00:00This is Apropos. Now we're now in the final hours until Americans cast their ballots to
00:09choose their next president. Today, both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have their eyes on
00:14Pennsylvania, a battleground state seen as critical for victory. The Democratic nominee
00:19will be crisscrossing the Keystone State before closing the night at a rally in the city of
00:24Philadelphia. Her rival, Trump, will be heading there too. Before that, he kicked off the
00:29final day of campaigning in North Carolina, where he told supporters that the election
00:34was his to lose. It's the first of four rallies that he'll be holding today. He heads to Pennsylvania
00:40next before making an appearance in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Now, not all votes are up
00:45for grabs, with about 77 million Americans having already cast their ballots. Eliza Herbert
00:51has more now on those who voted early.
00:56Many voting centers are teeming across the United States, but despite the long queues,
01:01the spirit of democracy remains high. We've been here for two and a half hours and the
01:06mood is still great. We are almost there. We're in the homestretch. We got in line around
01:122pm and now it's 6pm Eastern time and we did it. And I'm proud that we added our voice.
01:19With the polls neck and neck, Americans appear anxious to make their votes count. Already
01:24more than 75 million people have cast early ballots, particularly in crucial battleground
01:30states. Records have been broken in Georgia and North Carolina, with some 4 million and
01:354.5 million votes cast respectively. In Michigan, nearly 3 million people have already voted
01:42and in Arizona, 2.3 million. Wisconsin and Nevada have also returned high numbers. So
01:48far, statistics show that women have voted more than men and there has been a larger
01:52portion of rural voters showing up early. But it is still not quite clear which party
01:57will benefit. Four years ago in 2020, a record-breaking 70% of the overall turnout voted early, either
02:05by mail or in person. Democrats were urged to vote by mail to avoid the spread of COVID-19
02:11and ultimately the party gained votes in the counties that returned more mail ballots.
02:16Scenes of chaos then unfolded after Donald Trump doubled down on unsubstantiated claims
02:22of voter fraud and refused to accept the election result. A scenario these expert worries
02:27could be repeated.
02:29The more voting at a distance or voting early, voting sort of out of the regular schedule
02:36there is, the more challenges there are going to be. If everything happens on the same day,
02:42it's harder for the loser, I think, to complain because everybody's following the same rules
02:49on the same day, depending on which state they're in.
02:52Both presidential candidates, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, have encouraged early voting
02:57this election.
02:59Well, let's get more on the state of the race with John Zogby, who is a pollster and author
03:06of Beyond the Horse Race, how to read the polls and why we should. Thanks so much for
03:11joining us on the program, John. We really appreciate having you on. Now, you've probably
03:15got one of the toughest jobs at the moment right now. It's the last day of campaigning
03:20and final polls show the race couldn't be tighter. Tell us what you're seeing at a national
03:25level.
03:27We just released our final poll and polled nationwide right on up till yesterday. So
03:35there's obviously still last minute trends that could happen. But we do show Kamala Harris
03:41leading by almost four percentage points nationwide. And I think the thing that's most
03:47striking about it is the gender gap and the education gap. She is doing particularly well
03:56among women, even more particularly well among young women. We've talked about a gender gap
04:05in terms of men supporting the Republican and women supporting a Democrat. But among
04:11young women and young men, that gap is 60 plus percentage points. Young men voting for
04:19Trump by over 30 points of a gap and young women voting for Harris by more than 35 points
04:27of a gap. Also an education gap. College educated voting for Harris in really large
04:35substantial numbers. Those with a high school education or less voting for Trump. But I
04:43feel comfortable in suggesting that Harris will win the popular vote. But and I know
04:50you're going to ask this next. This key battleground states are just a big question mark.
04:57Let's go with that. Let's continue that conversation because it is very important. Of course, this
05:01will come down to those all important swing states. Give us a sense of polling there.
