pod at crooked.com slash friends or through the Apple podcast feed. It's where we really dig deep into polling and political trends. It's a great way to support Crooked Media. And we

We have a 25% off discount for annual subscriptions right now. In today's episode, we're going to dig deep into the state of the race as we approach the final days of the election. And I can think of no better person to join me in this conversation than Steve Kornacki. He's national political correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC and the man behind the magic wall. Steve, welcome to Pod Save America. Thanks. Great to be here. So before we get into the nuts and bolts of the race and what we're going to see in this election, I do have to ask you,

What is your plan for how to get ready for election night? Do you have one big meal early on? Do you stop drinking water at like three? How much caffeine do you take? I mean, you are on call for days potentially. How do you get ready? It's not too elaborate. The excitement of, you know, everything gets me easily through the night. I don't have to do, you know, anything artificial for that.

I guess the big thing is I always, I carve out like two hours in the middle of the afternoon to go take a walk. Just clear my head. You know, you get all those anecdotal turnout reports and it's just, they're useless. So, you know, just ignore it. Yeah. I know you guys have game planned a whole bunch of different scenarios about how this election could go. We didn't learn for several days in 2020. Have you guys thought about based on changes in who's voting, how votes are being counted, when we're likely to get a result here or what some of the different scenarios may be?

Yeah, I mean, I'm sort of cautiously optimistic it's going to be quicker, maybe significantly quicker. The main difference is just the volume of vote by mail this time around. It's down dramatically. That's what really clogged it up in 2020 in some of these states. Plus, some have changed their procedures to make it even better. Others that haven't even changed their procedures, at least they have more experience with it now, a couple of elections under their belt. So

Yeah, I remind people, you go back one election further, 2016, it was a close election. It was a couple states by about 50,000 votes, 75,000 votes. We had the verdict by 1.30 in the morning, I would say. That is a verdict I remember quite well when that came down, as you can imagine.

All of the polling suggests that this is one of the closest races in history. We're basically at a one-point Harris lead in most of the national polling averages. Battleground states are, at least if you look at the New York Times average, all under two points. Many of them tied or under one point. How are you sort of seeing the race along those lines?

Yeah, I'm sort of at the point where I don't think it's going to change dramatically. I don't know if I'd even trust it if a bunch of polls suddenly showed some kind of movement. And, you know, my overall thing here the last two months really has been I just don't trust confidence, you know, period. The more confidently somebody is asserting they see something in the polls or the early vote, the more skeptical I become.

I think that's fair, particularly when it comes to the early vote. You know, 2020, 2016 marked in many people's minds by a pretty significant polling miss, mostly on the state side in 2016, everywhere in 2020. Do you have greater confidence that the polls are accurate this time? If so, why?

Well, yeah, it's one of those cautiously optimistic things again. But there's an argument that the fact that they're so close right now across the board, Trump is running at a higher number than he polled at in the past. And the race is closer than it ever was in the polling in 16 and 20. Is that the sign that the Trump voters who were missed in 16 and 20 are now being accounted for? Whether that's because of methodological changes from pollsters, whether that's because of the

Did it self-correct? Was the big miss in 2020 more the product of just the weirdness of COVID, the pandemic? Did that somehow? So, I mean, that's one way to look at it. But yeah, I mean, when it's happened two elections in a row, I don't discount the possibility that, again, the Trump vote's undercounted, maybe not by as much, but even by a little would make a huge difference. And

Poll misses do not always have to favor Republicans. We've seen it before the other way. And I'm very alert to that possibility too. The other thing I always try to tell people is if the polling has Harris up one and Michigan and Trump wins by two, that's not actually a polling error. That is within the range of expected outcomes. There's a chance that this could end up where we have a big polling miss one way or the other, but the more likely scenario to race this close, if you look at 16 and 20 as benchmarks is-

the outcome is likely within the margin of error of the polling average, which is not an error. It just is the reality of, it's like 2022, right? Right. Some states, they underpredicted Democrats. Some states were right on, but historically accurate polls, right?

Yeah, I mean, like the big miss in 20, for instance, was Wisconsin. It was the worst of any swing state. The average was about eight and a half for Biden going into Election Day. Six tenths of one point was the final result. There was a famous, you know, ABC poll October 2020 in Wisconsin that had Biden up 17 points. You know, I mean, that's that's the scale of what we were talking about four years ago. Yeah. So it's election night, right? The first battleground state where the polls close is going to be Georgia.

What are you going to be looking at in Georgia? And I think that one of the things I just want to tell voters is, you know, everyone has their model, right? That's all these polling is a model of what people think the electorate is going to look like, Republican turnout, Democratic turnout, by demographic group, by age. And I think that's going to be a big thing.

