What Polling Says About Trump, Harris And An Election “Doom Loop”

>> Bill Whalen: It's Thursday, September 26, 2024, and welcome back to Matters of Policy and Politics, a Hoover Institution podcast devoted to governance and balance of power here in America and around the world. I'm Bill Whalen, I'm the Hoover Institution's Virginia Hobbs Carpenter Distinguished Policy Fellow in Journalism. But I'm not the only Hoover Fellow who's podcasting, and I suggest you go to our website, which is hoover.org, click on the tab at the top of the homepage that says Commentary.

Head over to the other tab that says Multimedia and up will come Audio Podcasts. There are about a dozen in all, including this one. My guests today are David Brady and Douglas Rivers. David Brady is the Hoover Institution's Davies Family Senior Fellow, Emeritus, at the Hoover Institution and the Bowen H and Janice Arthur McCoy Professor of Political Science in the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

Douglas Rivers, likewise, a Hoover Institution Senior Fellow in Stanford University political scientist. He's also the Chief Scientist at YouGov Plc, a global polling firm. Now, with America's election now 39 days away, they're here to talk about what their polling data suggests regarding voters' concerns and priorities. Gentlemen, thanks for coming on the podcast.

>> David Brady: Thanks for having us.

>> Bill Whalen: So our listeners and our viewers should know that we have had some challenges putting this together because you two gentlemen are very much in high demand in the campaign season. Plus, each time that I try to schedule this, something happens. Somebody drops out of the race, somebody drops in the race, somebody gets shot at, somebody holds a debate, somebody cancels a debate, and so forth.

So we're going to try to have a conversation here. And what I think is now a static run until the election, unless there's another debate and things get shook up again. But let's begin with the conversation this way. You two gentlemen run what is called a tracking poll on the election.

And this is different from a more traditional poll, which we would call a snapshot, which captures the voters moods in a period of one, two, three days sometimes. Dave and Doug, can you explain exactly how you put together your tracking poll, who exactly you're tracking, and how this is a different reflection for what you might see in other polls that are out there?

Doug, go ahead, Doug.

>> Douglas Rivers: Yeah, so we're running a big project called, SAY 24, that's Stanford, Arizona State, and Yale, with colleagues at Yale and Arizona State. It's being run by YouGov. So the panelists are drawn from YouGov's US panel. Starting in December of last year, we interviewed 130,000 people, and we divided them into groups.

The main group is interviewed, well, a group is interviewed every week. The same group is re-interviewed four weeks later. So we see changes from people over a four week period with the same people. And the reason that's important is most polls draw a fresh sample of people.

And when you see change, like the New York Times recently had Harris down by five points in Arizona in their most recent poll. Before that, they had up by five points. So according to them, there was a ten-point swing. Not terribly plausible. Our case is we're looking at the exact same people, so we see who changes and who doesn't.

And that enables us to quickly determine whether something is actually having an effect or it's coming from compositional differences you're seeing in one shot surveys.

>> Bill Whalen: Dave, one thing you hear in the era of polling with Trump supporters especially, is some Trump supporters are kind of reluctant to talk to pollsters who call them on the phone, who contact them.

Lack of institutional confidence, if you will. But when you do a tracking poll and you have people now on the Internet over a period of time, do you find that voters are maybe just a little more candid and forthcoming with their opinions?

>> David Brady: Doug, that's yours.

>> Douglas Rivers: We'd like to think so, but I don't think there's really any evidence that people are more or less forthcoming online than they are over the phone.

There is a bit of a difference of when you have an interviewer present so it's a person talking to them. We're naturally social animals, and they think about how they're coming off and that sort of thing. Whereas when you're online, you're talking to a machine and inhibitions may be a little less.

We do see that people, for example, are more willing to stake out more extreme positions when they're online than when they're talking to people. But in terms of how they intend to vote, we find those seem to be interchangeable.

>> David Brady: Two additions to what Doug said. On on those weekly polls, one of them features Stanford has control of that, then Arizona state, then Yale, and then there's a joint one.

So the Stanford polls will be more consistent on one set of questions. And the second thing, by the way, is-

>> Douglas Rivers: And the questions will be better than the Stanford ones.

>> David Brady: Pardon?

>> Douglas Rivers: The questions will be better if they're written by Stanford people.

>> David Brady: Yeah, that's correct, I knew you'd say that.

And the second thing is the real, if you think back to the Romney Obama debate, after that first debate, it looked like Romney had taken the lead. And that's because when they start to make phone calls, the people Democrats were less likely to pick it up. So you oversample because of what you said earlier, Bill.

It's a one time snapshot. You don't have that problem. So in regard to Arizona, as Doug was saying, we didn't get big swings in Arizona like the New York Times did because we had the same set of people.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, let's turn to data and what your poll suggests about the election.

Dave, I want you to start here. Let's talk about Kamala Harris. It's a situation like 1968 in this regard, and that the incumbent president decides he's not going to run surprises us all. And now the incumbent vice president is the party's nominee. But she did not go through a primary process that Humphrey went through in 1968.

Granted, a different primary process back then, and she is something of an unknown, I think we can agree. Well, she might have high name recognition in terms of knowing she's the vice president. Voters don't necessarily know where she is on position. So in this 100 day campaign of hers, it's been an exercise in sort of selectively filling in the blanks, if you will.

So, Dave, turn to your data and let's talk about how she has defined herself and how voters are receiving her.

>> David Brady: Okay, you wanna start with the fact that when after the debate, it was clear that Joe Biden was gonna lose and that Trump was gonna win. And Trump in both of his elections hadn't gathered a real majority of voters, but it looked like it was possible and he probably would do it.

So when Harris came in, it immediately changed things. It wasn't that Republicans and independents left to her, but what happened was that Democrats supporting Biden had dropped off quite a bit. There was a lot of voting saying they're gonna vote for other candidates, voting for RFK, or they were uncertain, and that all disappeared.

