The ‘Mind-blowing’ Thing About This Year’s Polls – CNN Political Briefing

‘Hey, everyone. I’m David Chalian, CNN’s Political Director, and welcome to the CNN Political Briefing. There is uncertainty before any election. But this year, it is virtually impossible to predict an outcome. The CNN Poll of Polls this week continues to show what has shown week after week: no clear leader in this race. It is a margin-of-error race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. And that puts the focus on a small sliver of voters who still don’t know what they’re going to do on Election Day. This week, CNN hosted a town hall where Vice President Harris answered questions from undecided and persuadable Pennsylvania voters. My colleague John King spoke with some of those voters after the event. A few of them said they now plan to vote for Harris. But Pennsylvania voter Pam Thistle said she still wasn’t sold on either candidate.

There are a lot of things that I connect with her as a woman. However, I am very big on details. I’m big on numbers. And so that is where — and I’m not getting it from either candidate.

She also called out another “turnoff” for her as an undecided voter.

Stop trashing each other. We don’t care. Stop trashing Trump. Trump, stop trashing the vice president. We don’t care. The voters don’t care.

This week, I’m joined by Kristen Soltis Anderson. She’s a Republican pollster and a political commentator for CNN. She says it would be irresponsible given the state of the polls to make a prediction in the outcome here. But she is here to provide us her excellent insight into the state of play, the different demographic divides, and why Harris and Trump are closing the way they are.

Kristen, thanks so much for being here.

Thank you for having me.

So I want to start with one question applying to each candidate: If Donald Trump wins this race, it will be because why?

Americans are frustrated and exhausted, and they are looking for something different than what they’ve gotten for the last four years. And their nostalgia for the Trump years has meant that they are willing to go back to that rather than stick with Kamala Harris, who was insufficiently able to explain how she would be different from the last four years.

If Kamala Harris wins this election, it will be because…?

Because Americans gave the Donald Trump experiment a try once and do not wish to do so again.

And as we sit here recording this podcast on Thursday afternoon with 12 days left to go, is it in your mind that you have an equal chance of giving either one of those responses 12 days from now?

I really think that it is going to come down to: Do Americans think that four more years of Trump would be four years of maybe a better economy, maybe the Middle East isn’t on fire? Let’s go back to that. The devil you know rather than the devil you don’t. I do think this is going to come down to Donald Trump’s brand image being pretty negative, but pretty set in. And an awful lot of voters having already made the bargain with themselves that they don’t like this guy, but they don’t care and they think he’s going to do enough good things to make it worth it. Is Kamala Harris an acceptable enough alternative for those people who don’t want to vote for Trump but are going to probably do so anyways? Can she peel them away or at least get them to say, you know what, I don’t need to put my name on this? I can just leave it blank.

Interesting. So you used the word nostalgia in your first answer in talking about Trump. And I’m fascinated by this because — and you said his brand image is pretty negative but set in and people don’t — you know, millions of Americans don’t seem to care, even if they don’t like him very much. And yet he is at his most popular today, as I’m talking to you, than he has been in his nine years since coming down the escalator in 2015. And I’m wondering why you think that is.

I think that’s the case because at the end of the Trump presidency, his things like his job approval were pretty bad. And yet now when you ask people, did you approve or disapprove of the job Trump did, his numbers are like ten points higher. And that ten points is what is making this election close when the last election —

Distance makes the heart grow fonder?

Absolutely. I mean and this in some ways happens to past presidents all the time, right? People look back more fondly at Obama and at George W. Bush and so on and so forth. And so Trump is benefiting in some ways from a little bit of that halo effect that past presidents get when you think back to their time. I know right now the ads that are being booked by the Trump campaign all seem to be very negative and about Kamala Harris, because they — not incorrectly — have decided that right now making her an unacceptable alternative is the key to them winning, that they’re not going to change anybody’s mind about Donald Trump. That’s probably correct. But I do think if I were them, I would want to end on a note that really plays into that — that notion that, hey, don’t you remember how it was? This was actually a line that Lara Trump used in her speech at the Republican convention, which was, if you’re wondering what the next four years would be like, you don’t have to wonder. Remember what it was like. And because people have that nostalgia for it, they go, you know, maybe the Middle East wasn’t on fire. Maybe my groceries were a little cheaper. I mean, there’s all sorts of negative things that happened during the Trump presidency to say, though, not even addressing the fact that we were in a global respiratory pandemic. But nevertheless, when people think back on it, those are the things I most often hear. They’ve reverted back to him and his brand as a businessman. He’s good on the economy. Gosh, we really need that. We need some toughness. We need some leadership. And they just think Donald Trump, for all his flaws, can provide that. And so if I were them, I would run an ad that just says, remember when grocery prices were low? Remember when we were getting people to sign the Abraham Accords and the Middle East wasn’t on fire? Remember when Russia hadn’t invaded Ukraine yet? I mean, those are the sorts of messages that I think they could drive home in the closing week instead of it just being the relentless negativity about Kamala Harris.

