Election night is here, and the U.S.–and the world–is watching as the votes come in. WSJ's Politics Editor Ben Pershing walks us through what he's keeping a close eye on, and how long it might take before a winner is called. Further Reading: -Election Day 2024 Live: It's Kamala Harris vs. Donald Trump as America Votes -A (Don’t Hold Us to It) Hour-by-Hour Guide to Election Night Further Listening: -Harris, Trump and the Inflation Election -Red, White and Who? An Electoral College Blowout? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the atmosphere like in the newsroom on Election Day?
Okay, it's about midday, late morning on Election Day, and I am in the Washington, D.C. newsroom of The Wall Street Journal. It's actually pretty quiet right now. Seems like a lot of folks are still out and about reporting, heading to polling stations, probably talking to voters. But what we're going to do is we're going to go over to Ben Pershing's desk.
He's the politics editor here at The Journal and kind of just see how things are shaping up. Before we do that, I gotta bring him an offering, if you don't mind. There's some snacks here. Let's do some Cheez-Its, granola bar. We'll do that. Let's head over. And here's Ben. Hi, how are you? Hi, Ben, how's it going? Good. How are you feeling today?
Pretty good.
Chapter 2: What insights does Ben Pershing have about Election Day?
Yeah? Yeah. Not stressed yet?
Rested, ready. I haven't eaten too much yet.
Well, that's perfect because I brought you some snacks.
Oh, boy. So I love Cheez-Its.
There you go.
And that is my go-to, but usually more in the afternoon than morning.
Okay, well, I'm going to put it right here in case you change your mind.
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Chapter 3: How many elections has Ben Pershing covered?
What's going through your mind right now? So there's this sort of hurry up and wait part now that we all sit around on and we watch feeds come in from voters and long lines and people saying anecdotal things about turnout, but we also always have to remember that almost none of it means anything.
Like you can't actually interpret what's going on in the morning and draw out some big conclusion about the night usually, unless there's something really crazy.
At this point, Ben, how many elections have you covered?
Let me see. So my first one I think was 1998. So it's like every two years since then. So it's probably 13 if you include like midterms. I don't know.
Is it still exciting for you? It's fun. Well, since you are such a pro at this, I've been doing this for a long time. We're asking for your help to put together a kind of user's guide to election night. What listeners can expect, what they should be watching for as results come in. In your game to do that? Sure. Yeah, happy to. From the Washington, D.C.
Bureau, welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Election Day, Tuesday, November 5th, 2024. Ben, do you want to tell folks what's coming up?
Coming up on the show, a political veteran's guide to election night.
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Chapter 4: What makes this election night different from previous ones?
So Ben, as we've established, you've covered many election nights. What makes this one different?
What makes this one special?
Yes.
Chapter 5: Which states are considered crucial for this election?
It probably is the closest race we've ever covered. If you look at the polls, both nationally and in the states, I just don't think we've ever had a race this close in this many important places in the final days. Usually it gets clearer by the end which way it's going, and it just isn't right now.
And how many states are in play?
We think seven. There's really seven states that are really close and could go either way. It's Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, and North Carolina.
I love that you did that without looking at your notes at all.
It did take me a minute. I've said them too many times. I mean, one way to think about it, as we do, is there's the blue wall states, they call them, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. And then there's what's kind of loosely called the Sun Belt, and that's North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada.
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Chapter 6: What key issues are influencing voters this election?
There is a theory that if Harris is going to win, she's going to win those blue wall states, whereas Trump has a better shot in those other four. But as I said, we're talking about a point either way, everywhere.
And then another thing that sticks out to me about this election, right, it's super close, as you said, but in terms of the issues, there are a lot of issues at play.
Yeah, it's a good point. I mean, there have been past elections where, you know, famously in 1992, James Carville said it was the economy, stupid, and everybody remembers that, right? And then there have been other elections where it was maybe about, you know, post-September 11th in Iraq or one issue really being dominant, right? And what is interesting about this election is there are so many.
Chapter 7: How competitive are the House and Senate races?
So, yeah, it's the economy. It's inflation. But it's also immigration and border security. It's also abortion rights and women's health. It's also the wars in Israel and Ukraine. And you can kind of go on and on. And you could point to any one of those. And if you told me that one issue was the difference, I wouldn't be surprised.
So up to this point, we've been talking about the presidential race. But what about the House and the Senate? How close are we talking in those races?
If it's possible to be just as close— Really, the House is the one that's especially close because Republicans have a narrow majority. They're defending a lot of seats. The smartest election analysts really aren't picking a side. They're saying they could see Republicans ending up with a five-seat majority. They could see Democrats ending up with a five-seat majority or even a 10-seat majority.
Kind of frustratingly for us, a lot of the seats that are really competitive are in California and New York, where it takes them a really long time to count. You know, and so if we're all waiting around and we want to know the answer, and here's California saying, it'll be days before we count all these ballots, I think there'll be some frustration. So that's the House.
The Senate is a little different. Republicans do have the edge in the Senate, and it's just because of the map. This year, Democrats happen to be in the position of defending a whole bunch of tough seats, and Republicans aren't. So all Republicans need to do to capture the majority is win a couple seats, and they've got it.
So that's what we know heading into tonight. Tight races all around, but especially the presidential race. Who wins? We'll come down to just a handful of battleground states. But tonight, Ben and his team won't just be watching states like Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania.
They're also going to be keeping a close eye on a handful of specific counties, counties that could give us early clues about how certain groups might be voting.
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Chapter 8: What specific counties should we watch for early voting clues?
What we wanted to do was pick counties that represented particular demographics. Younger people, older people, large black populations, white working class populations. The idea being if we look at these counties really closely, they might be a sign of how other counties with similar populations are going to vote.
So in other words, and I tell this story a lot, back in 2016, early in the night, some of our colleagues were looking at the Florida numbers coming in, including counties that Trump was supposed to win. And they're like, wow, he was supposed to win this county by 10 or 20 points. He's winning by 40. Like, what's going on here? Something's going on here.
Trump was winning in these Florida counties, which was no surprise. But he was winning by a much bigger margin than analysts had expected. And it turned out that those big margins were an early hint of the election's final result. These are the kinds of clues Ben and his team will be looking for tonight.
The margins everywhere matter. So we tried to pick counties that would report pretty early in the evening, but would give us clues about what's going to happen later in the night.
Ben says if you want to know how the night's going for Trump or Harris, you could keep an eye on Travis County, Texas, Hernando County, Florida, and Macomb County, Michigan. Let's start with Travis County, Texas. Can you describe Travis County? What kind of place is it?
Sure. So this is where Austin is, the University of Texas, which has more than 50,000 students. Obviously, it's a blue-leaning place, but it's the kind of place we're going to look at to see what Democratic turnout looks like, Democratic energy.
It won't be surprising if Harris wins Travis County. But Ben says if she's winning it by a lot, it could be a sign of Democratic strength.
It might be a clue that other blue places, other college towns, other young places, places where Dems should rack up votes, are going to do really well.
How much does Harris have to win Travis County by to say that she's having a good night?
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