Election Eve Margins & The Gender Gap | 11.4.24

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John Bickley: Anticipation reaches fever pitch as Trump and Harris sprint for the win after a tumultuous campaign season. It is nice to see you, Kamala. It is nice to see you, Kamala. And I'm just here to remind you, you got this. Together, we will fight, fight, fight, and win, win, win. We're going to win. We're going to win. We're going to win. We're going to turn it around. How and where are the two candidates spending their energy in these last few hours?

Georgia Howe: I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Monday, November 4th, and this is Morning Wire. The final polls are streaming in and showing an historically tight race. We talked to an expert pollster about who has the momentum in the states that will decide it all. And the Harris campaign is banking on women. while Trump may have secured the bro vote. We discuss the key role of the gender gap in tomorrow's high-stakes election.

John Bickley: Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.

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John Bickley: One day from now, Americans will head to the polls and select their next president. With the race coming down to razor-thin margins, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are today making their final pitch to voters. Here are the latest on where things stand is Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips, a cabot.

Cabot Phillips: So Trump and Harris are sprinting to the finish line here, 24 hours left. What's the latest from the campaign trail? Well, if you live in a battleground state, there is a good chance you got a visit or two this weekend, or at least will today. Trump took a swing through the Rust Belt and on to North Carolina. He even held a rally in Virginia, which isn't really considered a swing state, but numerous polls have shown a surprisingly tight race there. So he's looking to expand the map. For her part, Harris hit Georgia, North Carolina, and Michigan and continued to rely on star power to turn out voters. And Harris herself made an appearance on Saturday Night Live, a move that actually drew sharp criticism from FCC Commissioner Brandon Carr, who said NBC violated the FCC's equal time rules.

John Bickley: Right. And here we are one day remaining in a campaign that's been historically tight. Yeah, that is not hyperbole. This is the closest presidential race in modern history. All of the polling data we have points to a true 50-50 style toss-up. In all seven battleground states, Trump and Harris appear to be within two points of each other. That means that they are within the polling margin of error, which means that either candidate could very well win or lose all seven states. Yeah. I say that just to stress that even though the polls appear tight both Donald Trump or Kamala Harris could win by a wide electoral margin So let get to how each candidate could do that We start with Harris Why is her camp optimistic So first, of the more than 70 million Americans who've already voted, around 55 percent have been women. That is good news for Harris because polling consistently shows her with a 10 to 15 point lead with female voters. Harris also benefits from the fact that abortion remains a top issue for more voters this election than any other on record. In years past, it typically ranked as the seventh or eighth most important issue. This year, it is consistently coming in second or third. And that could seal the deal for Harris, but there are still plenty of warning signs for her campaign right now.

Cabot Phillips: Yeah, tell us about that, some of the reasons for concern for Harris. Well, polling shows that just 28% of Americans feel the country is on the right track today. In modern history, every time that number is below 40%, the party in power has been voted out. But perhaps even more importantly, voters simply do not trust Kamala Harris to handle the economy and immigration. Poll after poll all summer and fall long show Donald Trump with a lead on those issues. And the economy in particular remains weak. The cost of living and inflation are still growing up. And the latest jobs report this weekend showed the economy added just 12,000 jobs last month. Remember, the expectation had been 110,000 jobs. So it was 10 times below the mark. That is the worst number since December of 2020.

John Bickley: All right, so what about Trump? Yeah, we'll start with the reasons that he could lose. First, it is no secret that a lot of voters in this country simply do not like him. He is more popular now than when he was in office, but his favorability ratings are still around 44% on average. And historically, it is rare for a candidate to win with numbers that low. However, the Trump camp still has plenty of other reasons to feel good right now. First, Trump has the advantage of having actually held the office before, and polling shows that most Americans believe they were better off under his term than the Biden-Harris term. There are also encouraging signs in the early voting data. 46% of those who've cast a ballot already are over the age of 65. That is a group Trump has historically done very well with. But one of the most overlooked aspects of this race is that Republicans have gained major ground in registering voters. For example, four years ago, there were 6% more registered Democrats than Republicans in Nevada. Today, that lead is down to 2%. In Arizona, the Democrat lead shrunk by 2%. And in North Carolina, it shrunk by 5% the last four years. And then there is the all-important Pennsylvania. In 2020, there were 685,000 more Democrats than Republicans. Today, that margin has been cut in half, with Republicans registering hundreds of thousands of new voters the last four years. So all that to say there are simply a higher share of Republican voters today than there were last election. And this is likely to come down again to very slim margins of voters in just a few states. So every vote matters.

Cabot Phillips: Cabot Thanks for reporting. Anytime. And by the way, listeners can look for Cabot on Daily Wire's election night coverage tomorrow night.

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John Bickley: The final polls are streaming in on the eve of the election as both campaigns work to drum up big turnout tomorrow. Joining us to discuss is Brent Buchanan, president and founder of Signal Polling Group. Brent great to have you on We looking forward to having you live for Daily Wire election night coverage tomorrow Us too First all the focus in these final weeks has rightly been on the battleground states especially the three blue wall Rust Belt states. That's Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. If Harris takes all three, she almost certainly wins. If Trump picks off just one, he very likely wins. How are things looking right now for Trump versus Harris in the Rust Belt?