And sometimes we learn early on that that model is off. Are there specific counties in Georgia, specific things you'll be looking for when those polls come in? North Carolina obviously comes 30 minutes later. But I just want to research your warning signs. So I'm going to look at a couple of places in Georgia. First is what I call the blue blob. And it's the Atlanta metro area. It's now nine counties in that core that Biden won by, you know, cumulatively like 37 points in 2020. It counts for more than 40 percent of the vote.

statewide is just getting bluer and bluer every election. My question there is, I guess one of them is, is the blob expanding? There's one county in that area

that's been moving pretty dramatically towards the Democrats, but just missed Fayette County the last time around. If the Democrats are flipping that this time around and expanding that blob, I think that's a sign because that's talking about enthusiasm in the suburbs. You know, one of the things Democrats are hoping for here, that would be a very good sign for them of that. Then I'd look further north, sort of the fringes of the Atlanta Metro, two giant counties there, Cherokee County and Forsyth County. Cherokee, in fact, is

I think used to be one of the top plurality producing counties for Republicans anywhere in the country. It's just massive and has stayed heavily Republican, but you still see it there. You know, whereas Romney was winning that county by like 50 points back in 2012, in 2020, it was just under 40 for Trump.

So I want to see the Trump people believe they've arrested that slide. They think it's a bunch of things. It's, you know, four years of Biden has changed attitudes there a bit. They think, you know, Trump has mended fences with Brian Kemp, who did very well in a place like Cherokee County. Is that true? Has Trump arrested the slide there? Has he clawed stuff back? That's what they're counting on. There's the whole swath of counties, many of them rural, many of them with significant black populations, where Democrats are hoping for higher turnout.

You know, something they saw in a lot of cases with Raphael Warnock when he won his first runoff victory back at the start of 2021. So I want to see what's happening in those places, too. We tend to get the vote pretty late out of Atlanta. Is that right? Yeah. Fulton, DeKalb, you know, and it's that's a wild card everywhere this year is just the sequence and how this is going to happen. So it's

I think what we're going to get in Georgia, though, early is more of the pre-election day vote. Then we'll start getting the election day. We saw huge, huge disparities, obviously, in 2020, where the election day vote was so Republican friendly. The only I say from these early voting stats that we're seeing is clearly there's more interest from Republicans in voting early this time. Does that just mean we're going to look up and say, wow, there's a lot less Republicans voting on election day than last time, you know?

I mean, that is such the big question here, because, you know, obviously I find most of the early voting prognostication to be kind of like sorcery, right? You can read into whatever you want, right? You have all these people talking about the gender gap and the gender gap is huge in the early voting across the board. Now, if you dig deep, it's also the same gender gap as 2020. Is that still good because you have more Republicans voting, therefore more men? Hard to say. The one place where I do take it incredibly seriously is John Ralston in Nevada, who has been

quite dark on Democratic prospects. Are you seeing anything in Nevada? I mean, I see what you're seeing from him because I have the same attitude. You make the exception for him because it's so established. Go back decades doing this in the state. And he has a great track record. But again, it's I think what hangs in my head here a little bit in Nevada and everywhere is just we're so tied into the patterns that we saw in 2020. And I just think when you talk about early vote and these different vote methods, I think there's

volatility there in how, you know, how voters are going to, you know, make these choices. And I think the fact of Trump and the Republicans deciding this time they want to embrace it, so much coverage, you know, even in conservative media the last four years about, wow, this might have been a blown opportunity. And so I just, you know, we may end up looking back at this and saying, wow, all everything was inverted this time, you know, in these patterns. And so that's kind of in my head, too. You would assume, I mean, this is pure...

anecdotal assumption that the Republican voters most likely to switch to mail voting would be stalwart Republican Election Day voters. But you guys actually have an analysis from your decision desk folks today about Arizona, saying that you're a whole bunch of newly registered men turning out in Arizona.

And also the best, the sort of John Ralston of Arizona was also looking at it and looking at the turnout rates. What was interesting to me was if you look in Maricopa, which is pretty much the ballgame out there close to it, it is the first congressional district in

And that's one of the most competitive. That's Dave Schweikert, the Republican who barely survived in 22. This is one of the races of the side of the House. This is the highest income area in Maricopa County, highest college degree concentration. This is a place where Democrats think, you know, just demographically based on some of those factors, they can make more progress this time. And the turnout levels there significantly higher than elsewhere in Maricopa County, like the core city of Phoenix or Tempe or something like that.

And what does that tell you, if anything? Well, then that's the question. How do you read it? Are those the types of Republican voters who are kind of turned off by Trump? Because demographically, that's where Trump has struggled among traditional Republicans. Or have they made peace with Trump and they're just, you know, they're ready to go? Yeah, I'm like you. That's why there's that sorcery we're talking about here.

