--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): Welcome to this bonus episode of the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm James Reynolds.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): This week, I'm hosting the BBC's Global Story Podcast, and along with some brilliant colleagues, we bring you fresh takes and smart perspectives on what's happening around the world.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): For a few weeks, we'll bring you highlights of the Global Story Podcast here. But to hear a fresh episode every weekday, search for The Global Story wherever you get your BBC podcasts and subscribe so you don't miss a story.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): Today, who will actually decide the US election? There are more than 160 million registered voters. And yet... Yet it's going to only be 100,000 Americans, give or take, who decide whether it's going to be Joe Biden or Donald Trump.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): With no major surprises on Super Tuesday and with Nikki Haley dropping out of the race, we can be almost certain as to who will be on the ballot in November. Choice is clear.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): Donald Trump's campaign is about him, not America, not you. Biden, worst president. He's the worst president. He's the most incompetent president.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): Billions of dollars will be spent to sway the outcome. A lot of that money will be spent chasing a tiny number of voters in a small number of counties in just a few states. They will get to pick the most powerful man in the world.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): Well, the line you heard earlier that just 100,000 voters could decide the election came from a friend of this podcast, the BBC's special US correspondent, Katty Kay.
--:-- Katty Kay: Hi, James. Good to have you on the program.
--:-- Katty Kay: There is a lesson here, of course. If you say something interesting on the podcast, you know that we write it down and you know that we're going to come and phone you up and say, you know, that one thing you said, you might have thrown it away.
--:-- Katty Kay: Well, that's an entire episode for us. So it's my fault.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): OK, exactly. Precisely.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): Now, what should we spend the next half hour wriggling out of that one?
--:-- Katty Kay: And try not to say anything interesting so that you don't have to do a new podcast created on the one thing you said in the previous one.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): We've also got Eli Yockley, a political analyst from the polling and data firm Morning Consult, who's been looking closely at the states and the voters that will decide this election.
--:-- Eli Yockley: Hey, I'm very good. Good to be here.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): It is great to have you on the podcast.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): Well, we've just had Super Tuesday. Biden and Trump, familiar names, of course, secured the backing of primary voters in 14 states each.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): We are as certain as we can be that barring asteroids, meteors, alien invasions and apocalypses, they will be the candidates in November.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): So attention now turns to that election. Let's start with that point that Katty raised, why the election could be decided by such a small number of people.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): It all comes down to the Electoral College.
--:-- Katty Kay: And so is this where I can punt it straight to Eli and say, could he explain the Electoral College in such a way that our dear listeners in Middle England and Middle Europe and Middle Asia understand that the American electoral system is complicated and some would say pretty undemocratic in many ways.
--:-- Eli Yockley: And what happens is that every state gets to elect a certain number of electors who then go to Washington after the presidential election and cast their ballots for whoever has won their state.
--:-- Eli Yockley: Those people are known as the electoral college.
--:-- Eli Yockley: And you have to get to 270 electoral college votes. have I lost everyone already?
--:-- Eli Yockley: You have to get to 270 electoral college votes, which is really all you just sort of need to remember in order to win the White House.
--:-- Eli Yockley: And each state, depending on the size of its population, has a certain number of these electoral college electors.
--:-- Eli Yockley: And there are certain states that will give you large numbers of electors.
--:-- Eli Yockley: And then there are certain states that will give you a small number of electors.
--:-- Eli Yockley: But what we're really interested in for the purposes of this podcast and for this election, really, are the few states that change from going Democratic to Republican, Democratic to Republican, depending on the cycle.
--:-- Eli Yockley: They are called the swing states.
--:-- Eli Yockley: And it is those swing states that decide the election because California is always going to be Democratic and Texas for the moment is always going to be Republican.
--:-- Eli Yockley: What you want to win is those states that are really up for grabs.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): I love it that you say, I'm going to punt on this.
--:-- Eli Yockley: And then you decide, no, you know what, I'm just going to answer it.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): Yeah, you get those to the second quarter.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): Can you win the popular vote but lose the presidency in the Electoral College? Does that ever happen?
