--:-- [Ryan Knudsen and Molly Ball are introduced]
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Welcome to Red, White, and Who. I'm Ryan Knudsen.
--:-- Molly Ball: And I'm Molly Ball. It's Friday, October 25th.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: So, Molly, this is our last episode before the big day. Oh, wow. The big day being... no, it's not. It's not. Is it Halloween? Oh, okay. I was gonna say there is another Ryan. We did this intro last week. There's a lot of great holidays right now. Well, so what is your plan for Halloween?
--:-- Molly Ball: We're going to Sesame Street. Oh, you're doing a family costume. My wife is Cookie Monster. My two-year-old is going to be Elmo. And I'm going to be the trash can. And our two-month-old is going to be strapped to my chest. And he'll be Oscar. That's great.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Okay, so we have... I have a series of questions for you. Okay. The first of which is, are you a decisive person? I feel like if I were, I would just say yes. And the fact that I'm equivocating tells you that I'm not that decisive.
--:-- Molly Ball: So, Pepsi or Coke?
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Coke. Burger King or McDonald's?
--:-- Molly Ball: Burger King.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Would you rather have to swim across a 50-meter pool to escape a shark or run across a football field to escape an angry gorilla?
--:-- Molly Ball: My tolerance for hypotheticals is very low. I deal in facts, right? But definitely the gorilla.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: And hypothetically, if there was an election coming up on, say, November 5th, would you vote for Kamala Harris or Donald Trump?
--:-- Molly Ball: Well, there I definitely am not making any kind of decision or prediction. Which makes sense, of course, because you are a reporter. But the reason that I'm asking you about decisiveness is because there are still a lot of people who are indecisive about who to vote for.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: A Wall Street Journal poll out this week shows that 3% of the electorate still hasn't made up their mind. And in an election this close, that really could matter.
--:-- Molly Ball: This is the closest election I have ever covered, and it may be the closest election in history. And so that means that any tiny factor, you know, a weather event in Wisconsin or a last-minute revelation or really anything could sway the outcome, which means that these undecided voters also could change the outcome, even though they are only 3% of the electorate, according to our poll.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: When some number of these undecided voters listen to our podcast, because we got quite a few emails from listeners after we put that call out at the end of last week's episode for undecided voters in swing states. And our senior producer, Rachel Humphries, talked to five of them.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: Yes, Ryan. I spent a lot of time on the phone this week talking to undecided voters. They're all in key swing states where the polling is so close right now. And they're all really torn on who to vote for this year. And I have to say, they're not feeling good about it.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: What is one word that you would use to describe how you're feeling about this election?
--:-- Rachel Humphries: Confused. One word, probably frustrated. Honestly, nervous. More so than I ever have for any other political event I've participated in. Nervous. Very indecisive.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Yeah, indecisive. So why are they all undecided?
--:-- Rachel Humphries: Well, I'm going to tell you, Ryan, but don't you have a little bit of housekeeping to do first?
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Yes. Let's do that. From the Journal, this is Red, White & Who. Our show about the road to the White House.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Welcome back to Red, White, and Who. We're talking about undecided voters in swing states. Rachel Humphries, let's get into it. Tell us about these five voters that you talked to.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: Well, to start off, Ryan, I'm going to let them introduce themselves.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Yeah, my name is Ryan Cox. I currently live in Atlanta, Georgia, and I'm 27 years old.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: My name's Justin. I live in Pennsylvania, and I'm 34 years old.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: My name is Rachel Brody. I'm 30, and I live in Southern Michigan.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: My name is Nate. I'm 25 years old, and I live in Wisconsin in the Milwaukee suburbs.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: My name is Kobe. I am from Arizona, and I'm 24 years old.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: It's kind of amazing, Rachel, that you found five voters, and one of them is named Ryan, and one of them is named Rachel.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: I know. I don't know if this is just similar as a tract, but Ryan got in touch and said you have a great name. Great name. Probably the best name. After Molly.
--:-- Molly Ball: Molly, Ryan, Rachel. I was going to say, alas, no Mollies.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: But Rachel, why just sort of at a high level are these voters undecided?