Let's move around to North Carolina. It's the next state where the polls will close. Anything you're looking for specifically in North Carolina? And do you guys have any sense of whether the hurricane is going to have an impact on vote counting in that state?

Yeah, I don't get the sense on the vote counting side. I guess there's been some reports that the little bit less participation in the Western North Carolina area. We were running the numbers of the other day. I didn't see a very big difference there. What I'm looking for mainly is a couple of things similar to Georgia, Eastern North Carolina. There's a swath of, you know, large black population, generally rural counties. Obama, you know, did very well there when he won a state. No way. That's the last time a Democrat carried it.

Can Democrats kind of recapture that a bit? One thing they got to worry about there is the black populations have been declining in a lot of these counties, too. So it's not just a turnout question in some places. But I want to see if the Democrats are making meaningful gains there. And then I want to look at there's counties outside of the sort of big major metros just outside of bedroom community counties down by Charlotte.

You got Union County and similar to what I was describing with Cherokee and Georgia, big bedroom community suburbs, you know, a lot of a lot of banking industry kind of affiliations there. Went for Trump by 30 points in 2016, came down to 24 in 2020. Is he arresting the slide? Is he clawing it back? Similar just outside Wake County, you know, where Raleigh is.

You know, the other big population hub, Johnston County, just outside of there, similar story. You know, I want to look at that. Nash County is right around there. That's one a lot of people are talking about. So in all these states, too, there's the question of you can't pinpoint a single county, but you've just got this like collection of North Carolina, dozens of

of counties, rural, small population counties, where Trump has expanded the Republican support by leaps and bounds, even from where it was under Romney 12 years ago. Take those collectively. Is he continuing that trend or not?

Right. And you are running into diminishing returns with some of that, right? In most of these states, the population that has fueled that surge, white, non-college educated voters, has gone down as a percentage of the electorate over the last four years and certainly over time. North Carolina is the one exception to that where I think it has stayed flat. When the results come in, we're testing a bunch of propositions that have been manifest in the polling.

The three big ones. One is, is Trump making gains with black voters, particularly black men, working class black men? We will get a sense of that in Georgia and North Carolina, depending if he is improving on his margins in those counties you talked about, particularly those rural black counties in both those states. Then the second one is,

Is he really making gains of Latinos, right? Have we snapped back to where we were? Is he getting across that sort of magical 40% number? Do you think you can get any sense of that in those early states? Do we have to wait till we go west to know that? I'm going to cautiously look at Florida, which closes at seven and reports very efficiently. Not for Miami-Dade, because Miami-Dade, Trump made huge gains there. Demographically, though, lots of Cuban-Americans. It's different than a lot of other heavily Latino areas.

Where I'm going to look in Florida in particular is Osceola County, which is just south of Orlando. It's one of three majority Hispanic counties in the state. And it's the one with the highest concentration of Puerto Rican voters. It's about one third Puerto Rican as a whole of the county. It's a big size county. Obviously, you want to see there if there's any evidence that the events of the last week have had any impact. But it's also notable because this showed that, you know, Trump's gains with Hispanic voters

In 2020, Miami-Dade got all the attention. But again, because of the Cuban-American factor, I think Osceola was actually the more dramatic example of it. Trump gained 11 points. He lost it by 25, Osceola, the first time he ran, got it all the way down to 14 the next time out. It's one of his best improvements in any county in Florida. And that's exactly the kind of place that his campaign has felt they're going to make

More gains in, big gains in. The kind of place where like, you know, the way they've been talking, a Trump victory in that county, you know, would be something in the range of what they're thinking. So I want to see if that's happening there. I know Florida, you can't extrapolate as much as you used to, but I think that one might be more meaningful than Miami-Dade.

Yeah, it was. And I probably left off my list because it's A, not competitive, and B, a lot of emotional PTSD as a Democrat in Florida over the last few cycles. But it is also, I mean, that is when every Democrat knew we were in big trouble in 16, was when Florida dumped in the mail-in early vote. And all of a sudden, it looked very different than we thought. In part, that election was less about Latino gains, but then similar elections.

in 20 big alarm. And we're going to get that vote pretty fast, right? In Florida, at least. It is state law within 30 minutes of poll close, they have to report out all the mail and early vote. Typically, that's like 65, 70% of the vote in a county. Everything but the, you know, sort of small panhandle part of the state, that's 90% of the state is going to do that. So by 730, you've got just about every county, you know, has lighted up one color or the other. And then they just add the same day to it. And that

That can be very quick. You can have full counties, you know, by eight o'clock. I wish Florida was competitive for Democrats. It would make our electoral math easier. I will appreciate not being in the situation where you are hanging on, waiting for the votes for Miami-Dade and Broward to come in and possibly make up that gap because it always takes longer than you think and it doesn't go as far as you want it to. And so I at least have that emotional trauma removed. Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back.