--:-- Eli Yockley: You can and you do.
--:-- Eli Yockley: For the last several elections, Democrats have won the popular vote.
--:-- Eli Yockley: But even in cases where they haven't won the presidency, they've lost the Electoral College vote.
--:-- Eli Yockley: One exception was George W. Bush in 2000, a rare Republican in the last three decades to win both the Electoral College vote and the popular vote.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): Increasingly the pattern in America is that Democrats can almost pretty much rely on winning the popular vote.
--:-- Eli Yockley: Because if you were just to kind of have an election in which it's first past the post right across the country, forget about the states, forget about the electoral college, there are more people voting Democratic in this country than there are people voting Republican.
--:-- Eli Yockley: But because of this curious system of having to win a state and then win the presidency, as it were, you can win the White House without winning the popular vote.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): And the expectation is that in November, Joe Biden is likely to win the popular vote if recent history holds up.
--:-- Eli Yockley: But we don't know whether he's going to win this magic number of 270 electoral college votes.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): I imagine Eli you wake up in the morning with the number 270 in your head
--:-- Eli Yockley: It a tattoo on my arm the thing is a lot of these states are already decided
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): And so I mean that what we going to be watching play out over the coming months now that we have basically nominees, is there's not a lot of attention from a lot of these candidates given to many of these other states.
--:-- Eli Yockley: I mean, I'm from Missouri, which is since Obama's first election has become a very reliably red state.
--:-- Eli Yockley: Since then, it's become very red.
--:-- Eli Yockley: It's the only time the show me state ever saw presidential candidates was Republicans flying into St. Louis to raise a bunch of money.
--:-- Eli Yockley: It's the same thing in many ways with Democrats in places like California and New York.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): And so the downside to it is a lot of these states are sort of omitted from the presidential campaign at some point.
--:-- Eli Yockley: You know, the American people are somewhat divided on the Electoral College.
--:-- Eli Yockley: We checked in on this after the 2020 election and 45 percent of voters supported, 38 percent opposed it.
--:-- Eli Yockley: But it's not something that a lot of folks care about or want to change maybe until it becomes Election Day.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): When you look back, the states or districts that swing elections, well, they're easy to spot when you've got the figures.
--:-- Eli Yockley: In 2020, the candidates, the same guys as this time, made clear which states mattered to them.
--:-- Eli Yockley: Hello, Florida. We love Florida.
--:-- Eli Yockley: Hello, North Carolina. It's great to be here in Michigan.
--:-- Eli Yockley: Hello, Michigan. It's great to be back in Florida.
--:-- Eli Yockley: Here in the great state of Arizona.
--:-- Eli Yockley: Here in Wisconsin.
--:-- Eli Yockley: Hello, Wisconsin. We're back. We're back. We're going to win. We're going to win this state.
--:-- Eli Yockley: One state appeared to matter the most.
--:-- Eli Yockley: Hello, Pennsylvania. Hello, Pennsylvania. Hello, Pennsylvania.
--:-- Eli Yockley: Let's go, Pennsylvania.
--:-- Eli Yockley: Joe's a Philly girl.
--:-- Eli Yockley: Well, I'm a Scranton guy.
--:-- Eli Yockley: Early voting is open here in Pennsylvania.
--:-- Eli Yockley: Right here in western Pennsylvania.
--:-- Eli Yockley: Pennsylvania has been very important to me.
--:-- Eli Yockley: I went to school in Pennsylvania.
--:-- Eli Yockley: I'm from 2446 North Washington Avenue, and I'm happy to be home.
--:-- Eli Yockley: Happy to be home.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): That was 2020. We're in 2024.
--:-- Katty Kay: Well, it's all about, as we said, that map.
--:-- Katty Kay: And during the course of the next six months, both campaigns will spend a lot of time pouring through data to work out if we put together this jigsaw puzzle of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona, can we make it?
--:-- Katty Kay: Or if we put together Nevada and Michigan and Georgia and Wisconsin, can we make it then?