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: I mean, quite simply, Ryan, they have really big reservations about both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump that they're finding hard to overcome.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: So let's start with Donald Trump. Here's Ryan Cox in Georgia.
--:-- Ryan Cox: You know, January 6th was obviously something that made me feel ashamed to be American, that something like this would happen. And to know that someone that I voted for played a part in that happening was disheartening to say the least.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: And I spoke to Justin Hirst from Pennsylvania. Justin voted third party basically out of protest in 2020.
--:-- Justin Hirst: And he told me that he can see himself unlining with some of Trump's policies. But he also has issues with him as a person.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: You know, that Georgia phone call was a real problem for me. And that, of course, is that call Trump had with Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
--:-- Justin Hirst: Look, all I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: And so it seems like for these voters, their reservations about Trump really come down to his personality.
--:-- Molly Ball: When you think about the rhetoric that we're hearing on the campaign trail, it really reflects a lot of what these undecided voters are talking about.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: Kamala Harris, in recent days, has put a huge amount of emphasis on concerns about Trump's temperament and fitness, calling him unhinged, saying in her CNN town hall this week that she believes he is a fascist.
--:-- Molly Ball: The comments by Trump's former chief of staff, John Kelly, and a number of others calling Trump a fascist and raising concerns about his conduct and his fitness for the presidency.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: You see a lot of emphasis on this by the Democrats. And a large part of that is likely aimed at reminding voters like these of the qualms that they have and seeking to persuade them that Trump is a unique threat to democracy.
--:-- Molly Ball: And that is the reason, according to Kamala Harris, that people have to vote against him, even if they are not in love with her.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: So, Rachel, what do these voters say about why they were reluctant to vote for Harris?
--:-- Molly Ball: Yeah, when it comes to Harris, voters are still wanting to know more from her. They're kind of struggling to trust her, basically.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: And this came up in my conversation with Rachel Brody in Michigan.
--:-- Rachel Brody: I mean, I think the pros are she's, you know, for one, a woman, which I appreciate as a woman as well, but more so she's logical. She's a reasonable person.
--:-- Molly Ball: However, I'm really mostly concerned about how the rest of the world use her as a leader and whether that's going to cause America to kind of sit idly by and get passed by countries like China and India, whose economies are really growing and they're really doing a lot of things to make sure they push themselves into a higher superpower status in the world.
--:-- Rachel Brody: And, you know, if that's the case, then where does that leave America?
--:-- Rachel Humphries: Rachel told me that she selected interviews from both candidates and she's going to sit and watch them and make her mind up that way.
--:-- Molly Ball: And Justin in Pennsylvania talked about that too.
--:-- Justin Hirst: I think, I will say this, I think Harris really had a chance to win me over when she decided to go on Fox News and do a combative interview.
--:-- Molly Ball: And it kind of just felt like she filibustered and kind of dropped the opportunity to win over people in the middle.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: So you know that could have convinced me.
--:-- Molly Ball: Do you feel that she wasn't answering the questions in the Brett Baer interview?
--:-- Justin Hirst: I mean I just kind of want her to actually go down a list of these are my policies specifically these are what they will do.
--:-- Molly Ball: And you know she talks about the opportunity economy and that's a great idea but then she doesn't actually go on to list what the opportunity economy means.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: Molly it's kind of amazing that an individual interview that a candidate does can be so important.
--:-- Molly Ball: Yeah, well, these voters all feel like they know what they're getting with Trump. They've heard a lot from Trump. But Harris, they're still looking for information about her and they want to see her not give a speech at a rally or speak in a commercial.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: There's a feeling that, you know, that's sort of phony. That's all staged.
--:-- Molly Ball: They want to see her in these unscripted settings. They want to get a sense of her capability to handle tough questions and to really speak for herself and speak for her vision.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: The other thing, Molly, that came through when talking to these undecided voters is how much their decision is really weighing on them.
