With just two days to go, Dan sits down with Election Night guru and NBC News National Political Correspondent Steve Kornacki for a pre-election deep dive. Steve breaks down the state of the race, shares insights on key battleground states, trends among key voter groups, and which counties he's watching to signal election night outcomes. Then, Steve and Dan dig into close Senate and House races, plus some quirks in ballot-counting that could affect how quickly we get results. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [email protected] and include the name of the podcast. From now through the election, you can subscribe to Crooked Media's Friends of the Pod membership with a massive 25% discount. Your support helps us build the shows and initiatives we’re envisioning for 2025—it’s the best way to back our team as we create new content and launch exciting projects! Take advantage of this offer here: http://go.crooked.com/B3CLJM or sign up at the top of your Apple Podcasts feed!
Chapter 1: What insights does Steve Kornacki provide about election night preparation?
Thanks. Great to be here.
So before we get into the nuts and bolts of the race and what we're going to see in this election, I do have to ask you, what is your plan for how to get ready for election night? Do you have one big meal early on? Do you stop drinking water at like three? How much caffeine do you take? I mean, you are on call for days, potentially. How do you get ready?
It's not too elaborate. The excitement of, you know, everything gets me easily through the night. I don't have to do, you know, anything artificial for that. I guess the big thing is I always I carve out like two hours in the middle of the afternoon to go take a walk. Just clear my head. You know, you get all those anecdotal turnout reports. They're useless. So, you know, just ignore it.
Yeah. I know you guys have game-planned a whole bunch of different scenarios about how this election could go. We didn't learn for several days in 2020. Have you guys thought about, based on changes in who's voting, how votes are being counted, when we're likely to get a result here or what some of the different scenarios may be?
Yeah, I mean, I'm sort of cautiously optimistic it's going to be quicker, maybe significantly quicker. The main difference is just the volume of vote by mail this time around. It's down dramatically. That's what really clogged it up in 2020 in some of these states. Plus, some have changed their procedures to make it even better.
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Chapter 2: How have voting procedures changed since the last election?
others that haven't even changed the procedures at least they have more experience with it now a couple elections under their belt so yeah i remind people you go back one election further 2016 it was it was a close election you know it was a couple states by you know about 50 000 votes 75 000 votes we had the verdict by 1 30 in the morning i would say that is a verdict i remember quite well when that came down as you can imagine
All of the polling suggests that this is one of the closest races in history. We're basically at a one-point Harris lead in most of the national polling averages. Battleground states are, at least if you look at the New York Times average, all under two points. Many of them tied or under one point. How are you sort of seeing the race along those lines?
Yeah, I'm sort of at the point where I don't think it's going to change dramatically. I don't know if I'd even trust it if a bunch of polls suddenly showed some kind of movement. And, you know, my overall thing here the last two months really has been I just don't trust confidence, you know, period.
The more confidently somebody is asserting they see something in the polls or the early vote, the more skeptical I become.
I think that's fair, particularly when it comes to the early vote. You know, 2020, 2016 marked in many people's minds by a pretty significant polling miss, mostly on the state side in 2016, everywhere in 2020. Do you have greater confidence that the polls are accurate this time? If so, why?
Well, yeah, it's one of those cautiously optimistic things again. But there is an argument that the fact that they're so close right now across the board, Trump is running at a higher number than he polled at in the past. And the race is closer than it ever was in the polling in 16 and 20. Is that the sign that the Trump voters who were missed in 16 and 20 are now being accounted for?
Whether that's because of methodological changes from pollsters, did it self-correct? Was the big miss in 2020 more the product of just the weirdness of COVID, the pandemic? Did that somehow... So, I mean, that's one way to look at it.
But yeah, I mean, when it's happened two elections in a row, I don't discount the possibility that, again, the Trump vote's undercounted, maybe not by as much, but even by a little would make a huge difference. And poll misses do not always have to favor Republicans. We've seen it before the other way. And I'm very alert to that possibility, too.