So she got a big bump back. I think my view of what her problem is going forward is that we asked this question about how do you perceive is she liberal or etc, what's her political ideology? And we got about 65% varies one or two points. The last one was 64.6% said she's liberal or very liberal, with 38% saying she's very liberal.

And on the issues of she can handle the economy, she loses that one, she loses that one to Trump. And the way I've been running a little bit of data on the following things. So you take a look at what are the issues Americans consider most important and the issues are most important, our first inflation, that's the biggest.

For everybody, that's the highest, it's 20%. Jobs and the economy is 15, immigration is 11, and securing democracy is 10. But when you break that down by party, there are huge differences. Democrats don't consider immigration at all. Only 3% of Democrats think immigration is the most important issue.

So what's actually happening to her, since 13% of Democrats think that inflation's an important issue. If you look at how, if you're a Democrat and you believe inflation is the most important, that hurts her. It hurts her among Democrats, not as much, but it hurts her big among independents.

So on the issues of the economy, jobs in the economy, inflation, she's weakest there. On issues that favor the Democrats, like health care and abortion, she does a little bit better. But given the predominance of economic issues, I think she has to continue speaking to those. She made a speech yesterday where she outlined some of her democratic proposals.

>> Bill Whalen: Right.

>> David Brady: But they looked to me as though they were pretty much industrial policy, government policy. So I don't know how that'll carry over. We'll find out if that makes any changes.

>> Bill Whalen: Doug?

>> Douglas Rivers: Yeah, so the first thing is that Kamala Harris is perceived as being about eight points more likely to be very liberal than Joe Biden was.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay.

>> Douglas Rivers: So that is definitely a problem for her. If the Trump campaign could focus on its message and sell that she's extremely liberal now.

>> Bill Whalen: Doug, has that number moved at all since she entered the race?

>> Douglas Rivers: Yeah, it's actually moved a little further to the left.

>> Bill Whalen: Really, okay.

>> David Brady: Not much, not much, though.

>> Douglas Rivers: Three, four points.

>> David Brady: Yeah.

>> Douglas Rivers: I think that occurs because while she was well known to people that follow politics closely, she was not actually well known to most of the voters. And what happened is when she became the nominee, there was a focus on her, and that means Republicans who are conservative are the ones that moved on where she was.

That may not hurt her much with the swing voters. In terms of I do think that she's still a bit of an unknown quantity to a lot of voters, and what you're seeing is a delayed response. And we saw this actually with the Biden debate. Biden was even or down a point in the national polls.

He lost about one point after the debate. That was it. People do not move a lot, but perceptions of Biden changed quite a bit during the first debate. And over a course of several weeks with intense media scrutiny, the result was that Biden eventually lost, was down four to five points in the popular vote, which would be an electoral vote landslide.

>> Bill Whalen: Would it make sense, would it make sense, then, for her to agree to another debate with Trump?

>> David Brady: I think she's happy to have another debate since the first one went well. Yeah.

>> Douglas Rivers: And my perception is that this race is even or slightly a Republican advantage at the moment.

But the upside is mostly on the Democratic side. The reason for that is that Trump has never gotten above about 47% of anything.

>> David Brady: Right.

>> Douglas Rivers: He's majority unfavorable, nearly anything he's below the 50% mark. So there's not a lot of room for him to go up. She has a bit more headroom.

It's not a lot, I mean, her ceiling is probably 51, 52%, but there's room to win over voters that are in the sort of detached state. And so the longer the campaign goes, at some level, it's a better opportunity for her question whether she can take advantage of it.

>> Bill Whalen: Let's talk about Trump now, gentlemen, in this.

>> David Brady: Bill, can I press him a little on.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, go ahead.

>> David Brady: So Doug, when you did the YouGov sample with, I think, 95,000, 100,000 voters, you spent a lot of time on the seven crucial states. And on that, she had the lead in Nevada, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

And it seemed to me the two key states were North Carolina, where she's down by one point, and Pennsylvania, where she was up by one. So I-

>> Douglas Rivers: In Georgia, where she was down by two.

>> David Brady: Okay, the reason you're saying that she is not the favorite is the Electoral College, right?

There's no question she's gonna win the popular vote now.

>> Douglas Rivers: Right, so the narrowest win for Harris would be Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nebraska too. That would get her 270 electoral votes.

>> David Brady: Wow.

>> Douglas Rivers: And that assumes she gets Nevada. She's behind not by a ton, but by small amounts in North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona.

And she's even or slightly up in the Midwestern states and Nevada, so she has to essentially win all those. But you're right, Dave, I mean, the Trump campaign is spending its money in Pennsylvania and Georgia. And North Carolina is kind of a question mark at this point. Democrats haven't won that since 2000 and-

>> Bill Whalen: Well, let's talk about that for a second, gentlemen, because if you follow North Carolina closely, there's the governor's race. And Mr. Robinson, the Republican- Nominee, Dave's already laughing, he's a dead man walking. I think we can agree it's not good to get caught up. Not good to get caught up in a sex scandal this close to an election, it's indefensible.

Here's the question, guys. I went back and I looked at North Carolina results in 2020, republican turnout was stronger than democratic turnout. Trump won the state by, I think, less than two points. And that's probably why just Republicans more enthusiastic. I'm curious, as you look at this as pollsters, are there examples in past presidential elections when a weak candidate down ticket, like a bad gubernatorial candidate, a bad senatorial candidate, affects the top of the ticket?

And I'm thinking just Republicans who just might not be as excited to turn out because they're so turned off by this choice for governor.

>> Douglas Rivers: Yeah, so I don't think a down-ballot race, which governor is in this case, will move preferences over the presidential candidates. You don't go, gee, I don't like Mark Robinson, and therefore I'm not gonna vote for Donald Trump.

But the effect it has is as the Robinson campaign implodes, there's less turnout activity at the state level.

>> David Brady: Right.

>> Douglas Rivers: And second, you get demoralization among your base in that state. So a point of turnout, if you lose 1% of your voters ending up not voting, that gains you a half a point, so that's better than nothing.

