Path to the White House: What Harris, Trump need to win

Markham interviews Mark P. Jones, a Senior Research Associate in the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston.

What is Political Talks?

Smart people talking about the theory, analysis, and practice of Canadian politics. Guests include political scientists, pollsters, journalists, and insiders. More thoughtful journalism from Energi Media.

Markham: 00:04

Welcome to episode 8 of the political talks podcast. I'm journalist, Markham Hyslop. Joe Biden has announced he's withdrawing as a candidate and will not seek a second term as American president. Vice president Kamala Harris appears to be the heir apparent to battle Republican candidate Donald Trump this fall, and American politics appears to be even more chaotic than it was after Biden's disastrous performance in the June 27th debate. To help us make sense of it all, I'm joined by Mark p Jones, a senior research associate in the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston.

Markham: 00:41

So welcome to political talks, Mark.

Mark: 00:43

Oh, it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me on. Well, I what

Markham: 00:49

can I say? Watching American politics is one of Canada's favorite hobbies. And in particular, of late, it's been pretty interesting. I mean, your president, has an assassination attempt, your other your current president, has a bad, debate performance, and then there's a big huge debate whether or not he should withdraw. He finally does.

Markham: 01:17

Can you get kinda walk us through, like, where's where are things at?

Mark: 01:21

Okay. Well, I think I'll take us back to last fall. That was when Joe Biden had to make a decision of when he was whether he was going to run for reelection or not. That was sort of a drop dead date, sometime in October, November. And the consensus was that in spite of his age and his somewhat faltering abilities, that he was the best option.

Mark: 01:42

And the reason why many Democratic elites went with him was 1, he wanted to do it, but 2, they believed that if he did not do it, the most likely successor would be Kamala Harris, who they consider to be a weaker candidate vis a vis Donald Trump than the Joe Biden as of November, October of 2023. Fast forward to his debate, the debate in June, which either he was set up by his own team as a way to get him out or they committed one of the biggest areas of campaign malpractice in that they put a very unprepared candidate both in terms of the actual details, but just in terms of mental cognitive physical ability up before a national audience, and he crashed and burned. And I think what will go down is one of the most disastrous debate performances, at least consequentially, in global history. Normally debates don't move the needle that much, but that debate certainly did. The moment that debate ended, there began to be calls by the Democratic party and elites, subtle at first among some donors, some, politicians for him to step down, but over time that grew into a groundswell and a crescendo that got to the point where former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Speaker Joaquin Jeffries, Senate, or not House Speaker, it's House Minority Leader Joaquin Jeffries, Senate Leader, Chuck Schumer, all were putting pressure on Biden to step down and eventually became too much and he relented.

Mark: 03:16

Now the moment he made that decision, he had sort of 2 options. 1, he could have just said I'm gone and left it to the Democratic party, but he very strongly signaled that Kamala Harris was his preferred successor and endorsed her.

Markham: 03:33

What do we make of Kamala Harris? Because I remember when she was he chose her as his running mate in, in 20 for 2020, and there was a lot of excitement around that. I mean, she had a a considerable, political experience. She had been attorney general in in California, and she was seen as, you know, a really strong candidate. She had, as a prosecutor, she had those those, debating skills, and and she was seen as somebody who would really be able to take on the Republican party, and then then it kinda didn't happen.

Markham: 04:08

And then as you said, you know, her perception was that she really wasn't a a strong candidate to succeed Biden, and yet, everything I've seen over the last couple days, it's like now the party's behind her. She's, emerged as this you know, there are memes, there are tweets, there are videos. There's a it's like an an avalanche of support for Kamala Harris. What what are we to make of that?

Mark: 04:34

Well, part of it is that you had a Democratic party that was despondent thinking that they were on route to elect to a defeat at the hands of Donald Trump where they were also going to lose the house and the Senate, and this is like mana from heaven from them in the sense that, okay, they've been saved. I think now we probably have overoptimistic exuberance in the sense that they're now we've got rid of Biden, we don't have to worry about him dragging us down, But there's a reason why Kamala Harris was a weak candidate a year ago and continues to be a weak candidate. She hasn't shown a lot of gravitas on the campaign trail. She doesn't have a lot to show from her three and a half years in the White House. Now part of that's due to the Biden administration keeping her on the side.