The other thing I always try to tell people is if the polling has... Harris up one in Michigan and Trump wins by two. That's not actually a polling error. That is within the range of expected outcomes.
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Chapter 3: What are the key battleground states to watch on election night?
You know, something they saw in a lot of cases with Raphael Warnock when he won his first runoff victory back at the start of 2021. So I want to see what's happening in those places, too. We tend to get the vote pretty late out of Atlanta. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah, Fulton, DeKalb, you know, and it's that's a wild card everywhere this year is just the sequence and how this is going to happen.
So it's I think what we're going to get in in Georgia, though, early is more of the the pre-election day vote. Then we'll start getting the election date. We saw huge, huge disparities, obviously, in 2020, where the election day vote was so rapid. Republican friendly.
The only I see from these early voting stats that we're seeing is clearly there's more interest from Republicans in voting early this time. Does that just mean we're going to look up and say, wow, there's a lot less Republicans voting on Election Day than last time?
You know, I mean, that is such the big question here, because, you know, obviously I find most of the early voting prognostication to be kind of like. sorcery, right? You can read into whatever you want, right? You have all these people talking about the gender gap and the gender gap is huge in the early voting across the board. Now, if you dig deep, it's also the same gender gap as 2020.
Is that still good because you have more Republicans voting, therefore more men? Hard to say. The one place where I do take it incredibly seriously is John Ralston in Nevada, who has been quite dark on Democratic prospects. Are you seeing anything in Nevada?
I mean, I see what you're seeing from him because I have the same attitude. You make the exception for him because it's so established to go back decades doing this in the state. And he has a great track record. But again, it's I think what hangs in my head here a little bit in Nevada and everywhere is just we're so tied into the patterns that we saw in 2020.
And I just think when you talk about early vote and these different vote methods, I think there's
volatility there in how you know how voters are going to you know make these choices and i think the fact of trump and the republicans deciding this time they want to embrace it so much coverage you know even in conservative media the last four years about wow this might have been a blown opportunity and so i just you know we may end up looking back at this and saying wow all everything was inverted this time you know in these patterns and so that's kind of in my head too
You would assume, I mean, this is pure anecdotal assumption, that the Republican voters most likely to switch to mail voting would be stalwart Republican Election Day voters. But you guys actually have an analysis from your decision desk folks today about Arizona, saying that you're a whole bunch of newly registered men turning out in Arizona.
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Chapter 4: How do early voting trends indicate potential election outcomes?
When the results come in, we're testing a bunch of propositions that have been manifest in the polling. Three big ones. One is, is Trump making gains with black voters, particularly black men, working class black men? We will get a sense of that in Georgia and North Carolina.
If he is improving on his margins in those counties you talked about, particularly those rural black counties in both those states. Then the second one is... Is he really making gains with Latinos, right? Have we snapped back to where we were? Is he getting across that sort of magical 40% number? Do you think you can get any sense of that in those early states?
Do we have to wait till we go west to know that?
I'm going to cautiously look at Florida, which closes at 7 and reports very efficiently. Not for Miami-Dade, because Miami-Dade, Trump made huge gains there. Demographically, though, lots of Cuban-Americans. It's different than a lot of other heavily Latino areas. Where I'm going to look in Florida in particular is Osceola County, which is just south of Orlando.
It's one of three majority Hispanic counties in the state, and it's the one with the highest concentration of Puerto Rican voters. It's about one third Puerto Rican as a whole of the county. It's a big size county. Obviously, you want to see there if there's any evidence that the events of the last week have had any impact.
But it's also notable because this showed that, you know, Trump's gains with Hispanic voters in 2020, Miami-Dade got all the attention. But again, because of the Cuban-American factor, I think Osceola was actually the more dramatic example of it. Trump gained 11 points. He lost it by 25, Osceola, the first time he ran, got it all the way down to 14 the next time out.
It's one of his best improvements in any county in Florida. And that's exactly the kind of place that his campaign has felt they're going to make more gains in, big gains in, the kind of place where like You know, the way they've been talking, a Trump victory in that county, you know, would be something in the range of what they're thinking. So I want to see if that's happening there.