For the other side, that's half a point of gain. And North Carolina almost was Slightly over one point is how I would describe it. Yeah, it was quite close in 2020, and it wouldn't take a lot. Democrats have won statewide races in North Carolina. So I think it's definitely a competitive state.

>> David Brady: So there was one case, I can tell you it works the opposite way, though. I remember in 1972, I was in Texas at the time, teaching. And when was Nixon versus McGovern? The Democrats had the most unusual ballot I've ever seen. The first page Had Nixon versus McGovern, and then there was nothing.

You had to turn to the second page, and the guy was Democratic said, I remember talking to the guy who designed the ballot. He said, well, he said after that, we wanted to make sure that they got that out of the way and then they could turn to the next.

And remember, they were supposed to vote for Democrats.

>> Bill Whalen: By the way, who worked on the McGovern campaign in Texas in 1972?

>> David Brady: I don't know.

>> Bill Whalen: William Jefferson Clinton, I believe. I think that was one of.

>> David Brady: Yeah, yeah, yeah, he did.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, let's talk about Trump now.

So you guys have tracked him in previous elections. This is now.

>> Douglas Rivers: Back to the president here.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, back to, back to the president. Third time now in eight years that he is on a ballot. Let's talk about how he's selling to voters. It would seem to me he's very familiar.

But, Doug, you talked about him being capped at 46% to 47%. Is it the same makeup as in past elections? So have you seen any shifts in terms of white voters, minority voters and so forth?

>> Douglas Rivers: Yeah, we have. So it's been well discussed that there's movement among blacks, particularly younger black males, towards Trump.

The Hispanic vote has been eroding for Democrats for a decade. And so we expect that Harris will probably do a little less well among Hispanics than Democrats have previously. But those movements are all pretty small, and, well, you need huge polling sample sizes to reliably detect any of those, even at 100,000, we're on the edge on getting those groups.

And then the suburbs have gone, they're a little more Democratic than they were in the past.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, I wanna get to that in a minute. Go ahead, Dave.

>> David Brady: So you look at, it's amazing how stable he stays. So unfavorable is favorables across all Americans. He's 40.8% say favorable or very favorable, and 47.4% say very unfavorable or unfavorable.

Many of, most of those are, well, 40% unfavorable. Among independents, he's 50.7% unfavorable. And that has not moved. If you go back to 2016 it doesn't move much. And I don't see, other than what Doug talked about a little. You might if you stretch that, and I'd have to be stretching, it looks like maybe one or 2% of the gender gap a little more anti Trump.

But that's margin of error. I wouldn't bet a dime on it. But you could maybe make a case that women are going a little bit more for Harris than you would have expected.

>> Bill Whalen: So why can't Trump get to 50%? Is it as simple as he can't get enough women to vote for him?

Or are there other issues here?

>> Douglas Rivers: Well, his style is not to reach for swing voters. It's deployed at the base.

>> Bill Whalen: Right. I wouldn't say as much.

>> Douglas Rivers: It's impossible that it hasn't been tried.

>> David Brady: Well, I think the thing that Karl Rove and all kinds of commentators have been saying is he can't stick to the message.

I mean, the best message for Trump is to say, gee, you got the economy, you got the border, you got fracking, you got all these issues where at one point you said x. Now you're saying why, and why didn't you fix these? You've been a vice president for three and a half years.

I think that is. But he can't. But he doesn't stay to it. And as long as those campaign things are the rallies, he gets caught in those rallies and fades off into the standard stuff like the debate, the Haitians eating cats or whatever. So, at any rate, it seems to me he can't, his inability to stay on, what would be the significant message for voters that's making a difference?

>> Bill Whalen: Well, that's interesting. So, Doug, are you suggesting it's a style problem and, Dave, you're saying it's a substance style, or is it both?

>> Douglas Rivers: No, it's a candidate problem. Asking Donald Trump to be someone he's not is not going to be effective.

>> David Brady: Yeah, so we got someone that everybody knows very well, it doesn't look like he's gonna change.

And we got someone that, if you look at it from running in 2020 to now, looks like she's changed a lot. So we've got, she has more room to maneuver. I don't think he has much room to maneuver. I do think if he could stay on message about where she is, that he'd be better, that Republicans prospects would be better off.

But the odds of him doing that strike me as somewhat low.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, question, I'm assuming your tracking poll shows both of these candidates underwater in terms of approval versus disapproval. They're more unpopular than they are popular.

>> David Brady: Correct.

>> Douglas Rivers: Harris is now.

>> Bill Whalen: She's above water.

>> Douglas Rivers: 50, 51% favorable ratings.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay.

>> Douglas Rivers: She's higher than Biden. That's why I think she does have significant room to go up.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, so her head's above water. So she has actually grown. But my question is, when you have two candidates who start out not very popular, what effectiveness there have been in terms of voters looking at third party candidates.

Obviously, Robert Kennedy's out of the race now, but do they take a look at third party candidates, or is this just another election where the third party movement?

>> David Brady: That's just disappeared among, for Democrats and Republicans, it's just gone. The thing was, when Biden did badly in the debate, the percentage of Democrats who said they were thinking of Kennedy or Stein or anybody else had raised and the number of Democrats who said they were uncertain increased.

But in the last couple of polls on that, the only uncertainty is among independents. I got 15% of independents saying they're either uncertain who they vote for or they vote for another candidate. And uncertainty's about two to one. So that 15%, 10% say I'm uncertain, 5% are saying they're thinking about voting for or they have some other candidate.

>> Bill Whalen: Dave, you have data on independents. Tell me what other issue concerns are right now.

>> David Brady: Their issue concerns, their first is inflation. Their second is jobs in the economy, and their third is immigration. So they're the only issues that 21% of them say inflation is the most important.

16% say jobs in the economy, 11% say immigration. And the next, nobody else is at 10%. The next is securing democracy at 9%. And on those issues, if you're an independent who says your main concern is inflation, there's about a 20 point gap, you're for Trump on jobs and the economy.

