The discussion centers around the lead-up to a critical election night within the context of the U.S. presidential race. The panel delves into what would define a successful night for Kamala Harris, focusing on key indicators such as voter turnout in major Democratic strongholds like the suburbs around Philadelphia, Detroit, and Milwaukee. They emphasize the importance of voter demographics and their motivations, particularly issues like reproductive rights, and how these could influence the outcome favorably for Harris if they align with her campaign's priorities.

For Donald Trump, a successful election night hinges on new voter bases and turnout patterns, especially the possibility of high participation from young male voters. The discussion points to Trump's efforts in mobilizing groups traditionally less involved, such as young men, and the implications of their turnout for his campaign. The nuances of voter perception are explored, particularly concerning economic performance and societal issues, which Trump could potentially leverage to his advantage.

Main takeaways from the discussion:

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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. crystallize ['krɪstəlaɪz] - (verb) - To make something clear and fixed, or make something imaginary, thought, or idea tangible or definite. - Synonyms: (solidify, clarify, focus)

I felt when we were doing our rehearsals just now, it was interesting because it helps crystallize what you're looking at.

2. signpost ['saɪnˌpoʊst] - (noun) - Something that acts as a guide or indication of future behavior. - Synonyms: (indicator, marker, guidepost)

And if we kind of look at Kamala Harris first, I guess one signpost would be very big turnout in the areas where Democrats tend to do well.

3. demographics [ˌdɛməˈɡræfɪks] - (noun) - The statistical characteristics of populations, especially in terms of size, density, and distribution. - Synonyms: (population statistics, population composition, population data)

Because of course, in every demographic group, which was what we were kind of, I was talking about earlier, that you're going to get college educated women who actually end up voting Republican.

4. candidate ['kændɪˌdeɪt] - (noun) - A person who applies for a job or is nominated for election. - Synonyms: (nominee, applicant, contender)

So the way it's like following breadcrumbs in Hansel and Gretel, you are looking for sign posts to a good night for one candidate or another

5. contested [kənˈtɛstɪd] - (adjective) - Subject to dispute, argument, or contention, especially legal in nature. - Synonyms: (disputed, challenged, questioned)

I mean, we don't know if we're going to see a contested result, but it certainly could be.

6. legitimacy [lɪˈdʒɪtɪməsi] - (noun) - Conformity to the law or rules; acceptance as valid or justified. - Synonyms: (credibility, validity, authenticity)

So there's some legitimacy to that.

7. perception [pərˈsɛpʃən] - (noun) - The ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the senses; a way of understanding or interpreting something. - Synonyms: (awareness, insight, understanding)

The nuances of voter perception are explored, particularly concerning economic performance and societal issues, which Trump could potentially leverage to his advantage.

8. discrepancy [dɪsˈkrɛpənsi] - (noun) - A lack of compatibility or similarity between two or more facts. - Synonyms: (inconsistency, variance, divergence)

That they want checked. And Erie, of course, is a bellwether city in a bellwether state.

9. motivator ['moʊtɪˌveɪtər] - (noun) - Something that provides a reason or stimulus to act. - Synonyms: (incentive, drive, stimulus)

And Democrats and the Harris campaign have always said this is going to be a big motivator.

10. gauged [ɡeɪdʒd] - (verb) - To measure or judge something, especially in terms of quality or amount. - Synonyms: (assessed, evaluated, measured)

Because for me, I'm also really curious to see turnout in university towns, places like Madison, Wisconsin, because we've talked about the fact that there are a number of young voters who are so frustrated with Gaza policy.

What to expect on US election night - BBC News

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Path to the Presidency. We're recording late in the afternoon US Eastern Time on Thursday, 31st October. Slightly different this week. We're in studio together because we've been rehearsing for the big election. Yeah. So much to chat about, really, isn't there? I mean, where do we go from here now, the next few days, what we've got to look out for? I think it's like, what are we. We're now gearing up to the stage, right? We're what? We're recording this. It's five days out, so I think we're all stuck. I felt when we were doing our rehearsals just now, it was interesting because it helps crystallize what you're looking at. And so what are we all looking at on the actual night and what are we. I'd love to give our kind of viewers tidbits about what they should take away. Well, I guess what I've been thinking about is, okay, if we get into that election night, what is a good night for Kamala Harris look like? What do you guys think? Because I've been thinking a lot about there's really only one good outcome. So that'll be quick. We'll be done by 8:30 and go home. I think at the risk of rephrasing it, I think it's. How do we tell if it's looking like a good night? Right. So the way it's like following breadcrumbs in Hansel and Gretel, you are looking for sign posts to a good night for one candidate or another.