I know Florida, you can't extrapolate as much as you used to, but I think that one might be more meaningful than Miami-Dade.
Yeah, it was, and I probably left it off my list because it's A, not competitive, and B, a lot of emotional PTSD as a Democrat in Florida over the last few cycles. But it is also, I mean, that is when every Democrat knew we were in big trouble in 16, was when Florida dumped in the mail-in early vote, and all of a sudden it looked very different than we thought.
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Chapter 5: What are the critical demographic shifts affecting the election results?
Within Allegheny County that, again, fit this demographic profile that's been so rich for Democrats. So, yeah, I mean, a place like Chester County, an easy benchmark to start with is she is she over 60 percent, you know, because Biden was able to get it up to the high 50s. Could she crack 60 percent there? That starts to get into, you know, I think an encouraging territory for her.
Let's move to Michigan. I think Michigan is perhaps one of the more confusing states to look at because of the sort of kind of hard to gauge impact of the uncommitted movement, protest over Gaza, the very large Arab American population. What are you looking at in Michigan?
Yeah, I mean, so Wayne County is going to cover a lot of the uncertainty you're talking about. That's where Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, you know, Hamtramck, you have cities with large Muslim American, large Arab American populations. The way they do the vote counting in Michigan, they do it by, you know, at the municipal level.
So I think we should be able to have access to some of those individual results, hopefully early, that could start answering that. Also in Wayne, obviously, that's where Detroit is. Detroit, same story, really, as Philadelphia. As a city, Trump actually made a little bit of progress there in 2020.
That's a place where is Trump gaining, as you're saying, small but meaningful support with black voters, particularly black men and Republicans. what's the turnout level in Detroit? What's the turnout level among black voters in Detroit? Because you look at it, Biden was able to win Wayne County 68 to 30 last time around. When you start playing with the numbers, if it just went to 64, 34,
That's, in terms of raw votes, because Wayne County, it's 25% of the state, just that one county. So that's going to move massive raw votes.
And then the other quick test I have in that region, because you got Wayne, you got Washtenaw, where University of Michigan is, and then you got the two big suburban counties, Oakland, higher income, high college plus suburb, Macomb, blue collar auto industry suburbs. And measure Macomb against Oakland. This is one of the tests I'm going to do. In 16, when Trump won Michigan by a sliver,
McComb, his support of McComb, he won it by 12, almost completely canceled out Hillary's support in Oakland, which she won by eight. Basically canceled these other out. In 20, when Biden won, Biden won Oakland by 14 and Trump only won McComb by eight. And there was actually a net difference of 70,000 votes in the Democrats' favor. And they won the state by 154,000. So almost half
just came from that disparity. So, I mean, I want to know, are we looking at a tiny, insignificant disparity between them, or is it netting out in the Democrats' favor like it did four years ago?
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Chapter 6: How is the Latino vote impacting the election in key states?
Yeah, I mean, it's a Maricopa County. It's a little bit more than 60 percent is going to come out of there. And then south of that, you got Pima or Tucson is another 15 percent is going to come out of there. So more than three out of four votes coming from those two counties, unfortunately, with Maricopa. We can break it down by congressional district.
So I was mentioning earlier the first congressional district that Dave Schweikert seat. I think that's we want to key in on that one, you know, kind of right away. The other question, though, in Arizona, too, is it's the Hispanic vote, because, again, it's. By exit polling in 2020, Biden carried the Hispanic vote in Arizona by 24 points, 61 to 37.
You know, I pay attention to the polls that come out there and the Hispanic numbers, it's all over the place. There was one that had Trump up seven with Hispanic voters in Arizona recently. I think it was the CNN one this week had Harris up 18.
But that's where, you know, again, given how tight the margin was in 2020, even a relatively small gain with Hispanic voters could erase for Trump, you know, that gap.
Just a couple more things. On the Senate, barring some sort of recount sort of situation, there's a good chance we're going to know who has the Senate control in the first 24 hours here, right? Given the size of the states where this is happening and where they're going to come. Is that right?