That's been getting better for Democrats, but there's still a gap. And on immigration, if you're independent and immigration is your number one issue, There's a huge gap in their voting for Trump.

>> Bill Whalen: Doug, every election seems to bring a certain group of voters to the forefront that we haven't thought of before.

I went back to 2016 and looked at some of the data. We had a conversation back then about white voters and education. If you looked at the results in that election, college educated white voters preferred Hillary Clinton by about 55% to 38% over Donald Trump. Less educated white voters preferred Trump's 64% to 28% over Hillary.

That latter group was about 44% of the election. There's the ballgame for Trump. We move forward to 2020, and suburban voters come to the forefront. And Biden gets 54% of the suburban vote, which you mentioned a minute ago. Doug, Hillary gets got only 45% back in 2016. Gender is interesting.

Men were just about evenly divided between Trump and Biden in 2020. That helped get Biden elected by Trump, actually improved his women's vote numbers in 2020, though, he went from about 39% to 44%. Biden got 55% versus Hillary's 54%, kind of a static number. So, Doug, that's a very long preamble into you telling me what group of voters you're looking at in 2024.

There are these suburban moms, soccer moms, suburban dads, soccer dads. What demographic are you looking at?

>> Douglas Rivers: Bill, I'm not quite sure where you got those numbers. Was that AP VoteCast?

>> Bill Whalen: Pew Research.

>> Douglas Rivers: All right the education gap that is looking at college educated whites versus non- college educated whites, which exploded in 2016 and actually got slightly larger in 2020.

Is closely related to the suburban voter effect, because that's where college educated white voters live, as well as the suburbs becoming increasingly diverse. Suburban voters used to be the core of the republican base, and they have definitely moved very much in the democratic direction. Whereas rural voters, who used to be split between Democrats and Republicans, have now become overwhelmingly republican.

It's not a huge group, but they're splitting 75, 80% Republican, Democrat. They also happen to be more often non college voters, and they are non suburban voters. So, the center cities are still the bluest areas. The suburbs are competitive but increasingly bluish. And the further out you get, the redder it gets to where it gets deep red in rural areas.

The rural areas are much more likely to have evangelical voters, who are also overwhelmingly republican now. All these things are sort of part of the same piece. And I think what we've seen is that that's, it's calcified in the sense of those groups are not moving around. They're not switching between Democrats and Republicans.

And the configuration is completely different than it was 20, 30 years ago.

>> David Brady: Race plays a big role in this. Among white women, Trump was the majority. He won the majority in 2016, and he did in 2020. So when you talk about the gender gap, you have to factor race in, as well as the suburban vote.

So I expect among white women overall, he'll continue to lead that. So among black women, he's really in bad shape. Hispanic women are something I'm looking at, looking to see some change in that. There was a bit of a jump when Harris got the nomination over Biden, but that state study, it hasn't gone away, but it hasn't been added to.

>> Douglas Rivers: The race figures in two ways. When I was talking about those groups, I was talking exclusively among whites, because if you actually look at the electorate, non-college is BRICS democratic, but that's because of how well Democrats do among ethnic groups. They have large numbers of non-college voters.

So as we talked about earlier, there's a little bit of movement among blacks and Hispanics, particularly among males. In each of those groups, there did not used to be a gender gap in vote preference among blacks. And that started to open up so that blacks look more like whites, with women voting more democratic and men more republican.

The other way race centers here are racial attitudes. The white rural voters are very anti-DEI, affirmative action. There's a standard scale called racial resentment, and these groups are literally 60 points apart on the racial resentment scale. That's all bound together.

>> Bill Whalen: Doug, would you tie that into a larger thing, which might be kind of cultural drift and cultural resentment?

I'll give you an example. I was in Dallas, Texas, earlier this week at a Hoover function. Got in my hotel room after the event, turned on the tv, and there's an ad by Ted Cruz on the airwaves in front of me. And he's railing against a democratic opponent on one issue, and that is the idea of men playing women's sports.

>> Douglas Rivers: Trans bathrooms and trans and sports and so forth that polls fairly well. I suspect that's why Ted Cruz is using that one.

>> Bill Whalen: Dave.

>> Douglas Rivers: I don't think it's actually moving tons of people. The people who it appeals to are already on one side or the other.

>> David Brady: I don't disagree with that, although I would say that he's Texas candidate for the Senate against Cruz is quite good. He's got all the tickets. He's a moderate value, play football, etc. He looks good, it's a closer race than you might have expected. I don't think he'll win that race, but it's much closer than Cruz would prefer.

>> Bill Whalen: Interesting race, because if the Democrats are gonna hold on to the Senate, it would help them a lot to flip a seat. I think that seat and Rick Scott in Florida, the only two republican ones that are considered vulnerable. But, guys, let's talk now about the elephant in the room.

This is the first presidential election since the Dobbs decision that was handed down by the Supreme Court. Tell me what your tracking poll has to say about the issue of abortion. I'm curious if it's crystallized or moved votes in certain directions. Doug, if it's also worsened the gender gap.

>> David Brady: Let me say started, 6% of the overall population in our latest survey said abortion is the most single most important issue. 10% for Democrats, not very big for Republicans, 4%, 5% for Independents. But among those, if abortion is an issue, even if you're a Republican, Trump loses some votes on abortion among Republican women particularly, who say that abortion is a key issue.

>> Douglas Rivers: Abortion is one of the issues on which people prefer Harris significantly over Trump by around ten points. Our data, as Dave said, has indicated that relatively few voters are voting on the basis of abortion and that largely voters have already sorted on that. Republicans are well pro-choice Republicans are no longer Republicans for the most part.

However, it is the case that that is an issue. That as long as the candidates are talking about it, it's good for Harris and the Democrats and it's bad for Trump and the Republicans.

>> David Brady: So I agree with that. So it's very few voters, in the end, we'll have to look very closely in the key states of Pennsylvania and key places to see how much abortion makes a difference in those states.