‘That’s so interesting because clearly they haven’t made that calculation yet anyway. Maybe they will listen to this, take your advice, we’ll see. The other thing that you said that I find so intriguing, Kristen, is you were talking about sort of the Trump-reluctant Republican that Harris is maybe trying to appeal to, but who may end up voting for Trump or, as you said, maybe they’ll choose even if they can’t get over the hump and vote for Harris, that they’ll just not, as you said, put your name on and leave that blank and that that may be an avenue of potential success for her. Does that mean, in your estimation, that when we look at the exit polls and the voting returns in 12 days, do you suspect that she’s going to get a larger chunk of Republicans than we normally see a Democratic candidate get in a presidential contest?

I’m somewhat skeptical, in part because I think if you’re the type of Republican who really can’t stomach Donald Trump, you’ve probably left the party at this point. You may not call yourself a Republican anymore because it’s not that these folks don’t exist. But take the Republican primary, for instance. There was a big gamble on the part of folks like Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley to say, you know what? There’s got to be a lot of people in this party that don’t want Donald Trump anymore. And what they found was a lot of people in the party still wanted Donald Trump. There was a poll out of Georgia last week that released Crosstabs down to the decimal place, which as a pollster, I’m always a little bit opposed to. But they showed that 0.2% of Democrats had broken away from Harris and were voting for Trump. And for Republicans, it was 1.3% of Republicans had broken away from Trump and were voting for Harris. So I really think that what the strategy is that the Harris team is deploying with those voters who are in more of the middle or the disaffected Republican is less, you got to vote for me; I’m great. I’m wonderful. I mean, she’s been trying that. I’m a gun owner. Liz Cheney likes me. All of those things. I’m not sure that that’s the sell — that that’s the powerful sell that they may think it is. But I do think that this pivot at the end to this January 6th and democracy argument, while I’ve always been a little skeptical that it is the winning argument, I do think if you’re the kind of Republican who doesn’t like Donald Trump and you really are worried about another January 6th happening again, the message of you don’t have to put your name on this, like you don’t have to vote for him. You can go to sleep at night knowing you did not aid and abet this, I think is interesting. And I don’t know that it moves hundreds of thousands of people. But if it moves a couple of thousand people in the right states, in the right counties, that could really be meaningful.

That could be meaningful. And yet that’s clearly not going to be the only piece of her close. On Friday, the day that this podcast will come out, she’s going to be in Houston, Texas, putting abortion rights back, very much front and center. And I think that is going to be even with her announced speech on the Ellipse, which will have the January 6th imagery, I believe we’re going to hear a lot about abortion rights in these final 12 days as well. It’s clearly her strongest issue in all the issues that get tested. Do you see abortion rights not being a critical component of that?

‘Oh no, I think it will be a critical component of that. I think that is why you’re seeing them put so much effort into it. And it is an issue that unifies Democrats. It unites independents with Democrats, and it splits Republicans. And so in that way, just on paper alone, it is an issue that you absolutely would want to hammer home toward the end. And especially with so many of the stories that have come out about women who have not been able to access health care when they needed it because of doctors apprehensive to provide the appropriate care. You know, they have a lot of stories that they are able to tell. And in many of these states, you have initiatives on the ballot that are going to have this issue be front and center in people’s minds as they are casting a ballot, regardless of what the communication strategy is. So this is one where if I was the Trump campaign, I would be much more nervous about a Harris campaign closing on a message that really emphasizes Roe than I am on a message that really emphasizes January 6th. I do think that the democracy message is very narrowly tailored at a very specific type of maybe even pro-life sympathetic Republican. You know, that’s the Liz Cheney group. But there may well be this bigger group of disaffected voters who don’t pay that much attention to politics at all. They’re not the ones who are overthinking this question and wrestling with it every night, and what am I going to do? They’re the ones that haven’t really decided, do I even bother? And that’s especially the type of voter for whom that message is key.

And there’s no doubt in talking to the Harris campaign, these are their two targets. One, the smaller target, perhaps, but more reliable voters. The other may be larger, but just less reliable, actual with practice of doing the thing you got to do to have the impact, which is vote. So that — that is such an intriguing dichotomy between these two universes that are set up for them. Don’t go anywhere. We’re going to take a quick break. We’re going to have a lot more with Kristen Soltis Anderson in just a moment.