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Chapter 7: What role does Pennsylvania play in the 2024 election?
Yeah. I mean, look, once you take West Virginia officially, you know, off the table and the Yeah, you know, Ohio should be a pretty efficient vote counting state. So you'll know kind of Sherrod Brown there. And then if Brown doesn't hang on, I mean, you'll have to test her later. But if Brown, you know, doesn't hang on, then Democrats have to pull a rabbit out of the hat somewhere.
It'll be clear if there's any chance for them to do that in Texas, I think, pretty early on. And then there's that wild card in Nebraska. I know not technically a Democrat, all of this stuff. But again, barring something like that, you know, if Ohio is a four or five point win or something for, you know, for the Republicans, you'll know that on election night. Yeah.
And then finally, the House, good chance we're not going to the House for weeks, right? Because we're going to be waiting for California ballots. If the House proceeds as we suspect, and there's not some sort of giant wave, and we're down to a few seats, probably decided in California, you have second maybe to New York, the largest batch of toss-up winnable races. They don't count those votes.
Those votes can be postmarked by Election Day. Is that right? So they're coming in for a while after that.
Well, yeah, they're coming in for a while. They're very slow at counting it. And it's another conversation. But yeah, for the House, it could be election month if we're waiting on them.
Yeah. Hopefully you don't have to wait on them and you can actually go and get some sleep over that period of time. Steve Kornacki, thanks so much for joining us. Everyone is smarter from having listened to this conversation. And good luck. And we will be watching you very attentively on Tuesday Night and Beyond. Thanks again.
Hey, thanks a lot, Dan. This was fun.
You can catch Steve as part of MSNBC's election night coverage on Tuesday, November 5th at 6 p.m. Eastern. Okay, before we go to break, I have an ask for you. It's officially the last Sunday before the 2024 election, which means this is my last Sunday bonus pod of the cycle. If you like these bonus episodes, you will love Crooked and Pod Save America's subscription program, Friends of the Pod.
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Chapter 8: What are the significant factors to analyze in Michigan's election results?
But we don't have any evidence that they affect the polls. And we saw no evidence in either one of Barack Obama's elections, either in the primary or the general election in 2008 and 2012 of the Bradley effect. He actually outperformed his polls.
Oh, okay. So if they're not voting for Kamala Harris, it's not because she's a woman. It's just because they hate her.
No, no, this is a very important point. They may be sexist and racist, but the question I think here is about whether sort of silent sexism or racism or hidden sexism or racism is skewing the polls in her favor, right? So in other words, people are afraid to say that they aren't supporting her because they're afraid of being labeled sexist or racist. Right. And there's not evidence of that.
But I'm not trying to argue that misogyny and racism are not huge factors in an election with a Black woman running for president of the United States.
All right. All right. All right. Next question. Anna Del Hunt asks, if we lose, I'm not sure I'm going to find the strength to face the next four years. Obviously, I'm going to do what I can now. But what about on November 6th or whenever we find out? What should I do? Any tips?
I don't know how much value there is in preparing ourselves emotionally for what comes next if Trump were to win. I think we should focus our energy on doing everything we possibly can to make sure that does not happen. If it does happen, it's obviously... a deeply frightening, deeply dangerous, it's a crisis, right? It's a crisis.
And there are people in this country are going to be hurt in terrible ways. It's gonna be scary. If that were to happen, we can all get together and figure out what we're gonna do after that. Because there's going to be huge responsibility for all of us to do what we can to prevent the worst things from happening as we mobilized in 2017.
But do not waste your time and energy and mental space right now thinking about that is my recommendation. It would be take that energy and focus it on trying to win this race because it is so close. It is very winnable. It's in the margin of effort. We can absolutely do that.
Okay, this is a similar-ish question, and then we'll get to something a little more positive. But DownTheBallot96 asked, I already voted, I phone-baked, I've canvassed in swing districts, and I'm so stressed about having nothing to do on election day. Is there anything productive I can do on Tuesday beyond just watching cable news?
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