But it's like this issue of securing democracy, which is the fourth, about 10% of Americans say securing. But the problem with the way it breaks down is it's 18% of Democrats. They think that's the second net to inflation. They think that's the most important issue. They think it is the most important, rather.

And among Republicans, it's only four, and among independents, it's only seven, seven or eight. So the bottom line is it's a good issue, but it's dominated by Democrats who are already gonna vote for Harris.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, let's talk about two hot buttons and where they figure in your tracking poll.

One is January 6, and then the other one is election integrity. Election integrity, obviously a big hobby horse for Donald Trump. And January 6, a big hobby horse for Democrats.

>> Douglas Rivers: Yeah, so when Democrats talk about this, they talk about securing democracy. And when Republicans talk about it, they talk about election integrity.

So it's just different language where they're talking about the same issue, where they have opposed views. We've not ever seen much impact of January 6 that it obviously is an outrage for Never Trump Republicans and big issue for Democrats, but Biden certainly wasn't able to turn it into an effective campaign issue.

And I think for the most part, Harris is saying, let's talk about the future and not the past. I guess I think that's better strategy.

>> David Brady: Well, obviously, I take it you're talking about the presidential election because in the 2022 election, we did find that that was a variable that could help Democrats by a couple of percentage points.

>> Douglas Rivers: Yeah, Democrats in large numbers of independents don't wanna vote for election deniers that believe the 2020 election was stolen. But for most people, that's in the past, it's over, and they're looking forward. And so when Trump talks about it, he's talking about an issue that a, he's in a minority on.

And secondly, that's not moving any voters in his direction. I think the Harris campaign feels that the voters who feel strongly about this already know what they're gonna do, which is they're not gonna vote for Donald Trump and then arguing over the election being stolen. That is a 30% position in the electorate, and it's a loser whenever Trump brings it up.

>> David Brady: Well, and anybody who's taken a position knows how they're gonna vote.

>> Douglas Rivers: So I don't think that's what's gonna swing the election at this point.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, let's talk about one other factor, and that is age in a changing electorate. This may be the last presidential election in which a baby boomer is the nominee of a major party.

This is the talk I gave in Hoover the other day. Trump's born in 1946. Kamala's born on October 20, 1964, the same day Herbert Hoover died, by the way, did you know that? Clearly, he jumped out of his body into hers.

>> David Brady: You may be the only person who does know that.

>> Bill Whalen: I know it's an advertisement for getting a life, right. But no, the point is this, you look at the changing electorate right now, millennials and Gen Xers, we're talking about people from their early forties to the late fifties, almost 60. They're gonna make up about half of this electorate.

I think they made up about 47% of the 2020 votes, and now they're gonna take up the majority. You look at your tracking poll and you look at this by generations, do you see shifts in issues per generation? I'm particularly curious about what the millennials and Xers are into these days.

Dave and Doug, doesn't go back to your same what you told me earlier about the inflation, the economy, and immigration, or is there anything nuanced that younger generations follow?

>> Douglas Rivers: Well, the big difference is they thought Joe Biden was too old to run for re-election. And so while the younger voters tend to be to the left of older voters, though over lifetime, people tend to shift more to the right.

The problem was lessen Biden's ideology and more that he was too old.

>> Bill Whalen: Presentation.

>> Douglas Rivers: There was a huge.

>> David Brady: Their concerns were still the dominant issues were economics for them.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah.

>> David Brady: The younger they are, the more there's concern for being able to buy a house, etc, etc.

>> Bill Whalen: Of course, we're talking about attitudes also this is a generation that's dealing with aging parents and seeing parents in decline, and maybe that's just something they don't wanna see in a president.

>> Douglas Rivers: Well, when you look at the big drivers of changes in the cost of living, housing is one, taking care of elderly parents is another, healthcare related.

And the third thing is cost of education. When people are talking about inflation, they sometimes are talking about different things, whether it's groceries or gas prices or cost of housing or education or health care.

>> David Brady: But no matter what they're talking about, if they're talking about inflation, it's not good for the incumbent.

>> Douglas Rivers: Yeah, every moment that the campaign is about the economy at this point, it does not help the Democrats. I do think that Harris has come up with a few effective points. So the prescription drugs and Medicare, lowering the cost of that, that's popular. My own reaction is that her economic policies at the moment seem a little gimmicky.

I'm sure they were all poll tested, but they don't-

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, so Doug, mentioned earlier, she gave a speech in Pennsylvania yesterday, highlights in speech, what did she propose? She promised to eliminate degree requirements for federal jobs. She promised to double union apprenticeships in her first term. She promised reform permitting to speed up building projects.

Right, Doug, that's pretty safe and sound politics.

>> David Brady: But wait a minute, let me just see. In terms of economic ideas, if we go to the Trump candidacy, where are the economists who would say, let's get rid of the income tax for people with tips, let's blah, blah, blah.

And most importantly, where are the economists who say, well, what we should do is really increase tariffs, then maybe we might be able to eliminate the income tax. Where are they?

>> Douglas Rivers: Yeah, so.

>> David Brady: This is not an election in which economists should be happy.

>> Douglas Rivers: Yes, whenever they start talking about economists, I think most voters tune out.

But the problem for Harris on this is that people's memory, particularly Republicans and independence memory of the Trump administration is that the economy was good. And trying to counter that with policy proposals when people perceive that you're part of an administration where the economy wasn't good, fairly or not, that is not a good issue for you.

>> David Brady: That's true, if you look at pre/post-

>> Douglas Rivers: She's definitely doing better than Biden on this.

>> David Brady: She's doing much better than Biden. And I'll say one other thing, the enthusiasm, when it was post Biden, after the debate, before he quit, the enthusiasm was on the Republican side.

Now, in regard to enthusiasm, Democrats have about a six point advantage. They're much more enthusiastic about voting than Republicans.

>> Douglas Rivers: So the premise of the Biden campaign was that the economy was improving and that inflation had been conquered without causing a recession and that they had pretty good economic numbers.