And if we kind of look at Kamala Harris first, I guess one signpost would be very big turnout in the areas where Democrats tend to do well. So suburbs of big cities, suburbs of Philadelphia, suburbs of Detroit, suburbs of Milwaukee, those big cities in the blue wall states. If we see bigger numbers there than we saw in 2020, for example, and I think it's always worth comparing, then you could say, oh, this is looking like what the Harris campaign was hoping for on election night. So in a way, it's numbers as much as anything. Right? It's a numbers game. And I mean, that's what we're hearing from the campaigns in these last few days. It's turnout, turnout, turnout. Get the vote out. Use whatever celebrities, whatever you have at your disposal to get people out. And I think early in the night before we have any projections, when we see those exit polls bringing the information to us, and that's real voters that have been polled as they leave the polling centers, Are they women? What age are they? What ethnic background are they, you know, what financial background are they? Do they have a college degree? Do they have a college degree? What's their education level? What's their view on abortion? All of these things that we'll get from the exit poll, the campaigns are going to be looking so closely at that.

If they see people motivated by abortion, reproductive rights, over economy, are they seeing women coming out? Are they seeing gaggles of young people? That's the big point for me is what is the main issue those voters in those exit polls are actually pointing to? Because if in these last few weeks, Kamala Harris has really been ramping up that contrast between her and Donald Trump, right. That brings up the issue of democracy. But she's also been hammering home reproductive rights and abortion. And if you look at the economic numbers right now, they are not far off from where Democrats and President Joe Biden would want them to be. Inflation has cooled even on grocery prices, which we talked about last week, last week. Gas prices have come down, grocery prices have come down, but people still don't feel good about the economy. And if that's what voters are naming again as their number one issue, if that trumps for voters abortion, reproductive rights, even immigration and crime as some of the issues that Donald Trump's campaign have laid out as the priorities, to me, that would be an indicator that it's starting to be a good night for Donald Trump.

Yeah, I mean, that's a smart way of looking at it. Because of course, in every demographic group, which was what we were kind of, I was talking about earlier, that you're going to get college educated women who actually end up voting Republican or you're going to get non college educated white. I love the way we're slicing and dicing Americans up like this. You're going to get non college educated. I feel like a surgeon. It's like slice off your left arm and replace it with, you know, if you live here and you have a college education, you'll do this thing. And of course, and of course some people won't, they'll go the other way. But, and you could, you can draw a lot from that because we look at past history to see that, yes, a majority of college educated women do tend to vote Democrat at the moment. So there's some legitimacy to that. But I think you're right about that point about the exit polls and particularly on something like abortion, because abortion.

And what's been so fascinating, if we'd been having this conversation, my God, I remember having this conversation back in 2008 or back in 2004 even, and somebody had said that abortion was their primary issue, you would know that they were going to vote Republican. Yeah. And look how much we've, how it flipped. And Democrats and the Harris campaign have always said this is going to be a big motivator. And they, they have said even in the last few days, we're seeing in the suburbs of the kind of almost mythical suburbs of Philadelphia with like the new Florida, we're seeing in the suburbs of Philadelphia, large numbers of women turn out or higher numbers of women voting early. And they do put that down to the issue of abortion. Still. The thing with abortion as an issue as well is it can go in both directions. If someone's leaving the polling center and says, oh, abortion was my number one reason, does that mean because they want to keep Donald Trump out and secure abortion rights and reproductive rights, or they want to get Donald Trump in.