--:-- Molly Ball: You heard Rachel from Michigan say earlier that she's more nervous about this election than any other she's voted in.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: Honestly, I think there's really more at stake for my family, but also just the country in general.
--:-- Molly Ball: I think a lot of the rhetoric around the candidates is focused on the potential negative outcomes of either one winning and less so on the positive outcomes.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: And that's just a product of where we're at with the economy and the world.
--:-- Molly Ball: And it's just there's a lot more at stake than there used to be.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: There really is a feeling that the stakes are really high in this election.
--:-- Molly Ball: You know, the first election I really covered as a national reporter was 2012, when Barack Obama was running for re-election against Mitt Romney.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: And certainly both of them probably said many times, this is the most important election, you have to get out there and vote.
--:-- Molly Ball: But the stakes felt a lot lower. It felt like both of these were basically normal candidates offering a basically normal sort of policy divergence.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: And while there are certainly consequences for the policy decisions that presidents make no matter what, you didn't have this feeling that we were in, you know, the sort of twilight of American democracy, the potential end times.
--:-- Molly Ball: So this election, I think people are really, really, really on edge for that reason.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: Yes, and you could hear that in undecided voter Nate Zarin's voice when I asked him how he's planning to make a decision.
--:-- Nate Zarin: Oh, I need to do it fast. That's a big groan.
--:-- Molly Ball: Yeah, it's a big groan. It's a tough challenge for me.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: I think at the end of the day I just going to have to decide which is the better of the two and have to live with that going forward.
--:-- Molly Ball: I don't have an easy answer for how I going to decide yet but just that it needs to be this week.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: Yeah, I'm mailing in my ballot, which is why I need to do it soon.
--:-- Molly Ball: And where is your ballot right now?
--:-- Nate Zarin: Well, it's just kind of sitting, not filled out.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: I just opened mine recently. My wife's is still unopened.
--:-- Molly Ball: We just have kind of had him sitting for a few weeks, dreading voting.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: Nate isn't the only person I spoke to who's trying to avoid his ballot right now.
--:-- Molly Ball: Here's Kobe Brown in Arizona.
--:-- Kobe Brown: I've got my ballot sitting on my table and I'm just waiting to send it in.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: Have you looked at it yet?
--:-- Kobe Brown: No, it's still in the envelope. Just sitting there.
--:-- Molly Ball: You know, you're actually the second person today I've spoken to who's told me that. Just sitting there, like, weighing on you.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: Yeah, yeah, it's just on my mind, you know. It's like a piece of paper that weighs a thousand pounds.
--:-- Molly Ball: Yeah, I just said it's the elephant in the room, but that's actually not a sort of... It's the elephant and donkey. Elephant and donkey in the room, exactly.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: Just two huge animals sat there looking at them.
--:-- Molly Ball: And Kobe, like most of the voters actually that I spoke to, he told me that he would love to have a third option to vote for, but he says that right now that just doesn't feel viable.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: Yes, I have considered voting for a third-party candidate.
--:-- Molly Ball: I mean, I've even talked with friends and family, and we've all come to the same consensus that we feel like doing that is throwing away our vote.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: But that also makes me wonder, like, how many of the people who are voting for the candidates feel that way?
--:-- Molly Ball: And if there was another option, how many people would vote for that third option?
--:-- Rachel Humphries: Molly, why do you think there haven't really been any viable third-party candidates?
--:-- Molly Ball: So there's a lot of people who see both of these candidates negatively and would prefer something else.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: The problem you always get with third parties is the idea of a third option is an abstraction.
--:-- Molly Ball: And once you get into the weeds of what that person would stand for, the many people who have misgivings about the two major candidates don't really have anything else in common.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: Some of them are disaffected Republicans. Some of them are disaffected Democrats. Some of them may be libertarians or socialists or have some other philosophy that is not represented by either of the two parties.
--:-- Molly Ball: But to try to actually have a candidate speak for this sort of motley array of protests voters turns out to be quite a challenge in practice.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: And so in practice, the third party vote does end up being mostly a protest vote.