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All right, let's switch to Pennsylvania, viewed by many as the state that will decide this election, because if you don't win it, it comes very hard to piece together the replacement electoral votes to get to 270, particularly for Kamala Harris. What are you thinking in Pennsylvania? Now, you're talking about a more significant Latino voting population than like in North Carolina. So you're starting to really see it here. You look in Philadelphia, first of all, Democrats obviously depend on massive political

pluralities and turnout from philadelphia so you want to see if you can get a sense of the turnout early um but also there you saw in 2020 in philadelphia progress for trump in working class majority hispanic areas not huge but he did actually while losing ground in pennsylvania as a whole he actually improved in the city of philadelphia which is philadelphia county so um

You want to see that. And then you want to see, again, for Latino vote in Pennsylvania, another area that Trump folks have targeted for growth is you can call it the Route 222 corridor. Some people have called it the Latino belt. But you've got this sort of like network of small, mid-sized cities with large and really fast growing Hispanic populations there.

you know, Allentown, Redding, Hazleton. Hazleton is, it's a small city, but, you know, turn of the century, it was 5% Latino. Now it's almost 70% Latino. These are places where if you looked inside the cities, Trump made gains of 10, 15 points, net points in 2020, even as he lost the state. So this is where his campaign, you know, the way they've been talking about this, if that's happening, this is where you're going to see it dramatically. So look there,

You know, and look, you want to look at the collar counties. You know, this is where the Democrats, Chester County is in the Trump era. There's no county in Pennsylvania that has moved more in the Democrats direction than Chester. You know, high college educated concentration right outside Philadelphia. You know, it's like his hair is cracking 60 percent there. They want to keep growing there. And then the one, you know, Bucks is a big swing county there. And the other one I really want to look at is Lackawanna, Scranton. It's interesting because it's very classic for the sort of Midwest region, whatever you want to call it.

I know nobody up there would say they're in the Midwest, but Obama won it by 28 in 2012, came all the way down to three for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Biden comes along and he brought it back up to nine. And it's interesting because Scranton is where he's from originally. Was there a local effect for Biden that produced that or was there something else? Is Trump able to bring that back down and maybe even flip that county? I'm paying close attention there.

We had Bob Casey at a Ponce de America show in Philly a couple weeks ago. And, you know, I'm sure you know this, Bob Casey is a very big map guy. He calls himself the Steve Kornacki of the Senate. And we went through the map and Lackawanna County was the county where he was most focused. And obviously, it's where he's from. So it means a lot to him. And for his race, he's got to get big numbers out of there. But he also pointed that out as a place where if that snaps back to 16, that's a hard place for Biden to find those votes.

Pennsylvania to me is the real test about the suburbs. Is she beating Biden's numbers here?

in the suburbs, which if you believe there is some bleed anywhere, right? If it's a little bleed with Black men, with Latino voters, with young voters, with, you know, all the different possible groups, you know, white, non-college educated voters, right? She can even appoint, she loses a point or two with any of those groups. She's got to make it up somewhere. The most likely place, I believe, and I think the polling shows to make it up is in these suburbs. Like, is she juicing those numbers? Is she getting some of these Haley voters, these Republican-leaning independents, right? And I think

You will see some of that in Georgia and North Carolina, but Pennsylvania is the one where I think it really comes home because it's so critical to her, right? Yeah. Of the 67 counties in Pennsylvania, there are 10 that have actually, you know, gotten more Democratic, you know, since 2012. And obviously, as a whole, Democrats are doing worse in Pennsylvania than they were when Obama ran in 12th.

But there's 10 counties where they've actually gotten even better than they did under Obama. And, you know, Montgomery, Chester, Delaware, these, you know, collar counties right outside what you're talking about, these big suburban counties right outside Philly. A little bit of a sleeper one, south central Pennsylvania is Cumberland County, where Carlisle is. There's actually been Democratic growth in that area. It has a lot of these demographic characteristics there.

You know, and you go out Allegheny County, you think Pittsburgh, it's 1.2 million people. There's a lot of inner suburbs within Allegheny County that, again, fit this demographic profile. It's been so rich for Democrats. So, yeah, I mean, a place like Chester County, an easy benchmark to start with is she is she over 60 percent, you know, because Biden was able to get it up to the high 50s. Could she crack 60 percent there? That starts to get into, you know, I think an encouraging territory for her.

Let's move to Michigan. I think Michigan is perhaps one of the more confusing states to look at because of the sort of kind of hard to gauge impact of the uncommitted movement, protest over Gaza, the very large Arab American population. What are you looking at in Michigan? Yeah, I mean, so Wayne County is going to cover a lot of the uncertainty you're talking about.