And eventually people would come around to believing that. The problem is that Biden was never able to pull that off, he couldn't deliver the message. And it came back to, do you believe me or your lying eyes? And most voters went with what their views of the economy were able to constantly say that he had the best economy ever and it brings along the republican base.

>> David Brady: I just wanted to ask Doug so I'm pretty sure he didn't think bionomics work claimed it didn't, no.

>> Bill Whalen: Let me guys ask you one other question, so Kamala Harris was on MSNBC earlier today, and she was pressed on her economic plan and had a pretty tough question put for her.

Said, look it, you want to raise corporate taxes to pay for what you wanna do. If the Republican Senate's not gonna happen, so what are you gonna do? And she didn't really have an answer. She just said, well, we just have to raise corporate taxes. There's kind of a pattern here I've noticed on the democratic side, I'm in California, as you two fellows are as well.

Our governor right now is going to war against big oil under the guise of gasoline price gouging. The vice president has drifted into price gouging, she wants to declare war on big grocery, if you will. She wants to create, I think, a council run by the Federal Trade Commission to decide what is too expensive.

Then she wants to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy to pay for things. So it's kind of this institutional jousting it at these entities, you look at your polling, is there an audience for this, this kind of Elizabeth Warren style of politics, if you will?

>> Douglas Rivers: Well, Elizabeth Warren style would appeal to the democratic base, but it's not a good strategy for a general election.

But most of the things you're talking about actually poll pretty well, people like the economy under Trump, they have no sympathy for corporate tax cuts. While going against price gouging sort of offends economic sensibilities of professional economists, it polls perfectly well. The question of, you're not gonna have a majority in the Senate to pass any of these things at some level that probably could help her among swing voters because she's not going to get the stuff that they really oppose.

But as a practical matter, voters don't think that way about who controls Congress and so forth. They look at the overall state of the economy, how things are going, and don't attribute much credit or blame based on other constraints that you might have.

>> David Brady: But that, in my view, that's the problem with campaigns in general and the reason is David Kennedy, the historian, and I have had this argument for years.

And my point is, that you go out and make these things, and then what Doug said is correct. Well, okay, you're gonna raise corporate taxes, you're going to do some of it polls well. But, my guess is that even if you tell people you're gonna raise tariffs and eliminate income tax, even though it can never be done without putting the US in super death, my guess is it might poll well.

But the problem is that campaigns are about winning votes in the short run. And in the long run, this has effects on how America think about government. We are very cynical, this is Democrat, Republican, and independent. We're cynical about what the government can do, we're cynical about whether the government cares about what we think about.

We believe that the country's in the wrong direction, 44% of Democrats think the country is not headed in the right direction, and that's in a democratic presidency. So campaigns say all kinds of things that aren't true, and it's true, like Doug says, most of them don't happen, which is a good thing.

But in the long run, it seems to me they're not those things, those promises that don't get fulfilled are not good for the American political system.

>> Bill Whalen: So do voters necessarily believe, then, what candidates are selling them? Because the recent history in this country is we've had presidential winners who vastly over promise what they're gonna do.

They're all gonna go to Washington and change the world, and they all limp out of town four to eight years later, having been defeated By the system. So here we are in 2024, you guys are tracking this. Are voters really buying what Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are selling them?

In terms of, I'm gonna turn around the economy, I'm gonna end the war in Ukraine train overnight, so on and so forth.

>> David Brady: I think it's hard to go out and say, be honest and say, okay, I gotta try to do this, but I can affect things a little bit, not that much, blah, blah, blah.

There's trade offs, we'll do these trade offs. I've always thought, Kennedy always comes back to me with, well, suppose you ran a campaign on someone who says, we're gonna balance it and there's trade offs, and I'll do the best I can to move it this way. The claim is they'd be dead on arrival.

>> Douglas Rivers: Don't quit your day job and try to run a campaign.

>> David Brady: Yeah. Particularly, particularly the way that the nomination system epolarizes American politics even further. Democrats who vote in primaries are way left of the average voter and the Republicans who run our way, right?

>> Douglas Rivers: Yeah, voters are pretty cynical, but it hasn't actually moved much in recent years.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay.

>> Douglas Rivers: They started from a high level of cynicism and maintained it.

>> Bill Whalen: Let's talk about swing states for a second, so Kamala Harris gave her economic speech in Pittsburgh. Volodymyr Zelensky was in Scranton, Pennsylvania earlier this week, Donald Trump was in Pennsylvania when a bullet was fired in his direction.

Do we agree that Pennsylvania is the new Florida in terms of being the showdown state in America? Doug?

>> Douglas Rivers: Yeah, I think that's a good description where we are. So there was a New York Times poll that showed Harris up by four points and even nationally, I wouldn't put much stock in that.

I think most of the polls have shown Pennsylvania, even to slightly democratic and the national vote being plus three or four points democratic.

>> David Brady: By the way, I will say that, Doug, in terms of estimating, underestimating the Trump vote in the past, Doug, how many rural voters did you add to the say poll?

>> Douglas Rivers: Well, we have to weight them heavily because they are underrepresented in the sample.

>> David Brady: So, but that's been taken care of in terms of the estimates.

>> Douglas Rivers: Yeah, we thought we had control over that in 2020 and it didn't. So, I mean, it raises interesting issue of are the polls off.

So if you look at what the New York Times calls high-quality polls, the final ones were mostly a ten-point Biden advantage, in 2020, Biden won by four and a half points. The overall poll average was a bit less than that, making you wonder, what was particularly high quality about these polls?

But, if we have a poll miss on this scale of what we had in 2020, then, we're understating the Trump vote by a large amount and this election would not be all that close.

>> Bill Whalen: Doug, what is your pushback when somebody approaches you and says, Mister Pollster, why do polls always under poll Republicans?

>> Douglas Rivers: Well, they don't always under poll Republicans.

>> Bill Whalen: But that's their viewpoint, that they're biased against conservatives?

>> David Brady: Rasmussen does.