--:-- Katty Kay: And they'll be literally trying to see if I can get this state, I get this many votes.
--:-- Katty Kay: If I get this state, I get this many votes.
--:-- Katty Kay: And I add those to my total and I get to 270.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): Five or six states, that's been the margin between the winner and the loser.
--:-- Eli Yockley: Yeah. I mean, every month we've seen Joe Biden is trailing Trump in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin.
--:-- Eli Yockley: These are going to be the key states we're watching this year.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): Trump's lead is the widest right now that we've measured.
--:-- Eli Yockley: It's in Arizona and Pennsylvania.
--:-- Eli Yockley: He's beating Joe Biden by six percentage points there, just like he is in Georgia and Nevada.
--:-- Eli Yockley: These were key states to Joe Biden's electoral college victory.
--:-- Eli Yockley: He's going to need to make up ground in those states.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): In some ways, that's an easier task than what Donald Trump has moving forward to try to revive the same kind of voters who backed him four years ago.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): And Donald Trump is going to be out on the campaign trail being heard by voters that might work to his detriment moving forward.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): Here's a fun fact for you.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): The spending on the last U.S. presidential election in 2020, I was just doing the maths, was about $14 billion.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): If you think that it's about 100,000 voters who really matter, that is the grand total of $140,000 per voter.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): Could they just wire the cash to each voter?
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): They could just.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): I could just move to Wisconsin.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): Actually, good idea.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): Why haven't we thought of this?
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): And then get them to wire us the money.
--:-- Eli Yockley: looking back in time i focused much of my life on trying to recreate the west wing when i'm off air and in living that is my framework and i remember in one of the final episodes the defeated candidate was thinking what should he do after he lost the election and he decided that he might take professorships in florida pennsylvania or ohio because those were the swing states at the time that was back in 2006 in the funny west wing world which i still live in and have not updated any cultural references since.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): But we haven't mentioned some of those states, Eli.
--:-- Eli Yockley: They do change then over time.
--:-- Eli Yockley: Yes, they definitely do.
--:-- Eli Yockley: I mean, we wouldn't have been talking about necessarily Georgia eight years ago.
--:-- Eli Yockley: Florida is one of those places that has turned pretty red in recent years.
--:-- Eli Yockley: It's one of the more conservative states in the country with a very pretty popular Republican governor down there.
--:-- Eli Yockley: Ohio, we see as pretty far off the map.
--:-- Eli Yockley: That might be something that started before Trump, but his ability to fire up the white working class economic concern base with some racial component too has really helped take Ohio off the map.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): How does a state go from being a solid state in one category or another to a swing state as happened with Georgia?
--:-- Eli Yockley: It happens pretty quick.
--:-- Eli Yockley: Voters are able to react to circumstances as they see.
--:-- Eli Yockley: Part of that is the campaign's ability to identify them in some of these key counties that have pivoted.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): I mean, we saw the suburban flip in 2018 where Democrats were able to pick up votes from women-educated folks in the suburbs who make more money, who were disgusted by what they were seeing out of Donald Trump.
--:-- Eli Yockley: The Biden campaign in 2020 was able to build on that.
--:-- Eli Yockley: It helped them flip places in like Arizona, too.
--:-- Eli Yockley: There are parts of Pennsylvania.
--:-- Eli Yockley: The question is whether it sticks.
--:-- Eli Yockley: I mean, the American electorate is so partisan these days.
--:-- Eli Yockley: It's really hard to find voters who are swayable, and they happen to dislike both of the candidates right now.
--:-- Eli Yockley: I mean, I think the Cook Political Reports' Amy Walters has talked a lot about the so-called double haters, These people who have unfavorable views of both candidates.
--:-- Eli Yockley: That share of the electorate looks as big as it was in 2016 when voters did not like Donald Trump and did not like Hillary Clinton.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): Katie and Eli, you've both given us the roadmap then about where to look for swing voters.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, maybe Nevada and North Carolina.