That's where Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, you know, Hamtramck, you have cities with large Muslim American, large Arab American populations. The way they do the vote counting in Michigan, they do it by, you know, at the municipal level. So I think we should be able to have access to some of those individual results, hopefully early, that could start answering that. You know, also in Wayne, obviously, that's where Detroit is. Detroit, same story, really, as Philadelphia. It's as a city, Trump actually made a little bit of progress there.

in 2020. That's a place where is Trump gaining, as you're saying, small but meaningful support with black voters, particularly black men. And what's the turnout level in Detroit? What's the turnout level among black voters in Detroit? Because you look at it, Biden was able to win Wayne County 68 to 30 last time around. When you start playing with the numbers, if it just went to

64-34. That's, in terms of raw votes, because, you know, Wayne County, it's 25% of the state, just that one county. So that's going to move massive raw votes. And then the other quick test I have in that region, you know, because you got Wayne, you got Washtenaw, where University of Michigan is, and then you got the two big suburban counties, Oakland, higher income, high college plus suburb, Macomb, blue collar auto industry suburbs.

And measure McComb against Oakland. This is one of the tests I'm going to do. In 16, when Trump won Michigan by a sliver, McComb, his support in McComb, he won it by 12, almost completely canceled out Hillary's support in Oakland, you know, which she won by eight. Basically, cancel these are out. In 20, when Biden won, Biden won Oakland by 14 and Trump only won McComb by eight. And

And there was actually a net difference of 70,000 votes in the Democrats' favor. And they won the state by 154,000. So almost half just came from that disparity. So, I mean, I want to know, are we looking at a tiny, insignificant disparity between them or is it netting out in the Democrats' favor like it did four years ago?

And for our listeners who may not know, Macomb County is the quintessential home of the Reagan Democrat. This was the famous study that Stan Greenberg, Clinton's bolster, did to look at why Democrats were losing working class white men. This is Macomb County. And once again, finding a similar level of significance. Because for a long time, that was the county everyone was looking at to see if we were holding on to the New Deal coalition or not. So it's welcome back to the news, Macomb County.

All right, let's move to Wisconsin. Wisconsin is interesting because on paper, it should be the most difficult of the blue wall states for Democrats. It's the whitest. It's the most rural. It's been the closest. Not that any of them have large margins recently, but Wisconsin was about a half a percentage point.

Yet for a long time, it's the one Democrats felt best about. I think that's shifted a little bit in the last few weeks here as the polls have narrowed there and Tammy Baldwin's race has narrowed as well. Wisconsin, I'm going to look at two things. I'm curious what you're looking at. One is the wow counties around Milwaukee, and then also the massive growth in Dane County in population and whether we, because it is one of the most Democratic counties in the country. And so, or at least among the battleground states, can you get even more vote out there to make up for any losses in the rural areas? What are you looking at? Yeah.

Yeah, no, I mean, exactly. It's like geographically, Wisconsin, just if you paint the map is very red right now. The Democratic support, as we see in so many places, increasingly geographically concentrated. They just keep squeezing more and more out of Dane County every election. I think every election this century, the Democratic plurality in Dane has grown. There's

There's a test right there because they increasingly need it to compensate for these losses they've taken everywhere else in the state. Milwaukee, again, very similar to what we talked about with Detroit and Philadelphia. You know, Trump showed a little bit of signs of inroads there in 2020. Are we seeing more of that or not? Of the three wow counties around Milwaukee, Ozaukee is the one that I'm most interested in because it's moved the most dramatically away from the Republicans. It was 55-43 for Trump.

in 2020. That was the best performance for a Democrat there since LBJ in 64. It has the

Second highest concentration of white college educated voters of anywhere in Wisconsin. Second to Dane. You know, Harris is threatening to win a place like Ozaukee County. And then we say, wow. I like to say bow wow, because you've got Brown, Outagamie and Winnebago counties, Fox River Valley. And they all tell the exact same story. This is Green Bay, Appleton, Oshkosh. And they tell the exact same story. Trump got up to about a 10, 12 point win in 2016 in these counties.

And then he gave back some of those games, not all, but some. And he lost them by, you know, mid-high single digits. And so is he back at 16 levels in the bow counties or is he still back in a single digits? Cause he needs to get back to where he was there.