Are they more stern position on abortion? The assumption would be in this election that if you've put down abortion as your number one issue, it's more likely to be because you want to find some way to get those abortion rights back again. What are the other areas you guys are looking at? Because for me, I'm also really curious to see turnout in university towns, places like Madison, Wisconsin, because we've talked about the fact that there are a number of young voters who are so frustrated with Gaza policy, for example, or with affordability, for that matter, don't feel like they can buy a home at any point in the near future that they have said that they are not going to vote, or some have even said, of course, that they would vote for Donald Trump on Gaza policy to send a message to the Biden Harris administration, to the vice president here. And I'm curious to see if on the day we see a big turnout among those youth voters, because that could be a real wild card in some of these battleground states where you have a huge youth population.

We're talking about Michigan in that matter for that. Ann Arbor, Michigan. I think those young voters are one of the kind of unknown quantities in this election. They're very, very hard for pollsters to capture them because they're generally in the places. I mean, they don't have landline phones. Are they going to spend 10 minutes if they get a call on their cell phone answering questions from a polling company? So they're quite hard to capture. And they're motivated by a whole pile of things. And we've seen a lot of them in those so called blue walled states, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, saying they may vote for Jill Steen just now, the Green Party candidate, you know, and so there's a risk, I think, which we haven't talked about much actually is the impact she could potentially have in Austin and Wisconsin in particular.

Yeah. And I mean in 2016 she had more votes than the difference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. So had she not been running, who knows what would have happened to get on that young voters point. It's a super smart point. What will we learn on election night if we see high turnout and in Michigan, young voters turned out more than in any other state. And 75% of Michigan students who were registered to vote, I've clearly been reading my briefing book, actually bothered to go out to the polls, which is a very high number for students, huge number for students. Having university students of my own, I realize what a big lift that is for university students, but I don't know what.

That's an interesting point. How much will we be able to read into it then? Let's say we do see big turnout in Ann Arbor, Michigan, my guess is, or Madison, Wisconsin. And I could be completely wrong on this. My guess is, is that among those young, so young voters, 10 Democrat. And if we see big turnout in those areas, my guess is that we are going to see a higher Democrat vote, presentation notwithstanding. Yeah, that is my guess. Of course, I could be completely wrong. But so then the other, the other slice and dice of the demography, of course, is going to be if the unknown factor for the Trump campaign and the kind of theory of the case for the Trump campaign is that Donald Trump, in a way that is almost unique to any candidate, manages to get people out to vote for him that don't usually vote.

And in this election it's men between the ages of 20 and 30 or 20 and 40. And the Trump campaign have told me that if they win this, it will be because of a surge of young male voters. So I guess we should also be looking at that. Right. We're looking at suburban women, but we should also the quote, unquote vote, the quote unquote, bro vote, wherever that might be, whether it's in the suburbs, because young men live in the suburbs. But I mean, in a way we need to look at that across the states, then that's not going to be particularly geographic. Yeah, that's going to be something that's, you know, I heard a reporter saying that it's a heavier lift for the Trump campaign to get these people out to vote.

Because young men, as you said, are not, do not vote in as high numbers as young women do. And certainly if Donald Trump and his campaign are relying on those young men to turn out in big numbers, they've spent a lot of time and money and investment in going on some of these podcasts on Joe Rogan, all these, this outreach to young men. Does that then translate to them actually going to the poll? Maybe they did vote early. I mean, that is a possibility as well. But on election day, actually going to the polls?

Well, that's the big gamble for the Trump campaign, because if you look at the polls, support for Donald Trump is almost where it was at a year ago when we were so far from the election. It hasn't really changed through the changing of the top of the ticket. On the Democratic side, he sat in there between 46 and 48, 49% support this whole time, which is roughly what he got in 2020 as well. So the big question for the Trump campaign is what new voters do they have? What have they built on in that time? And that's why I think they've been targeting those young men, because they weren't eligible to vote the last time around, or maybe they weren't eligible to vote even one year ago.