Welcome back. We’re here with Republican pollster and CNN Political Commentator Kristen Soltis Anderson. Kristen, in your career, have you ever seen polling in a presidential race across the entire set of battleground states as close as you see the polling heading into this Election Day?

‘It’s not just that the polls are so close but also that they are so stable. Those are the two things that are really mind-blowing about this election that I think is important to put in context, because as a pollster, people are always asking me, So what do you think’s going to happen? And I say, I’m not going to tell you. And they say, No, no, no. But really, I won’t tell anyone. What do you think? I say, No, I’m not telling you. I have a zero, no exceptions policy. I’m not telling anyone. And it’s not because I want to be a jerk or because I’m afraid that I’ll be — I mean, I am concerned that I’ll be wrong, but I’m concerned that it would be wrong because right now it would feel irresponsible to make a strong prediction one way or another with the information we have. Because, one, the polls are unbelievably close, which we know. Two, they really haven’t moved. I took a look at the Real Clear Politics polling averages going back to 2008 because they have — you can go and look at their website going back that far. Almost no one else has that kind of archive. And if you look, the polls in the closing two months kind of go up and down. It is a poll-er coaster, so to speak, in most elections. And it is just not. Which isn’t to say that all the polls are saying the same thing. You’ll get a poll that says Trump plus two and then you’ll get a poll that says Harris plus three — but they all converge around the same mean. And that’s what’s not moving. And so that’s why I’ve been a little skeptical that there will be an October surprise because it just feels like we’re so locked in at this point. And that assumes, again, that the polls are, quote unquote, right. Even if they’re right, we still don’t know. And then there’s also the chance that there is some kind of systemic polling error that we are missing those Trump voters who are hard to survey or we are underestimating the extent to which an issue like Ro is going to activate previously unactivated voters and reshape the turnout model. So those sorts of things all also make me feel very uncomfortable making a firm prediction because we’re doing our best. But, ultimately, the electorate is an unknowable, ever-changing target that we’re just making a very educated guess about.

But those two X factors that you just cited — not reaching all of like a representative sample of Trump’s support and maybe underestimating the power of the overturning of Roe in the first presidential election since — those do seem like the two things that could, that really, I can’t think of another one to add to that pile that may be lingering out there

And maybe the polls with do both of those things, and it will cancel out and the topline numbers will look fine and everyone will go, the pollsters are right. Where we’ll all be looking under the hood and our crosstabs going, okay, let’s solve that for next time.

That’s excellent. So we were talking right before the break about abortion rights and that Harris is going to definitely incorporate that as part of her closing message here. Which brings me to the gender gap that we’ve been seeing in this election. And I do want to get at some of the subgroups and just get your thinking. To me, one of the first things I will look at when the exit polls come out is to see if indeed this gender gap is at historic levels or closer to the norm, that’s one thing I’m going to be looking for. Is there a particular subgroup somewhere that you are keenly focused on? What demographic slice are you going to be so interested to see the initial exit polls on?

So I expect that this election will see a shrinking of the generation gap and a shrinking of the racial gap a little bit. To the extent we saw polarization along those lines expand during the Obama years, I think it’s going to contract. I think Donald Trump is going to do a little bit better among voters of color. I think Kamala Harris is going to do a little bit better among seniors. Donald Trump may do a little bit better among, say, young men. And that’s what I’m going to be looking at, that even as the age and race divides shrink, or I think they might shrink, the gender gap will explode. And so for something like that, I’m looking at women kind of over the age of 65, and I’m looking at men under the age of 30, because right now, every data point I’ve seen shows young women as this unbelievably Democratic constituency, more so than ever, lock it in. And older men leaning pretty Trumpy. But it’s women 50 plus, and it’s young men that are are consistently the two things when I’m looking at polls, I see numbers and I go, is that — is that for real? We will know in just about a week and a half. Is that for real? But that for me would be so interesting, is if even as we are erasing some of the gaps along race and generation lines, that we’re seeing this gender gap grow.

‘We’ve also obviously seen over several cycles now the education divide grow as well. I don’t know that we are going to see any shrinking of that this time. In fact, I would imagine that the inroads that we saw Hillary Clinton — I mean, this has really been a phenomenon maybe that started before Trump, but that I think Trump helped sort of turbocharge. But Hillary Clinton performing with college-educated voters, Joe Biden improving in some ways with that, does Harris — I can’t tell yet if Harris is going to be able to actually build on that for Democrats, or if that is not going to — that divide, we don’t anticipate to grow even further.

