00:00Hi, I'm Stephan Grobe and I cover the U.S. presidential elections for Euronews.
00:14Today I want to talk about an important element, turnout.
00:18It sounds like a truism, but it's very important in the United States, more maybe than in other
00:24countries.
00:25You see, I live in Brussels, and in Belgium, voting is mandatory.
00:29So at the end of election day, you have a turnout rate of 90 plus percent, which gives
00:35the people who are elected a very strong mandate.
00:38Not in the United States.
00:40Turnout there for presidential elections is between 55 and 60 percent, typically.
00:46That is nothing compared to European numbers.
00:49Now, figure this out.
00:52The turnout record ever in the 20th century was reached four years ago in 2020, when Joe
00:58Biden beat Donald Trump.
01:0066 percent, more than 66 percent, that's two-thirds of the electorate, went to the polls and elected
01:07the president.
01:08That was the national record in the United States.
01:11Until then, the records were all established in the 1960s.
01:16John F. Kennedy's election in 1960, Richard Nixon's election in 1968, LBJ's, Lyndon Johnson's
01:23election in 1964, and Dwight Eisenhower's elections in 1952 all had turnout rates between
01:3062 and 63 percent.
01:33Now, Obama in 2008 even stayed below these numbers.
01:37Now, there's a rule of thumb in the United States.
01:40If the turnout rate is about 55 percent, that heavily favors the Republican candidate.
01:45If it's about 60 percent, it may be the Republican or the Democratic candidate.
01:51If it's 60 percent and more, it heavily favors the Democratic candidate.
01:55So Kamala Harris must all be interested in turning out people in drove.
02:00If you have one-third of the electorate that is not voting, sitting on the couch, basically,
02:06you need to get these people to come to the polls and vote.
02:09And this is what she's doing.
02:11And both candidates have even established a strategy that tries to target, to zero in
02:18on slivers of the electorate that so far have been reluctant to participate in this
02:24political process.
02:25That's why the media strategy is based on podcasts this year, rather than traditional
02:32media.
02:33Normally, candidates to communicate with the voters, they go on television, they put ads
02:37on television, they go to the famous news shows, news programs like 60 Minutes and CBS
02:43or something.
02:44They go to town halls and on Fox News or on CNN, the traditional TV networks.
02:50But this year, for the first time, podcasts have become very important.
02:54The idea is to reach people that are normally not part of the huge audience, people that
03:00are not really familiar with the political issues.
03:02And so are the podcast hosts.
03:05So the idea is to have a rather friendly conversation and not a challenging interview with a network
03:12journalist who will ask tough questions.
03:15And we've seen this in case of Donald Trump this year, in case of Kamala Harris.
03:19They both went to podcast hosts.
03:21Trump, for example, went to the Joe Rogan Experience, basically a male-dominated podcast
03:28that has 17 million viewers or something on YouTube.
03:32Kamala Harris went to podcast hosts who have a strong appeal among women.
03:38Call Me Daddy is just one name.
03:40Now, they did all the other things as well.
03:43They did network interviews, more Kamala Harris than Donald Trump.
03:48They did the debates, of course.
03:50Other than that, traditional media have lost a lot of influence, a lot of importance.
03:54But we're going to see whether this will play out positively for either candidate.
04:02The answer certainly next week when we have the final results.
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