I think they've been putting a big push on Georgia. And we'll be looking, I think, around the suburbs of Atlanta as well for young men there in Arizona, we've seen them court the Latino vote. I was there a few weeks ago. I met a whole pile of young men. That sounds a bit suspicious, but I met a whole pile of young men in an early morning diner who'd just come off shift somewhere. And they so many. You'd said in a nightclub, it would have been a lot more. I don't go to nightclubs anymore. Caddy, unfortunately, two small children. That's not a runner these days, unfortunately. But they were all really impressed by Donald Trump and many of them came from Democratic households.

You know, that's kind of what they would have grown up with, their parents and so on. It was their first time to vote for many of them. And they just really liked this kind of strongman image that he's put across. Some of the more controversial things that he says, they were able to just wash over that and kind of dismiss it as off the cuff remarks. And we all say things sometimes that come out the wrong way and whatever. So I think Arizona is going to be really one to watch as well. You know, we always talk about Maricopa county and all of that. But I think right across that state and there's a big student population there as well. Talking about the young people, you know, there's some, I think there's something like 700,000 students in that state.

The difference between the two, between Biden and Trump in 2020 was just over 11,000 votes. So, you know, there's potentially a huge number of people there that can tip the scales in either direction. I think it's also going to be interesting to watch the climate on Election Day. I mean, I don't mean the geographic climate, I mean the weather. Yeah, it's always interesting to watch the weather, but it's going to be interesting to watch, you know, whether people in polling stations feel safe, whether how well protected they are, whether we have any more incidents of, you know, the kinds of things, ballot burning, that sort of stuff, whether they, the Trump campaign in the past has said that they are going to send poll watchers, is what they call them people to go and stand outside polling stations, which has sometimes been signed as intimidation of certain demographic groups. Are we going to see that kind of thing or is that actually going to all pass off pretty smoothly?

I know people are prepared for that because of 2022 and 2020. So they're much more focused on that. They are. But look, just ahead of the election, we have seen Donald Trump pointing to what he said is cheating in Pennsylvania. I mean, if you have that kind of distrust of the electoral system ahead of time, I mean, imagine what we might see in Pennsylvania the day of. Of course, Pennsylvania we know took longer to count in 2020. And we're all going to be sitting on our seat's edge here in the studio waiting for a result from Pennsylvania, which we're not going to get on election night with all the mail in ballots and the process that it takes to count votes there.

But the fact that there's Republicans and Donald Trump pointing to Pennsylvania ahead of time doesn't bode well necessarily for what might happen after the election. I mean, we don't know if we're going to see a contested result, but it certainly could be. Why do you think he's pointing to cheating now? What's your read on that? I think he's been doing this for a couple of months. If you look at the speeches that he's made, you know, he's talking, he hasn't been as specific as saying, well, there are these voters in Bucks county who were turned away apparently, according to the Trump campaign, who were turned away from voters. So they have a specific issue, specific issues and specific legal issues around some of the vote.

Because some of the people in the Harris campaign are saying to me this is him preparing to lose Pennsylvania and that if you put out now that there's cheating, you make the prospect of a suit somehow. It's more official if you put it out now already. But that's what I was going to say about what we've heard from him for months about the potential for it being stolen as well. It's the same kind of theme and we saw it in 2020, where you put these bits of rumors out and then if it doesn't go the way you want to, you can say, well, I told you it was going to be stolen or people were cheating or it wasn't a fair fight.

We should say, though, the Democratic Party in Pennsylvania has launched a lawsuit just in the last 24 hours. All the others we've seen have come from the Republican Party. And that's about the county of Erie and mail in ballots not being requested, not having been delivered and a few other things that they're saying are irregularities there that they want checked. And Erie, of course, is a bellwether city in a bellwether state. And as goes Erie, generally goes Pennsylvania and generally goes to presidency. So again, I was there several months ago speaking to one of the local on the ground Republican organizers and they were working really hard at that time to up their mail in ballot system because they said particularly in 2022, they had missed out to the Democrats.

They felt because the Democrats were better at organizing people to get their ballots in early, post them in early. And they didn't want that to happen again. So although we've often heard from Donald Trump, don't post your vote, go in person, his party and the ground operation for months have been doing just the opposite to that. And of course we've heard him say in recent days, do vote early, get out and vote now. Yeah. But it is a little bit still of a mixed message because you then got Elon Musk saying just a week ago that mail in votes are subject to fraud or ripe for being subject to fraud. So they haven't quite got the messages clear on this. It does look from the numbers of early voting that you've got almost as many Republicans doing early votes as you have Democrats this time around. To the extent that you can tell because different states have different rules around whether people are registered, these are people registered, doesn't mean they vote that way.