--:-- Molly Ball: That they're in a pretty tough spot, Ryan.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: I don't envy them right now. All of them told me that, you know, they're all in swing states. So they're being inundated right now with ads, political ads, whenever they switch on the TV, go online, it's everywhere.
--:-- Molly Ball: And so they really feel the pressure, right? They know how important this is.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: And all of them said that it is more important to vote than to not. So they all say they're definitely going to vote.
--:-- Molly Ball: They just don't have a sense of how to do it.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: And some of them said they might just take the plunge.
--:-- Molly Ball: But the last thing I want to say is all of them talked about how they hope the future for a politics that is a bit kinder and is less divided.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: They don't like the divisive rhetoric that we're hearing at this election. And they want to feel that they have something in common with their fellow Americans.
--:-- Molly Ball: And that's something that came through from every single person that I spoke to.
--:-- Rachel Humphries: All right, well, thanks, Rachel, for bringing us these voices. It's all super interesting.
--:-- Molly Ball: We're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, can a betting market predict the election? Stay with us. We'll be right back.
--:-- Molly Ball: So we've been talking a bit about this new Wall Street Journal poll that came out this week that shows that Donald Trump has opened up a two percentage point lead, which is still, of course, within the margin of error, but it is a meaningful improvement from where he was in prior polls.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: And yet, our colleague Aaron Zittner had a really interesting piece the other day about how pollsters blew it in 2020. Are they going to blow it again in 2024?
--:-- Molly Ball: Well, I think the polls are probably right when they tell us that the race is really, really close and is really, really close in all of the swing states.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: And that's about as close as a poll can get.
--:-- Molly Ball: Once you get to a race that's potentially going to be decided by a point or less in a lot of these states, by a few thousand votes out of millions of votes being cast, There's just no way for a poll to be precise enough that it tells you exactly how people are going to vote.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: But the polls seem to underestimate Trump's support in 2016, underestimate him again in 2020.
--:-- Molly Ball: And then some polls predicted a red wave in 2022 that didn't happen.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Do you think there's a possibility that there could be some overcorrection in one direction or another in 2024?
--:-- Molly Ball: It's definitely possible, but we don't know in what direction.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: And in 2012, for example, the polls underestimated Barack Obama. So it can go in either direction.
--:-- Molly Ball: We do see this trend where Trump in particular tends to outperform his polls, but the pollsters want to get it right so they have tried to correct for that in the past four years.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: And it possible that they overcorrected for it and are now overestimating Trump support.
--:-- Molly Ball: And again, we're just not going to know until we get the election result whether the pollsters were overcounting or undercounting Trump supporters, in what direction that error goes.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: All right, so a couple of listeners got in touch this week asking about other ways to evaluate the state in this race. One of them is Ariel Asayagi.
--:-- Ariel Asayagi: Hi, Molly. My name is Ariel, and I am from Fortaleza, Ceará, here in Brazil. My question for you is, how reliable are betting markets compared to polling data when it comes to predicting election outcomes?
--:-- Molly Ball: Muito obrigado and thank you. Ariel, thanks so much for this. This is a really great question.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: I'm just looking at Polymarket right now, one of the popular betting sites, which we did an episode of The Journal about a little while ago.
--:-- Molly Ball: And it shows that most people in that market are betting that Trump will win. He's got a roughly 20 percentage point lead right now.
--:-- Molly Ball: I'm very skeptical of these betting markets. I don't think they should be taken particularly seriously, particularly as any kind of indicator of how the election is going to turn out.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: But before I uncork that rant, I will say why people do look at them and take them seriously.
--:-- Molly Ball: And there is an argument for it. The idea is that when people are putting money on the line, that is more serious than just saying who they think is going to win.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: So people who are placing these bets are invested in the outcome.
--:-- Molly Ball: There's a few problems with that when it comes to elections. First of all, there's nothing to suggest that these betting markets are more accurate than polls.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: In fact, there is a lot of reason to suspect that the type of people who are betting on elections are not necessarily in touch with the electorate as it actually exists.
