00:00Now, recent general election polling shows Trump and Biden neck and neck in a head-to-head matchup,
00:06but recent polling in swing states show that Biden is gaining some ground.
00:11What do you make of all these numbers?
00:14The first thing to say, first, it's almost certainly will be a close election in terms
00:19of overall numbers. That doesn't always mean that the Electoral College will turn out closely
00:24because you could win four or five states in a very close election and win overwhelmingly
00:31in the Electoral College, but even lose the popular vote. But the key thing the audience
00:38needs to know about polling as it leads up to the election is that until Labor Day,
00:48they ask people who are registered voters. Registered voters aren't always the likely
00:55voters. So, for example, people who are very concerned about overturning Roe v. Wade,
01:04the Dobbs decision, they will be almost certainly be voters, right? But they may be overwhelmed
01:13in the polling by people who, it turns out, have sort of less intense views and may not show up.
01:21And one of the things that we're seeing also in polling is that there is less interest
01:28in the presidential election this year than in previous years. That may be because it's
01:33the first time two candidates who ran against each other before are running again since
01:40Eisenhower and Stevenson ran against each other in 56. But for whatever the reason,
01:49it's likely to be close. And I think a key state will be Pennsylvania. It would be hard
01:56to win the presidency for either candidate without winning Pennsylvania. It used to be
02:01Florida and Ohio. Those are now pretty securely Republican states. But Pennsylvania is a true
02:08toss-up. So actually is North Carolina and Georgia. These used to be solid Republican states.
02:19Well, at least a couple of them were. But we're seeing a change in the electorate. We're also
02:26seeing a change in the composition of each side's electorate. The people who would have been
02:35Harry Truman Democrats now vote Republican. They like Donald Trump. And a lot of the wealthy
02:45suburbs of Washington and New York and Chicago and everywhere else are now pretty reliably
02:53Democrat. One of the interesting questions, Brittany, is whether all the chaos on the streets,
03:02all the pro-Palestinian demonstrations and the riots at universities,
03:07which are pretty far removed from the kind of Democrats you see in the suburbs, whether that
03:15will either force them not to go to the polls or even vote Republican. So that's all up in the air.
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