‘Yeah, I’m not sure. And I wonder to what extent, you know, the big fight there is that these college-educated voters who had been available to Republicans during the Romney era, but less so. And the tradeoff Republicans have made is for every one of these college-educated voters, we lose, we think we’re getting like one and a half working-class, non-college-educated union voters. And that’s great for us in the Electoral College, even if it’s kind of terrible for us in midterms and for the prospects of holding the House of Representatives. And so, you know, that’s the tradeoff that the Republican Party has made in the Trump era. But I don’t see a ton about the electoral landscape right now that makes me think that’s gone anywhere. And if anything, I can see I can see it being slightly more supercharged. With that said, that’s a dynamic that helps Democrats in midterm years, but I don’t know if it helps them as much in years like this. It really helps if you are a Democrat running for assistant dogcatcher in a special election in an off year that nobody knows about except the 15 most engaged voters in your district, because they’re probably those people. But in a presidential year, no one doesn’t know the election’s happening. So it’s a little bit more favorable toward this new coalition Trump has put together on the right.

Which to me brings us exactly where I wanted to round out this conversation with you, which is to the electoral map itself. I think the Trump people and the Harris people actually agree on this, that Trump may be running a little bit stronger in the Sunbelt than he does in the Rust Belt battleground states. And the Harris campaign clearly believes that they still think their best path to to 270 is through Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. And yet what you’re just describing, I think, gets at the challenge for that, that the change in the coalition is why I don’t think the Harris campaign can take any comfort in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin necessarily.

‘Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, I’ll shout out my polling business partner, Patrick Ruffini, whose book “Party of the People,” which is about the multiracial working-class coalition that has been formed over the last couple of years, that, I think, is what’s powering Republicans feeling good about some of these Sunbelt states, what’s making them feel like a state like Arizona that Kari Lake is almost certainly going to lose at the Senate level is still available to Donald Trump. It’s frankly partially why I think you see Donald Trump overperforming the Republican Senate candidates in a lot of these races. For all that, I, as a Republican commentator, have plenty of criticisms of Donald Trump and the way that the party has maybe trended in the last decade, it is undeniable when people say, well, what if we just swapped Donald Trump out for like a quote unquote, normal Republican? But if you look at the Senate map this year, there are normal Republicans, you know, non Donald Trump. They like Donald Trump, but they are not personally Donald Trump, and Trump is outrunning them. Michigan, Pennsylvania, maybe less so. But in Arizona, we see, you know, just not having it be Trump doesn’t mean, look, Republicans are doing much better, like candidates do matter. And Donald Trump has plenty of downsides. But he does pull together a coalition that seems like almost no one else is able to assemble but him.

How do you think that that coalition perhaps slows Harris’ roll across those three Blue Wall states?

Yeah, I think it’s when you look at, for instance, the data around union members, and, of course, Harris has secured the endorsement of many of the major unions. Famously, the Teamsters have kind of stayed out of this. They released a poll showing that their membership was pretty divided. I do think that there are pieces of the Democratic coalition that have shown some weakness. Republican weakness among the parts of our coalition that have been struggling, we’ve been struggling with them for a while. We know it. We’ve been we’ve accepted it, or, you know, we’ve moved on, and we’ve built a new coalition without them. I don’t know that Democrats yet have fully grappled with, okay, what’s our new normal with union voters? Okay, is this our new normal with Black men? Or something like that. And so, if there is a new normal and that is an if — that will be the thing that I think Democrats will go, whoa, okay, this is something we actually have to deal with.

Kristen Soltis Anderson, thank you so much for being with us. Really appreciate it.

Thank you for having me.

‘That’s it for this week’s edition of the CNN Political Briefing. We want to hear from you. Is there a question you’d like answered about this election cycle? Is there a guest you really want to hear from? Give us a call at (202) 618-9460. Or send us an email at [email protected]. And you might just be featured in a future episode of the podcast. So don’t forget to tell us your name, where you’re from, how we can reach you, and if you give us permission to use the recording on the podcast. CNN Political Briefing is a production of CNN Audio. This episode was produced by Emily Williams. Our senior producer is Felicia Patinkin. Dan Dzula is our technical director, and Steve Lickteig is the Executive Producer of CNN Audio. Support from Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, Jon Dianora, Leni Steinhardt, Jamus Andrest, Nichole Pesaru, and Lisa Namerow. Special thanks to Katie Hinman. We’ll be back with a new episode next Friday. Thanks so much for listening.