--:-- Katty Kay: next the voters themselves
--:-- Katty Kay: it all started with me asking my friends and family to write letters to my daughter Coco sharing their experiences and giving her advice for her life ahead
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--:-- Katty Kay: Listen now by searching for Dear Daughter wherever you get your BBC podcasts
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): Dear Daughter.
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--:-- Host (James Reynolds): If you or someone you love is facing challenges with depression or anxiety, talk to your doctor about how genetic testing may help.
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--:-- Host (James Reynolds): This is The Global Story from the BBC World Service.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): And if you're enjoying what we're doing and would like to hear more, remember at the end of this episode to search for The Global Story wherever you found this podcast.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): now onto those swing voters themselves
--:-- Katty Kay: katie we know where they live you've told us but who are they would you recognize them if they're walking down the street
--:-- Katty Kay: it's hard to say right i can zoom in and at 433 w street in the suburbs of philadelphia there is a housewife who is a swing voter
--:-- Katty Kay: because actually it's this kind of weird, amorphous group of dissatisfied people who could go either way and who could go either way depending on what's been in the news that week
--:-- Katty Kay: which means that one thing we do know is that the next seven or eight months are going to be very volatile because I think the polls will continue to reflect what has been happening in the news in that moment
--:-- Katty Kay: At the moment, immigration is driving people to say that they would rather have Donald Trump.
--:-- Katty Kay: Biden's conduct on our border is by any definition a conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America.
--:-- Katty Kay: Folks, on my first day as president, I introduced a bill I sent to Congress, a comprehensive plan to fix the broken immigration system and to secure the border.
--:-- Katty Kay: But no action was taken.
--:-- Eli Yockley: Eli mentioned earlier the double haters, which kind of sounds like a Taylor Swift song, but has become the jargon of this election.
--:-- Eli Yockley: And they are voters who are dissatisfied with Joe Biden and voters who are dissatisfied with Donald Trump and therefore could jump potentially to one side or another or could jump to a third party candidate or could stay home.
--:-- Eli Yockley: We think they make up about 19, 20 percent of the electorate.
--:-- Eli Yockley: That's a big group of people because in 2020, they were only about 5% of the electorate.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): Amazing to hear that there is that concept of floating voters, because of course, looking back, this is the first election, what, since 1892, between two people who've already done the job.
--:-- Katty Kay: We know what each man is like as president.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): So Eli, who becomes an up for grabs swing voter in a rematch between two very, very known quantities?
--:-- Eli Yockley: Because these two candidates have run against each other before, we have a pretty good idea of what these voters look like, the kinds of voters Joe Biden needs to win right now.
--:-- Eli Yockley: He is not leading Donald Trump in most public surveys.
--:-- Eli Yockley: And a lot of that's due to the fact that he's weaker among his own 2020 voters than Donald Trump is among his voters.
--:-- Eli Yockley: There's more women among these double haters than we've seen ever since we started tracking this in 2016.
--:-- Eli Yockley: There's more young people, especially Gen Z, who doesn't love the president's handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
--:-- Eli Yockley: There's also a number of Republicans who are not thrilled about Donald Trump's re-ascendance in the Republican Party, the kind of folks who were out there supporting Nikki Haley throughout the primary process.
--:-- Eli Yockley: These voters are going to be very decisive as we move forward.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): And Cady's very right, by the way. This is going to be a very volatile year the next year.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): The American public has not been paying attention to this like the political class in Washington has.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): They don't know every piece of Donald Trump's multiple serious legal problems.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): They don't know every single thing that he said.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): But they are starting to pay attention.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): And especially among some of these conservative voters, old school Republicans like the Mitt Robbins of the world in these swing states.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): We've noticed them sort of voters organically mentioning things like NATO and Trump's comments on that.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): NATO was busted.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, well, sir, if we don't pay and we're attacked by Russia, will you protect us?