05:09It's tied. There's no other way to look at it. When we see, you know, Trump leading,
05:17I'm putting that in quotation marks, you know, by point three or point five or even 1.1 percentage
05:25points. There is no trend line here and there is no gap here. You know, we have a margin
05:32of error in our business, a margin of sampling error. But when you get to races that close,
05:39that's not even within the margin of error. It's just tied. And these seven states, the
05:47southern rim, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina and the northern wall, the blue wall,
05:55we call it, for Democrats, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, just too close to call at this point.
06:03You mentioned that the figures very much fall within the margin of error. How much attention
06:09should we be giving these polls, especially on the battleground states, if, you know,
06:13they can't, they're not reliable, so to speak?
06:17Well, they are reliable in the sense that they're showing a very close race. And I think
06:22that's how we need to look at it. So rather than looking at a pollster's final numbers
06:28and saying, oh, Donald Trump is leading in this state by point three, and then tomorrow
06:35or whenever, God knows, he loses by two points, let's not be eager to say, oh, the polls were
06:45wrong. It's a close race, no matter which way you cut it. Now, there could be late-breaking
06:50developments even tonight or tomorrow. But nationwide, I'm pretty comfortable in suggesting
07:01that Kamala Harris wins the nationwide popular vote. But in terms of these key battleground
07:07states, it is still too close.
07:10OK, and give us your thoughts on the Des Moines, Iowa, surprise poll that came out. Harris
07:17has a significant lead, according to that poll. Iowa isn't considered to be a swing
07:22state in this election, but Trump won it pretty convincingly in both 2016 and 2020. The polls
07:30are saying that Harris could win there. How much could that kind of information reshape
07:35the race, do you think?
07:36Oh, it could considerably, because what we learned is that, yeah, as you pointed out,
07:41it wasn't on anybody's list as a battleground state, and here we have a shock. That pollster
07:48and seltzer, I respect as among the best in the business. But the key finding, she discovered,
07:58as we have discovered nationally, is the large turnout of women, especially young women,
08:06and that the utmost importance to them, reproductive rights. That's on the ballot in Iowa. That
08:13brought women out to vote. That could be the bellwether in some of these states. The women's
08:21vote, especially younger women, and that could put Harris over the top.
08:26It's very much a widening gender gap, as you already alluded to earlier on. John, you're
08:32in a position that, you know, we should still be reading these polls. We should still be
08:37relying on these polls. I think it's fair to say that they haven't been as reliable
08:42as they once were. We can see that in the last two elections, where polls underestimated
08:48support for Trump. Many new pollsters have now flooded the markets, and pollsters are
08:54also dealing with this ongoing crisis of falling response rates. Can polls be trusted?
09:01Absolutely. Yeah. Let's not look at a poll the day before saying someone is ahead or not ahead.
09:12Let's look at the trend line. In 2016, the famous race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump,
09:19she was ahead by 10, 11 points in some of the battleground states 10 days before the election.
09:26We saw her lead dissipate each day to the point where the day before the election,
09:33she was leading by one or two percentage points, maybe even behind in some states.
09:39Instead of saying, oh, the final number had Clinton leading by two points. Therefore,
09:45she'll win. You need to look at the trend line, the trajectory of the race. The trajectory was
09:51going against her. I think the polls captured that. And I think they're capturing that it's
09:57much too close to call. So yes, polls are good. You'd expect that from me, though, wouldn't you?
10:03Yes. But it's good. It's still good for us to know. John, I'm going to ask you to look
10:09into a crystal ball for us right now. Who do you think is going to win tomorrow?
10:15You're unable to answer.
10:17No. I feel pretty good about the popular vote. It would be polling malpractice
10:23for me to project a winner in the States.
10:26OK. OK. Well, we appreciate your thoughts anyway. Thanks so much for breaking down
10:31the polls for us. We really appreciate your time. That's John Zogby, who is poster and author of
10:37Beyond the Horse Race, how to read the polls and why we should. Thanks so much for joining us on.
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