--:-- Molly Ball: There's also some evidence that these betting markets can be manipulated.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: And I think because people are looking at the betting markets as an indicator, some people have an interest in trying to make them reflect a certain outcome in order to make that outcome seem inevitable.
--:-- Molly Ball: And the Wall Street Journal also reported last week about how it looks like there was a small number of very large bets on Polymarket totaling $30 million that could be skewing the results in Trump's direction.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Mm-hmm, exactly.
--:-- Molly Ball: There's actually a study now by a professor at the Yale School of Management, Jeff Sonnenfeld, and some colleagues. They looked into a lot of these prediction markets and found that there are actually very few participants in a lot of them.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: There's actually not very much money going into a lot of these markets and not a lot of people going into these markets, which suggests that that aggregation effect, that wisdom of crowds effect, isn't really happening when you only have a few people or a few thousand dollars being placed on these bets.
--:-- Molly Ball: Okay. All right. Well, this was really interesting.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: And next week is actually our last episode before the really big day, which is Election Day, November 5th.
--:-- Molly Ball: We're almost at the finish line.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: What are you going to be looking for in this final stretch?
--:-- Molly Ball: Well, it's a political reporting cliche, but it's closing argument time.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Kamala Harris is going to give a big speech where she makes her final case for her candidacy.
--:-- Molly Ball: This is going to be, I think, a big moment that gets a lot of attention.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Donald Trump is holding a big rally on Sunday at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
--:-- Molly Ball: Also not in a swing state, but a way to sort of make a big splash, get a lot of attention.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: So both of these candidates are really trying to put a lot of juice behind their big closing argument, make their best case to those last voters who are still trying to make up their minds, people like the ones that we all heard from in this episode.
--:-- Molly Ball: Great. Rachel, do you think that our undecided voters are going to be able to make up their minds before November 5th?
--:-- Rachel Humphries: They all told me they would, so we're going to get back in touch with them, and maybe next week we'll find out who they voted for.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Great. All right. Looking forward to that.
--:-- Molly Ball: It's so exciting.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Well, thanks, Molly. Always a pleasure.
--:-- Molly Ball: You too, Ryan. Good luck with Halloween. Good luck with your trash can.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Thanks. You too. Thanks to Nate, Ryan, Rachel, Kobe, and Justin, and all the other undecided voters who spoke to us for this episode.
--:-- Molly Ball: Good luck in coming to your decision.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Red, White, and Who is part of The Journal, which is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal.
--:-- Molly Ball: Our senior producer is Rachel Humphreys. Our producer is Pierce Singe. Our editor is Catherine Whalen.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: I'm Ryan Knudsen. This episode was engineered by Peter Leonard.
--:-- Molly Ball: Our theme music is by So Wiley and remixed by Peter Leonard.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Additional music this week by, you guessed it, Peter Leonard.
--:-- Molly Ball: Fact-checking by Najwa Jamal. Artwork by James Walton.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Special thanks to Kate Leinbaugh, Sarah Platt, Ben Pershing, and the whole Journal team.
--:-- Molly Ball: Thanks for listening. Red, White, and Who will be back next Friday morning. See you then.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Okay, we're rolling, Molly. Tell us.
--:-- Molly Ball: Okay, well, so I spent most of the day yesterday stuck on a dirt road in remote rural Georgia, having managed to both get my rental car stuck in a ditch and also lock myself out of it with the keys and my phone still inside while it was still running.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Oh, no.
--:-- Molly Ball: And so I spent several hours watching traffic go by, waiting for the roadside assistance that was supposed to be on its way and never came, finally went and knocked on some doors in this, again, extremely rural part of the state, Zebulon, Georgia, and found some kindly strangers who were able to get the car, pull the car out and pry it open and get me back on the road late at night.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: So big shout out to Gary and Mona Norton of Zebulon, Georgia, who are the heroes of my existence. May have saved me from being eaten by a coyote and never seen again.
--:-- Molly Ball: And they're two boys who pulled the car out. Just wonderful, incredibly lovely people.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: But yeah, that was my day yesterday. It was quite an adventure.