It doesn't mean that they've voted that way. Do we think that the three blue wall states, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, traditionally they all vote the same way. I think there's only been one instance, 1988, in modern history where they didn't. And one of them, which I can't remember off the top of my head, went for Michael Dukakis and the other two didn't. I think it was Michigan. But I have absolutely no doubt that some eagle eyed viewer will fact check me on that one. Anyway, they generally tend to vote together.

Do we think that they are going to vote? If we see it's going to be Michigan again? That would be. I agree. It'll be Michigan again. It'll be the question about whether point there. I mean, yes, although the Trump campaign is saying they're going to win six of the seven battlegrounds, except for Wisconsin. So that would be a split between Wisconsin going Democrat and Michigan and Pennsylvania going to Donald Trump. I mean they're projecting a lot of confidence in the taking what, six at all? I mean taking six of the seven battlegrounds is projecting confidence in and of itself. But it's interesting that they're single.

But I think you could see a split this time around. I think it's possible. And I agree with you that if we are going to see a split, I will be watching Michigan because of the Arab American vote that we've spoken about a lot and something that we haven't spoken about as much, which is the issue of electric vehicles. And the Trump campaign has put a lot of money into running ads in Michigan saying that if Kamala Harris is elected then everyone in America will have to drive an electric car. And at the moment those electric cars come from China and trying to suppress the autoworker vote for her or get the auto worker vote for him. And I think it's a kind of sleeper issue in Michigan, but it is an interesting one. They're trying to rally on that, the Democratic Party in Michigan by saying okay, electric vehicles.

But electric vehicles still have to be built. Someone still has to build them. So we still need the manufacturing plant. They're a little bit on defense on it because they know they what Donald Trump had already put out there. They absolutely are. But I think it's really interesting when you look at how much it both campaigns are giving to Michigan that the Democratic campaign are not going near Dearborn and Hamtrank. They've been really trying to maximize the votes elsewhere. And of course Dearborn, Hamtrank, those kind of edges of Detroit are where the big Arab American, Muslim American communities are. And it kind of feels like they've almost given up, that they feel they can't win those people back. That's what they're hearing.

But that they're not even making an effort. Like she hasn't gone there. But it feels like they're really trying to energize voters in the whole rest of the state to boost the turnout there to compensate. To compensate. To overcompensate. Well, you know, who's not so happy about that? Or some of the members of Congress there, of course, Debbie Dingell is one of them, who represents not only a big Jewish community, but a big Arab American community. And she's talked about the struggle that she's faced. And we talked a bit about Elissa Slotkin and her Senate race there. And she's been very in tune with the Arab American community.

They are understanding that the criticism of the Biden Harris administration on their Israel Gaza policy is one that would make it very difficult for her to win that Senate race. And she's distanced herself a bit from that policy in questioning Israel's operation in Gaza now and in Lebanon as well, because we know there's a big Lebanese American population in Michigan. And we're hearing just today, just before we came into studio, Tony Blinken had a press conference there and really changing the narrative again on how unhappy they are with Israel on this latest bill that passed through the Israeli parliament banning Unruh, the aid agency, from operating inside Israel will have absolutely zero impact on Arab American voters. I agree with you, but it's in. It's, you know, and not to say that the political arm of the Democratic party is controlling U.S. foreign policy. I'm sure that Tony Blinken is well aware of attacked and all that.

But it's just interesting that the language has really sharpened up now with just a couple of days to go and saying things that we haven't heard them say over the last whole year, that this humanitarian crisis has been so dire. So the other kind of sleeper thing that I'll be watching on election night is New York, which is an odd thing to be watching on election night, but I think because of the House races that helped with the House races in California, hand the House to the Republicans in 2022. And you're always looking kind of for tells right early on in the night. And because it's New York and so polls close earlier and it's on the east coast, you start to get feedback earlier. And these are smaller races, so we may get results pretty quickly from those races. If those Republicans in New York, in Long island, the Hudson Valley, right up to Syracuse, across the board, do.