Let's end this little tour of the map in Arizona, which is a state that I think Democrats genuinely feel the worst about among the seven, although many believe it's still very winnable. But it's the one in the polling average where Trump has the largest lead. Once again, that large lead is two. So it's not it's not gigantic. Yeah, I mean, it's.

it's a Maricopa County. It's a little bit more than 60%. It's going to come out of there. And then you South of that, you got Pima or Tucson is another 15%. It's going to come out of there. So more than three out of four votes coming from those two counties, unfortunately with Maricopa, um, we can break it down by con congressional district. So I was mentioning earlier, um,

the first congressional district that Dave Schweikert seat. I think that's, we want to key in on that one, you know, kind of right away. The other question though, in Arizona too, is it's the Hispanic vote. Because again, by exit polling in 2020, Biden carried the Hispanic vote in Arizona by 24 points, 61 to 37. You know, I pay attention to the polls that come out there and the Hispanic numbers, it's

all over the place. There was one that had Trump up seven with Hispanic voters in Arizona recently. I think it was the CNN one this week had Harris up 18. But that's where, again, given how tight the margin was in 2020, even a relatively small gain with Hispanic voters could erase for Trump that gap. Just a couple more things. On the Senate, barring some sort of

recount sort of situation. There's a good chance we're going to know who has the Senate control in the first 24 hours here, right? Given the size of the states where this is happening and where they're going to come. Is that right? Yeah. I mean, look, once you take West Virginia officially, you know, off the table and the Republicans get that pickup. Yeah. You know, Ohio should be a pretty efficient vote counting state. So you'll know kind of

Sherrod Brown there. And then if Brown doesn't hang on, I mean, you'll have to test her later, but if Brown, you know, doesn't hang on, then Democrats have to pull a rabbit out of the hat somewhere. It'll be clear if there's any chance for them to do that in Texas, I think pretty early. And then there's that wild card in Nebraska. I know not technically a Democrat, all of this stuff, but again, barring something like that, you know, if Ohio is a four or five point win or something for, you know, for the Republicans, you'll know that on election night. Yeah.

And then finally, the House, good chance we're not going to the House for weeks, right? Because we're going to be waiting for California ballots. If the House proceeds as we suspect, and there's not some sort of giant wave, and we're down to a few seats, probably decided in California, you have second maybe to New York, the largest batch of toss-up winnable races.

They don't count those votes. Those votes can be postmarked by election day. Is that right? So they're coming in for a while after that. Well, yeah, they're coming in for a while. They're also, they're just, they're very slow at counting it. And it's a, it's another conversation, but yeah, for the House, it could be election month if we're waiting on them. Yeah. Hopefully you don't have to wait on them and you can actually go home and get some sleep over that period of time. Steve Kornacki, thanks so much for joining us. Everyone is smarter from having listened to this conversation and good luck. And we will be watching you very attentively on Tuesday night and beyond. Thanks.

Thanks again. Hey, thanks a lot, Dan. This was fun. You can catch Steve as part of MSNBC's election night coverage on Tuesday, November 5th at 6 p.m. Eastern. Okay, before we go to break, I have an ask for you. It's officially the last Sunday before the 2024 election, which means this is my last Sunday bonus pod of the cycle. If you like these bonus episodes, you will love Crooked and Pod Save America's subscription program, Friends of the Pod. Friends of the Pod perks include ad-free Pod Save America episodes, Pod Save the World bonus segments, exclusive podcasts, and access to our Discord community.

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Before we go, I wanted to answer some final questions from our subscribers. And joining me now is producer of Polar Coaster, the amazing Caroline Reston. Caroline, thank you for being here instead of Elijah. I appreciate it. I'm really happy to be here. I don't know if it's because I haven't eaten or I've had two cups of coffee or I'm stressed, but I'm like actually weirdly shaking right now from anxiety. Electoral anxiety, you think? Yeah, electoral. I mean, after listening to you and Steve Kornacki, I'm just like...

so overwhelmed with anxiety. But I'm very excited. Listeners, do everything you can. Don't be stressed like me. Yes. Channel your stress by doing something in the final days by going to votesaveamerica.com and signing up. Yeah, be productive with that stress. Okay, so we got some really great Discord questions here. The first one is from Callier338.

They say, I'm from a deeply blue state that is quite far away from most swing states. Is there evidence that texting and calling folks from the other side of the country sways undecided voters? Or how do voters respond from people who are contacting them out of state?

In general, they may not know you're from out of state, so that's a plus. But the voters where that is probably most helpful is GOTV calls. And that's usually what, if you're signing up to volunteer for a campaign, you're going to be calling people to remind them to vote. These are people the campaign has decided are likely Kamala Harris or Democratic Senate or congressional voters who have not yet voted. So you're just trying to remind them to vote and giving them information about their polling places or early voting options.

But everything helps. Do what you can from a blue state or a deeply red state, either one. It definitely helps. Do it. Okay. This next question is something I've been really thinking about too. It's from SwingingLiberal901. There is so much conversation about how Harris is polling with key constituencies, but how worried are you about the inability of polls to capture voters' inherent sexism and racial biases?

This is a great question. Both of Barack Obama's races, 2016, and then obviously, and perhaps in the most vivid way possible in Kamala Harris's election. And so we don't know. Now, back many, many years ago, Tom Bradley, who was the black mayor of Los Angeles, ran for governor. And the polling showed him winning.