>> Douglas Rivers: No, they're not. We definitely don't think our polls are biased one way or the other. Is the case that in 2016 and in 2020, we underestimated the Trump vote, overestimated the Democratic vote.

So without getting too far into the weeds about what we do, our polling is based on taking what people told us four years ago, because these people are on a long term panel and adjusting to that. We do not do, generally, party id waiting, at least in our state level polls.

The reason for that is if you change the party id targets, you change the poll results. It's kind of like making it up. Whereas pass vote is something that we concretely know what it is. And the result of the 2020 election being much closer than our poll showed it at the time is there's an automatic recalibration to what the 2020 outcome is.

That's probably the biggest thing that will affect our polling this year differently. But there are others. We have tried to better measure evangelical voters and to balance the samples on that and to use precinct bubble election returns to make sure that we're getting people in the right geographies based on how they actually voted four years ago.

>> David Brady: One other reason for that is that polling for most companies is a loss. Political polling is a loss leader. So the fact is you don't wanna get the election wrong, because if you get the election right, it aids the business down the line. Forget how we personally are gonna vote.

There's no way we would wanna report based on how we feel the reports based on what the data say to the best of our ability. And as Doug pointed out, a lot of work being done to make sure we don't have that 2016, 2020 bias or not bias, but result.

>> Bill Whalen: Now, the three of us live close to San Francisco, and I imagine you've heard the phrase that's associated with that city called the doom loop. Have you? You know what the doom loop is?

>> David Brady: Yes, sir.

>> Douglas Rivers: Right.

>> Bill Whalen: Here's the question to the two of you.

Are we in something of a national election doom loop in this regard? In 2016, a difference of 107,000 votes have about 136 million cast in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania decide the election. If those votes shift, Hillary Clinton gets 273 electoral votes, she's the president. In 2020, a difference of 44,000 votes in Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin separate Biden and Trump.

If those flipped from Biden to Trump. I believe it's a 269 all tie in the electoral college and all hell breaks loose. That's 44,000 votes out of nearly 158 and a half million cast. Question, gentlemen, is this the doom loop? Are we headed for a third straight election where we're gonna have just a sliver of votes and a handful of states decide things?

Is this a function of where the country is divided or just a function of Donald Trump and Democrat fill in the blank?

>> David Brady: The answer is yes. The answer is yes and second, it's a combination of what you said, but it's also the institutions that we have. We would be the only country that has this long drawn out electoral process result between the, even if you think the electoral college is being somewhat skewed.

The fact that once you've elected them, the time that it takes to certify the votes, to actually cast them, for Congress to do it, it's an outdated system. And let me say that in terms of those who are talking about changing it, it is not gonna be changed in the short term.

>> Bill Whalen: Doug?

>> Douglas Rivers: Well, I agree with everything Dave said about that. However, to be a bit contrarian, humans are over interpret patterns in data. And so, if you look at the current polling, it says we're gonna have a result that's even closer than 2020 and 2016. However, I think the odds are that one candidate or the other is gonna get a bump in the next six weeks and result in something that's not quite as similar as we thought.

>> Bill Whalen: So kind of a 1980 scenario in terms of a late break, is that what you're suggesting?

>> Douglas Rivers: Well, that would be a huge one.

>> Bill Whalen: I mean, not a huge one, but just a last minute shift.

>> Douglas Rivers: A big shift in this world is two points.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay. 

>> David Brady: So let me ask Doug, what's the advantage? Is it ogynous, what happens?

>> Douglas Rivers: But, I mean, we've already had two debates that were pretty consequential, relevant, what we've seen in the past. Now, the second presidential debate did not move voters, but it kept Harris from, I think, losing votes, which is what the Trump campaign was hoping that would go back to the numbers they had with Biden.

We've had two assassination attempts. So I think, based on the year there's lots of random stuff still to happen.

>> David Brady: I don't disagree, I wanna see.

>> Douglas Rivers: I have no clue what it is, Dave.

>> David Brady: But I agree, there's gonna be within the next six weeks, something's gonna happen to change stuff, I agree.

>> Bill Whalen: So I mentioned beginning of the podcast that we're now 39 days away from the election, and I'm concerned about Doug and his being prepared just kind of mentally, fiscally for this. Dave, are you training your friend for election night? And Doug, I want you to tell me how you're gonna spend your election night.

>> David Brady: He spends his election night in New York collecting all this stuff and saying who's gonna win.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, but Dave, are you taking him out on power walks and getting him in shape for this ordeal that's coming up or is just Doug on his own?

>> David Brady: He's on his own on this.

>> Douglas Rivers: I'm just hoping it won't last as long as the 2020 election because normally you get to fly home the next day and it's all over. And in 2020, it went on for months.

>> Bill Whalen: Well, I think we'd agree this with the health scenario would be as follows, that neither candidate has more than a 20 electoral vote advantage.

And Pennsylvania is sitting out there, and what Pennsylvania doesn't start counting votes until 7 AM on the day of the election. And I think in 2020, guys, they didn't certify their vote until Saturday after the election. So, I fear for our country if we have to sit through four or five days of intrigue while votes are being counted in Pennsylvania.

>> Douglas Rivers: Well, I think it's almost guaranteed that Trump has signaled that unless he wins, they're going to question everything, every step of the way and use every tool. And they have lots of tools at the federal level.

>> David Brady: The courts are gonna see a lot of action as lawyers on both sides for each party have already, they've been working for a year on what they're gonna do and what the Trump and how to counter it.

>> Douglas Rivers: And I think the Trump legal team is a little more professional than the Rudy Giuliani led one in 2020.

>> Bill Whalen: All right, so, Doug, do you have a checkout time on Wednesday morning lined up and a return flight to California on Wednesday or we talking open reservations?

>> Douglas Rivers: I think I'll jinx it if I book the ticket back first thing Wednesday morning.

>> Bill Whalen: I think you're asking for trouble.

>> Douglas Rivers: I buy a refundable ticket.