Well, you might be able to say, actually that's, I mean, they're local. They're much more local races. But again, if you were the Trump campaign, you wouldn't be unhappy with that. But they're very different and they didn't turn up at Madison Square Garden and they're running from him. But even so, it would help the Republicans if, let's say, all of the. And the counter would be if they all lost on election night, maybe that's the more interesting thing. If all of those five Republicans who managed to do so well in 2022 in seats that have gone traditionally Democrat, let's say they all lose, I think that would be something the Harris campaign would be happy about. Right. I mean, you'd start to think, oh, that's an interesting narrative to watch at least on election night.

And when we're talking about what to watch on election night, of course, we're talking largely about who's going to be the next president. But it's really important as well, isn't it? I mean, we've been discussing this over the last few weeks to look at what's happening in the Senate and the House, because whoever gets into the Oval Office needs the Senate and the House if they're to have any chance of getting through any of these promises that they're making on the campaign trail. And I think, you know, you're talking about what's a good night for Kamala Harris, apart from a win, obviously, either of them. Or what's a good night for Donald Trump, A win for him, too. But either of them are going to want to see, do I have my guys and gals behind me? Can I actually do any of this? Can I get any of this through? Yeah.

I mean, there's an understanding of that in the Democrat party after 2022. I mean, they had, quote, unquote, slept on those races in New York and California. And that's why we've seen huge amounts of money invested in these races now. I mean, they are very clear about the fact that they need to have a successful night in a Democrat state of New York and a Democrat state of California. You think it wouldn't tell us much about the national race? You know, my sense, and I come from Rochester, New York, and upstate New York is my, my home, original home. These, you know, local politics and district politics are really quite different.

Think about the fact that Mike Lawler was campaigning on the fact that he stood on stage with President Biden at an event that he works across the aisle. It just feels like such a different flavor. But that being said, I mean, you never know. It could give us an indication of how people are feeling about the economy, for example, or how people are feeling about. If there is enthusiasm for her and large numbers of Democratic voters are turning out, they may well just be voting Democrat right down the ticket. Right. So they're voting for Kamal Harris, they're voting for the others. And same would go, you know, if they're voting Democrat in those House races, they're probably voting for Kamala Harris, too, in big numbers. That may just give us an incense of enthusiasm.

And one of the things that Democrats have been worried about, Democratic strategists that I've spoken to have been worried about all through the race up to including just today, I was on the phone with one just before we came into the studio, is that there is a sort of lack of enthusiasm for her. There is a. There is enthusiasm around the issues. There is an enthusiasm around the issue of abortion. There is an enthusiasm for stopping Donald Trump. They really want him not to win. But that doesn't quite translate into a massive amount of active enthusiasm for her. And it is something that Democrats are a little worried about.

The campaign won't say it out loud, but strategists around the campaign do talk about it. And are those enthusiastic people, people who are going to vote Democratic anyway? Like, how many extra people are they bringing on board? You know, and that's to our point at the start of.

This is about turnout. It's about getting the numbers out. It's about, we'll be sitting here on election night going, oh, only 15% of the votes are in because there are so many votes to count. And as we know, the rules are different in each state as to who can start counting that huge pot of postal votes ahead of time. And, you know, when we're gonna see these little things trickle in that give us these little tells.

Another thing that I'll be watching is just turnout. You know, Donald Trump drove up turnout in 2016. He drove up turnout in 2018, in the midterms, he drove up turnout in 2020, he drove up turnout in 2022. Does Donald Trump love him or hate him on either side still driving people out? Yep, definitely. Well, there will be plenty to watch, and I hope everyone tunes in. We're going to be literally chained to these seats. Not literally, but it'll feel a bit like that. We'll be there all night in the studio, bringing people all the action, so something to look forward to. Yeah. See you guys. We will get through it. Yeah, we will.

Politics, Leadership, Inspiration, Voter Turnout, Election Strategy, Demographics, Bbc News