And then he ended up losing the governor's race. And then that became known as something called the Bradley effect. And the Bradley effect was this idea that people will tell pollsters that they are willing to vote for a black candidate. But then when they actually get into the voting booth and are asked to pull the lever or fill in the bubble or whatever you're doing, they won't do it. And so basically this idea is they might have seemed more racially sensitive than they are.

There was some sense that a similar thing happened in 2016 with Hillary Clinton. Now, studies have shown, like retroactive studies that looked at the Bradley election, that that is actually not what happened. It was actually just a polling error. There have been some political science and sociological experiments to test this proposition and have not found that it exists. There isn't a lot of evidence that inherent or silent evidence

sexism is why the polls were wrong in 2020. Now, this is not saying that racial biases and sexism are not huge parts of the electoral calculus for people and overhang these elections. That is absolutely true. But we don't have any evidence that they affect the polls. And we saw no evidence in either one of Barack Obama's elections, either in the primary or the general election in 2008 and 2012 of the Bradley effect.

He actually outperformed his polls. Oh, okay. So if they're not voting for Kamala Harris, it's not because she's a woman. It's just because they hate her. No, no, no, no, no. It's just because they hate her. No, no, this is a very important point. They may be sexist and racist, but the question I think here is, is about whether sort of silent sexism or racism or hidden sexism or racism is skewing the polls in her favor, right? So in other words, people are afraid to say that they aren't supporting her because they're afraid of being labeled sexist or racist.

Right. And there's not evidence of that. But I'm not trying to argue that misogyny and racism are not huge factors in an election with a Black woman running for president of the United States. All right, all right, all right. Next question. Anna Del Hunt asks, if we lose, I'm not sure I'm going to find the strength to face the next four years. Obviously, I'm going to do what I can now. But what about on November 6th or whenever we find out? What should I do? Any tips? I don't...

know how much value there is in preparing ourselves emotionally for what comes next if Trump were to win. I think we should focus our energy on doing everything we possibly can to make sure that does not happen. If it does happen, it's obviously a deeply frightening, deeply dangerous... It's a crisis, right? It's a crisis. And there are people in this country who are going to be hurt in terrible ways. It's going to be scary. If that were to happen, we can all get together and figure out what we're going to do after that.

Because there's going to be huge responsibility for all of us to do what we can to prevent the worst things from happening as we mobilized in 2017. But do not waste your time and energy and mental space right now thinking about that is my recommendation. It would be take that energy and focus it on trying to win this race because it is so close. It is very winnable. It's in the margin of effort. We can absolutely do that.

Okay, this is a similar-ish question, and then we'll get to something a little more positive. But DownTheBallot96 asked, I already voted, I phone-baked, I've canvassed in swing districts, and I'm so stressed about having nothing to do on election day. Is there anything productive I can do on Tuesday beyond just watching cable news?

You can absolutely volunteer on election day. It's one of the most important volunteer days out there because the campaigns are going to have a list of who their target voters are. And they know, they have people at the precincts getting updated voter rolls as who's voted. So they have people calling the people who have not yet voted. We may need people who can drive people to the polls. Like there's all kinds of things you can do on election day from phone banking to driving people to the polls to

being a poll watcher or working for the campaign on that day to just helping out in the office to get administrative work or coffee and donuts or whatever it is for the people who are working that day. There's so much you can do. So I would check with your local campaign or local party or go to Vote Save America to look for opportunities. What level of creepy is it to call a stranger and be like, hey, do you want me to come pick you up at your home and drive you somewhere? Yeah.

You don't call them. The campaign calls and offers them a ride because you have a lot of seniors who cannot get there on their own. If you live in a city, parking can be challenging. People can't do public transportation. And so it is a thing that happens all the time is that people do rides to the polls.

Oftentimes they're people from your community or your neighborhood, but you can, it is absolutely a thing that happens all the time. You don't call them and say, hey, you don't know me. Meet me outside of my windowless van in 20 minutes. I'll take you to the polls. I don't know why, that's how I'm picturing it. And my dumb ass would be like, okay, I'll get into this weird man. If you vote, basically Uber has normalized that for all of America. So I don't know what the difference is, but you're just taking a free Uber to the polls.

Okay, there is a follow-up from a Discord user named Superskink. They say, took Wednesday off in case I'm crying in the morning again, like in 2016. What should I drink on election night to celebrate Kamala's win? Well, first, and a classic organic plug, you should drink in Z-Biotics. They're your first drink of the night, Z-Biotics. Z-Biotics, free alcohol. Okay, that one's a freebie. Drink whatever you want. The only thing I would tell you to drink could be a long night. Drink water.