Brent Buchanan: They're not all acting the same, which is interesting because in 2016, they all flipped for Trump. In 2020, they were all for Biden. And the conventional wisdom is that they all three vote together. But we're starting to see separation within those three states to where it's fairly likely that they all will not go together, which is to Trump's benefit, as you said. Out of the three, which do you think Trump is most likely to pick off?

John Bickley: Well, the whole focus of this campaign has been on Pennsylvania. I think there's a world in which Trump wins Wisconsin and loses Pennsylvania, but I also think he could win both. But of the two, I think Wisconsin is actually one of the most likely for him to win, mainly because it has the highest polling error of any state if you look back at the last four elections.

Brent Buchanan: Now, Nate Cohn, in his analysis of the final New York Times-Siena polling of the battlegrounds, he closes with a warning that pollsters may once again be underestimating the Trump vote. He says the Times found that white Democrats were 16 percent likelier to respond than white Republicans, and that's a larger disparity than their previous polls this year and not much better than their flawed 2020 polls. Do you think we're once again seeing Trump's support underestimated?

John Bickley: I don't know if we're necessarily seeing it underestimated, but we just finished up our own battleground state surveys. and in every single one of them, something that we call the retro ballot, which is how did people tell us they voted in the 2020 election, came back at like Biden plus 10, Biden plus 11. So we're definitely, even in our own polling, seeing significant over-response among Biden 2020 voters. But most pollsters should have pieces in place that take into account how to adjust for that. I think if you look at the Setzler poll in Iowa that came out that showed Harris up by three points, she does random digit dialing, very little waiting to her polls. And so she basically just takes whatever the respondents said, and that's what she releases. And so I think she got caught in this massive Democrat over-response, but good pollsters know how to account for that. And even with us in our own polls, I mean, we have the battleground states almost within a point of each other, or each candidate is within a point of each other.

Brent Buchanan: Final question. What trends will you be looking for early on in election night? Every state reports differently. But one of the things we're going to be looking for is what is that election day turnout? And normally it's only Republicans that really, really have to focus hard on turning folks out. But Democrats just haven't hit a lot of their margins in the places they need to. And like Philadelphia and Pennsylvania and Milwaukee and Wisconsin and Detroit and Michigan. And so the biggest thing we're going to be watching is how high is election day turnout compared to all the people in our poll who told us they're going to vote on election day. and comparing that percentage against those who have already voted and what percentage of the population we expect that to make up.

John Bickley: Brent Buchanan, thanks for coming on. And again, we look forward to seeing you for Daily Wire's election night coverage tomorrow evening. Thanks, John.

Georgia Howe: The gender gap has been a major theme of this election. Now in the closing hours, Democrats are putting all their chips on the female vote, especially in the all-important battlegrounds. Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham, who, by the way, is going to be co-hosting Daily Wire's election pre-show tomorrow, is here now to explain. So Megan polling has showed some strong momentum for the Trump camp but Democrats believe early voting numbers are really good for them Why Well simply because in early voting women are outpacing men in the battlegrounds of Michigan North Carolina and Georgia by roughly 10 points In fact, in Pennsylvania, that gap is even wider. There, about 56% of the early vote is women, 43% is men. Now, that general trend is historically not unusual, as men do tend to wait to vote until election day. But Democrats are taking the fact that these early vote breakdowns between men and women are trending about the same as 2020 as a good sign.

Megan Basham: Trump supporters also seem to feel like this doesn't bode well for their guy. Conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, who has mounted quite a number of turnout the vote efforts on Trump's behalf, posted this on X. Early vote has been disproportionately female. If men stay at home, Kamala is president. It's that simple. As for the Harris camp, they say they're feeling very good about what they're seeing in early voting. Now, this group, though, does include a lot of Republican women. That is true. It does. But based on the polling, the presumption is that women will break heavily for Harris and that men will break for Trump. Because while women have always tended to vote more for Democrats, we are seeing a greater divergence between the sexes in this election than ever before, particularly when it comes to those younger voters. So women under 30 have become much more liberal, while young men are becoming much more conservative. Since 2020, there has been a 14-point swing among young men towards Republicans. The problem is actually getting that bro vote to the polls, as women tend to be more reliable voters. In every election since Reagan won in 1980, they have cast ballots at higher rates than men.

Megan Basham: So has Team Trump shifted their approach to make this sale to women? No. You know, I've watched a few interviews and they really seem to be sticking with the playbook of appealing to women based on kitchen table issues like inflation and safety while minimizing the issue of abortion, which has been Harris's primary pitch to women. So this is what J.D. Vance told CBS's Face the Nation just a few days ago. All I can say to women voters and frankly to men voters too, but to all Americans is I think that Donald Trump is the person who's going to lower the cost of groceries. I know that Donald Trump is the person who's going to secure the southern border. What does it say about Kamala Harris's leadership that violent crime has gone up? What does it say about the fact that fentanyl overdose deaths have increased under her leadership?

Georgia Howe: And here's a bright spot in battleground early voting for the Trump camp, Republicans are trending much better by that measure than in 2020. In Arizona, for example, which they narrowly lost in 2020, Republican early voting is up six points from the last election, while Democrats are down four points. In Pennsylvania, Republican early voting is up 10 points, while Democrat early voting is down 11. So the question is whether those Republican women are voting for Trump or Harris.

Megan Basham: Well, we're going to find out soon.

Georgia Howe: Megan, thanks for reporting. Anytime. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back later this afternoon with more news you need to know.

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