>> Bill Whalen: There you go. Okay, final question, guys. We talked earlier about the governor's race in Georgia as a possible wild card in this thing.

Tell me one thing you're looking at in the final 39 days is kind of an x factor in this election?

>> David Brady: Well, it's not that I'm not saying there isn't an x factor.

>> Bill Whalen: Well, Dave, you can pick a segment of the electorate you're looking at, you can pick a Senate race, a House race around the country is a bellwether, just tell me one thing.

>> David Brady: All right, so I'm looking, I'm following for the Democrats in the Senate. I'm following Tester and Montana as a case study. He's down two points, he's elected several times, never won by more than 51% of the vote. I think he's still in that race, that's still crucial, a lot of money flowing in there.

And then I'm looking at the House in terms of races in New York and California and a few others to see who's gonna control the House. And I think in our major and the big poll, we'll be honing in on that a little bit more in the next couple of weeks.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, one of the truly weirder elements of 2024, the control of the House pretty much spins around. About ten Republican held seats in two of the bluest states in America, New York and California, okay, Doug.

>> Douglas Rivers: Yeah, so first, the House, I mean, there are literally 25 competitive House seats in this round.

So it's way below what it's been in the past, and that's gonna be relatively close. My guess is Democrats are gonna do much better in New York and somewhat better in California than they did in 2022, but there are thin pickings there. The Senate, I think Republican chances there are excellent, that Testa, I think, is going to lose and probably by a decent amount.

I think Ohio will be closer, but my prediction is Republicans will win Ohio and Democrats can't make it up in or Texas. They generally don't have the money at the moment to run those campaigns.

>> Bill Whalen: Right, Larry Hogan in Maryland. Is that competitive, Doug, or is that kind of returning?

>> Douglas Rivers: I don't think that one is competitive. People thought Hogan would be able to make that a close race cuz he was a popular governor. That shows you that people have different views of governors than senators. Similarly, Pennsylvania was thought to be competitive, and it hasn't been so far.

>> Bill Whalen: And you said you think Cruz will win in Texas, what about Scott in Florida, do you think he's safe? He's kinda Testa, he's a guy always scrapes by by a point or two in his elections.

>> Douglas Rivers: Yeah, so both Scott and Cruz are relatively unpopular, but my guess is they will eke it out.

>> David Brady: I agree.

>> Bill Whalen: And then to close out on the House, Dave and Doug, I think if you fill the vacancies, give them back to the parties that held them before the vacancy occurred. It's a 221 to 214 arrangements, so Democrats have to pick up to four seats, does the House flip?

>> David Brady: I think yes.

>> Douglas Rivers: Currently said 54% probability the Democrats flip the house.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay.

>> Douglas Rivers: I wouldn't want to bet on 54% probabilities.

>> David Brady: I'll buy the 54%.

>> Bill Whalen: All right, so one of us is gonna have to look up if this has ever occurred in a national election where the White House changes parties, but the two chambers of Congress each change hands as well.

Not for one party, in other words, the House could go, think about this. The White House could go from Democrat to Republican, the House could go from Republican to Democrat, and the Senate could go from Democrat to Republican. I don't think that trifecta has ever occurred.

>> David Brady: If it did, it was, I can't think of an example.

But if it did, it occurred in that period of indecision that was a prior 1874, 1896, that'd be the only time it could have occurred.

>> Douglas Rivers: What's your memory of 1896, did you vote in that election, Dave?

>> David Brady: I did not, isn't he guilty of ageism there?

>> Douglas Rivers: You have the historical perspective that I lack.

>> Bill Whalen: We can't go an hour without making fun of Dave Brady's age. What, this happens, though, this trifecta of all three bodies do change hands, Doug, is the time to ask a question of voters, what the hell do you want?

>> David Brady: Yes.

>> Douglas Rivers: Yeah, but the problem here is not that they're big swings, these are tiny swings that are changing control of the institutions.

So Francis Lee has a nice book that basically makes the point that no one can be assured of who's gonna control an institution in a few years with just slight changes in the way people are voting.

>> David Brady: Yeah.

>> Douglas Rivers: But, if you got a republican trifecta of the presidency in both houses of Congress, given how homogeneous the parties are, that could have a substantial effect.

I think it's highly unlikely you'd get a democratic trifecta.

>> Bill Whalen: But here's the problem, the Republicans retain control of the House, but if they don't have 235 or 240 votes in the House, they've shown. Recent history shows they can't run the House because there are 10 to 15 Republicans at all times who just wanna buck the system and just not go along with the program.

Democrats far more organized and unified than Republicans are in that regard.

>> Douglas Rivers: Yeah, but no one thought that with as thin a majority as you've had and as contentious it is among Republicans that you could keep them going as well as they have.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, so final question to you, too.

Are you suggesting then that the best thing for a system is to have a blowout election to one party's advantage, where they win big presidentially, they win big congressionally, they win big down tickets, and thus they go to Washington, they have a mandate. Is it as simple?

>> Douglas Rivers: Absolutely not.

>> David Brady: Absolutely not.

>> Bill Whalen: Why not?

>> David Brady: I wrote a book called Revolving Gridlock, and I'm very much in favor of gridlock because there's things on both party side that I'm not in favor of. So I favor gridlock.

>> Bill Whalen: Doug, you pro gridlock, too?

>> Douglas Rivers: Yeah, I think gridlock served us well, to some extent.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, gentlemen, I enjoyed this conversation very much, I'm glad we had a chance to pull it off. I hope nothing terrible happens between now and the next 39 days that would require me to bring you back on and talk about updated polls. It's fingers crossed that we have smooth sailing from here to election day.

And Doug, I wish you the best on election night in New York, and hopefully not election week in New York.

>> Douglas Rivers: See you on the other side, Bill.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, .You've been listening to matters of policy and politics at Hoover Institution, podcast devoted to governance and a balance of power here in America and around the globe.

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For the Hoover Institution, this is Bill Whalen, we'll be back soon with a new installment of Matters of Policy and Politics. Until then, take care, thanks for listening.

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