Hydrate. Could be a while. You don't want to be the sad drunk as you're waiting for the final votes of Maricopa County to come in at three in the morning. Drink water. Wait till the election's called. If you want to have a champagne, you want to have a cocktail, I will have a cocktail if and when this race is called for Kamala Harris. I hope, you know, maybe that's at 7.30 in the morning. I'm okay with that if that's what happens, but that's where we are. Okay.

D. Lil Voter asks, LeBron James just endorsed Kamala Harris. I know we tend to dismiss celebrity endorsements, but so close to the election, can this help? Should more celebrities hold their endorsements until its peak GOTV time? Celebrity endorsements, there's a handful of exceptions, Taylor Swift being one of them. Their value is probably a little overstated.

But where it matters is these celebrities have giant social media platforms and followings, and they use those to announce endorsement, but also the fact that their endorsement reminds people to vote, right? LeBron James, you know, one of the most famous people in the world to get a huge following across the country, all ages, all races, all groups, and him telling people to vote could remind people who wouldn't otherwise vote to vote. It is less that the people are like, oh, yeah,

You know, I wasn't really sure which candidate I liked on minimum wage, but I also care about immigration and I also care about abortion. What do I do? And it's like, oh, Jennifer Lopez is for, I'm in. Like, it doesn't really work that way. It's more that the reflected glory of the celebrities brings more attention to the candidate and their positions. And then they use their platforms to remind people to vote. With all due respect to Jennifer Lopez, who gave a great speech at her rally with Kamala Harris last night.

So there is strategy to all these like mega celebrities waiting until the end to do it. Yeah. You know, it's six year half-times to the other, right? Do you want one post at the end or you want 12 posts over the last three weeks, right? You know, it's hard to say.

Yeah, I was listening to What A Day and they were talking about the Bad Bunny effect. And Bad Bunny seems like actually a huge endorsement to get right at the end. Yes. And there's timing to it too, happening at the exact moment of the offensive comments about Puerto Rico from the Trump rally. Like it's a very powerful endorsement. Bad Bunny would certainly be on that list with Taylor Swift in terms of celebrity endorsements people really care about.

Man, I know it's been said before, but the Democratic Party is so much more fun. Like, we just are such a better, more fun party. We have, we got all the celebrities. We got all the good music. They have that random comedian. I mean,

I mean, that's something we should actually play up. This is something that was very true of the party in the Obama era, and we've sort of lost some of that. But we should be the fun party. We should be the ones with the fun. And Kamala Harris has brought that back. That's the joy, I would say. We had that with Obama. We kind of lost that in the Trump era. And then Kamala Harris has brought it back. Like, her rallies seem fun as hell. They're fun anyway, but the celebrities, it's all great. It's a party. It really is. Okay, here's the last question. And it is from yours truly. Oh, wow. A toughie. Okay. Dan?

Who's going to win? I will not answer this question.

I will not. It is a cardinal rule of Potsdam America that after 2016, we don't make predictions. We focus our energy on trying to make what we want happen as opposed to guess what's going to happen. The thing I will say is this is an incredibly close race. You can make a reasonable, rational, credible argument that either candidate is favored. Trump, the political environment is very much in Trump's favor, right? Kamala Harris is the better candidate with a better campaign.

I think, and I wrote this in my newsletter message box this morning, I think there are three reasons for optimism for Kamala Harris down the stretch. One is the Democrats are more enthusiastic than Republicans. That's something that has not been written about much. Democratic enthusiasm is at the same level right now for Kamala Harris that it was for Barack Obama in 2008. And enthusiasm matters a lot, particularly when you have built an organization as the Harris campaign has to harness that enthusiasm into action and devotes.

Second, if you look at the polling, the economy is the top issue for everyone. It is everyone's most important issue. It's one where Trump has had a huge lead. He had a 20 point lead on Biden at one point.

In the most recent New York Times Siena poll, that lead is down to six points. Kamala Harris doesn't have to beat Donald Trump in the economy, but she has to reach a certain level of credibility and trust that the voters who are cross-pressured, where they don't like Trump, they don't like January 6th, they don't like how he acts, but they also are deeply concerned about the cost of gas and the cost of groceries and their economic future, trust her enough to be willing to turn the page on Trump. And the third reason is, and this is something that everyone listening to this obviously listened to in my conversation with Ron Brownstein last week, but

We are not talking enough about how the demographic shifts in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin in particular have moved in the Democratic's favor. In Michigan and Wisconsin in particular, the base of the Trump coalition, white, non-college educated voters, has shrunk by two points as a share of the electorate. His mountain is higher to climb this time because of that. And I think that if Kamala Harris can maximize her gains with core parts of her coalition, then she can win this race. All right. That sounds like a great place to end on.

That'll wrap up our episode for today. Thank you to Steve Kornacki and to Caroline and our subscribers for the questions. If you're a friend of the pod subscriber, I'll be on your feet again soon for a new Polar Coaster. Thanks everyone.

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