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): I said, you didn't pay your delinquent.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): He said, yes, let's say that happened. No, I would not protect you.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): You got to pay. You got to pay your bills.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): The issue of the day is going to matter a lot moving forward.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): And that's why this economic improvement, the president's going to need to lean into highlighting that in the immigration discussion we're having right now is clearly dragging him down.
--:-- Katty Kay: Katty, do non-swing staters, the vast majority of the population, do they ever get a bit jealous of these 100,000 people you're talking about?
--:-- Katty Kay: Or are they rather relieved to be avoiding all the fuss?
--:-- Katty Kay: There is a saying, particularly amongst Democrats, that maps don't vote, people do.
--:-- Katty Kay: And what they're sort of protesting there is the fact that in California, large numbers of people will vote.
--:-- Katty Kay: But because the state always leans democratic, people feel slightly disenfranchised.
--:-- Katty Kay: They feel that their vote doesn't matter as much as somebody in Michigan.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): I think that by the end of the election, once you've had these, whatever it was we said, $140,000 spent on you in political advertising, and you've been bombarded day and night with campaign ads and visits from candidates and more campaign ads, you're probably fairly sick of being a swing stater.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): Yeah, it must be pretty draining.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): It's a long, exhausting process of turning on your television and seeing yet another negative ad about Donald Trump or yet another negative ad about Joe Biden.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): So we know where the swing states are in this particular election, and we know roughly who that 100,000 people are made up of.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): How then, we want to know now, are the campaigns trying to get them on board?
--:-- Eli Yockley: Eli, are they ringing them up?
--:-- Eli Yockley: Or would it be more cost effective for each campaign to send an individual campaign worker to embed or live with that swing voter from March till November
--:-- Eli Yockley: Oh my gosh the idea of moving in campaign workers would probably scare off swing state voters
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): By the way, I love campaign ads.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): I love negative ads. They're fun to watch.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): It's like the fun part of politics.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): They are getting better and funnier.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): Here's a question for you.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): Just how far are the radical left and inside the beltway bandits willing to go to stop him?
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): They are funny and they like work.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): Yeah.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): I mean, that's why the campaigns run them so much is people are very responsive to it.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): It's called negative partisanship.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): We all know they hate him for winning the fight to protect life.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): And negative partisanship attacking the other sides here on advantage works.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): And that's going to be the whole job of Biden's campaign over the coming several months is he's got to revive this coalition from four years ago.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): And the best way to do that is to remind all these voters why they hated Donald Trump in the first place.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): There's something dangerous happening in America.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): There's an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs in our democracy.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): All of us are being asked right now, what will we do to maintain our democracy?
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): History's watching.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): But on the other side of that, I mean, is the whole messaging war about the current president's age.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): I mean, people are seeing these clips of Joe Biden stumbling all the time.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): We saw the images yesterday of Biden stumbling around.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): And, you know, honestly, you know, it's a sad thing to see.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): You don't want to see anyone do that.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): But it was frustrating because, honestly, that was symbolic of the state of our country.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): And it's definitely breaking through.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): When I go back home to Missouri, it's the first thing people say to me is, do you think Joe Biden is as bad as he looks on TV?
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): you.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): And that's going to be something he's going to have to contend with.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): It's why moments like the State of the Union matter so much in a way that they don't always.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): Can he give an hour-long speech at nine o'clock without stumbling through it?
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): The other challenge for the Biden campaign in these swing states, in these key communities, is going to be firing up the kinds of people he needs to do some of this traditional knocking on doors and meeting voters where they are.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): His problem right now in all the data we're seeing is by some of these young folks who traditionally would have been the Democratic Party's round army trying to rev up these voters in these key communities.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): He's going to have to do something moving forward in his campaign.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): He's going to have to spend some time figuring out how it is to try to revive those folks who do kind of the hard work of campaigning every four years for the presidency.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): This election then looks set to be a sequel, the first between the same candidates since the rematch between Eisenhower and Stevenson in 1956.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): In Hollywood, some sequels are like The Godfather Part II, very successful, breaking new ground.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): Others are like Jaws II, a creative abyss and a flop.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): Katty, which will 2024 be?
--:-- Katty Kay: I'm not sure Americans love reruns, and maybe in the television age, reruns are inherently a little bit boring.
--:-- Katty Kay: We do know that Donald Trump tends to drive up turnout, partly because people love him and partly because people hate him.
--:-- Katty Kay: So it's possible that this is going to be a very high turnout election.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): The key, you were asking about what the Biden campaign can do, because the volatility at the moment is on the Democratic side.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): The key is to build an anti-Trump coalition.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): And the way they do that, they feel in my conversations with people from the campaign is by goading Donald Trump into being Donald Trump at his worst.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): And they will do that as they're starting to do on social media by getting him to say outrageous, offensive things by pushing his buttons.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): Now, that doesn't lead for the most edifying political campaign.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): And I think if that's what the Biden camp feels they have to do for the next seven months in order to win back those people who may be flirting with the idea of voting for Donald Trump, but probably have more Democratic leanings, that's what they're going to do.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): So this is going to be a hard to predict, volatile and pretty dirty campaign.
--:-- Eli Yockley: Eli, a rematch, a sequel, how does that go down in US history?
--:-- Eli Yockley: It's going to be a dark year.
--:-- Eli Yockley: I mean, we have an interesting kind of scary constitutional problem with the idea of these trials.
--:-- Eli Yockley: I think you've seen reporting of the Biden campaign not talking about Election Day as the end of this campaign, but about January 6th when the Electoral College meets being the end of the campaign, building off of what we saw happen after the last election.
--:-- Eli Yockley: I think that's a scary moment in American politics.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): And, you know, what's going to these key states are going to matter a lot because these are going to be decided by so few votes.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): The one thing we haven't talked about and I think is probably something weighing on, especially the Biden campaign, is the notion of some of these third party candidates.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): candidates.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): If we go back to the 2016 analogy, it was those third party candidates in key states.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): And we started this conversation by talking about which were the key states.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): It was third party candidates in key states like Michigan and like Wisconsin that lost Hillary Clinton, the presidency and RFK, Robert Kennedy Jr., who people are not hearing a lot about, Cornel West, a progressive African-American candidate who could appeal to young progressive Democrats.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): They only need to peel away, as Eli says, a few thousand voters of these double haters, as we've called them, to swing the election one way or another.
--:-- Katty Kay: Katie, you know, we said that we listen to every word that you say, and that some of what you say, then we make into another episode.
--:-- Katty Kay: Well, third party candidates, you just created another episode with another of your paragraphs and we will delve into that with what Teddy Roosevelt in 1912 Ross Perot in 1992 and so on up to Cornel West and Robert Kennedy Jr.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): If you're up for that.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): You're the historian so I'll be asking the questions.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): We can flip.
--:-- Katty Kay: Cathy thanks so much for joining us.
--:-- Katty Kay: Thank you.
--:-- Katty Kay: Thanks Eli.
--:-- Katty Kay: Thank you James.
--:-- Eli Yockley: Eli thanks so much.
--:-- Eli Yockley: Yep anytime.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): We'll take you up on that.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): Remember, if you want to hear more episodes from The Global Story, we release a new one every weekday, Monday to Friday.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): Search for The Global Story wherever you get your BBC podcasts and subscribe.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): Thank you for listening.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): If you want to dig deeper into the US election, do check out our increasing back catalogue.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): There's one about Trump's inner circle and another about Biden's brain.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): There is a link to those in the show notes.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): And if you have ideas about what we should cover on the election or anything else, please send us a text or a voice note on WhatsApp at plus 44 330 123 9480 or email us at theglobalstory at bbc.com.
--:-- Host (James Reynolds): Goodbye.
--:-- Asma Khalid: America is changing, and so is the world.
--:-- Asma Khalid: But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval.
--:-- Asma Khalid: It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.
--:-- Asma Khalid: I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C.
--:-- Asma Khalid: I'm Tristan Redman in London, and this is The Global Story.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet.
--:-- Asma Khalid: Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Asma Khalid: MailChimp