Mark: 05:19

And she's going to have to run from a senate record where she is very far to the left in from a state California that is seen as, you know, at the far left end of American politics. So she's running as a progressive California politician, and that's something that plays well among the base, the people who are getting really excited, but it's questionable how well it's going to play among the people who are actually going to determine the next president, and that's, sort of undecided voters and sort of more general voters, November voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin.

Markham: 05:58

Is this a case where the, we go back to her vice presidential, choice will be a balance it'll be chosen to balance the ticket?

Mark: 06:10

Yeah. Just as she was chosen because Biden had to be under Democratic party sort of norms. He had to name a woman, and he had to name a person of color. So he was effectively and she fit both of those categories. We're gonna have the reverse now where she's but certain to name a white male as her running mate.

Mark: 06:31

Theoretically, it could be a white woman, such as, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, But the most likely scenario is it will be a white male, either people like governor Andy Bashir from Kentucky, governor Roy Cooper from North Carolina, governor Josh Shapiro from Pennsylvania, senator Mark Kelly from Arizona, someone with that type of profile. Tim Walz, governor of Minnesota, would be another.

Markham: 06:56

Now I have to ask about Donald Trump because, of course, after the after the assassination attempt and, you know, the I think the current the the the consensus thinking was that this had basically handed Trump the election. You know? There was that famous photo of him with his pumping doing his fist pump, you know, surrounded by secret, service agents. And and that just seems to have been all the wind has been taken out of that.

Mark: 07:26

Right. A lot of the momentum that Republicans had coming after the assassination attempt and coming out of the convention has now gone by the wayside and the optimism that they had, perhaps the overconfidence they had based on Biden being their rival has now been somewhat deflated. And I suspect that there are at least some Republicans that are now engaged in Monday morning quarterbacking about the selection of JD Vance, the senator from Ohio, as Trump's running mate. At the time, that was sort of a full throated, overconfident type selection that we don't really need to use the vice presidential position to reach out to anybody. And that's you know, he didn't go for Marco Rubio, senator from Florida to reach out to Latinos or, Elise Stefanik, representative from New York to reach out to women or, you know, any of the other sort of more moderate type of Republicans like Glenn Youngkin, the governor of Virginia, to reach out to the more moderate wing of the party.

Markham: 08:23

Will that turn out to be an, an error, do you think? Because, I didn't know JD Vance very well. I just knew him from the hillbilly elegy. And my wife and I watched the the movie, the other night, and only because, he had been chosen as as Trump's running mate. And I I really have a hard time squaring the character in that movie with the individual I see, you know, now on social media and in and in the news.

Markham: 08:55

And he almost seems like a cartoon version of that other JD Vance, and I can't imagine. I mean, you mentioned he you know, he could've taken a more moderate person. He could've taken a woman. He had lots of choices, chose Vance, and it it almost seems like that might come back to bite him hard.

Mark: 09:13

It does. I mean, we could be in a point. If he ends up losing this election by a very small margin, you know, people will look back to the vice presidential nomination. Now normally vice presidents, a lot of the statistical analysis that's been done over the past 50 years suggests that they really don't have that much of an impact outside of potentially in their home state. But, you know, at the margins, you know, and and, like, if we have elections that are decided by 30,000 or 50,000 votes, at that point, anything can help or hurt.

Markham: 09:43

Is it any possible, now you've got, 2 candidates, or 2, people on the Republican ticket that I would describe as extreme. I mean, where I sit from Canada, that looks like those are extreme political views, from for for us. We we tend to be more centrist, I guess. But, it seems to me that if I was a moderate republican, you know, sort of a small government, market oriented kind of a a person, I might just stay home. Is that a danger?

Mark: 10:17

Well well, I mean, I think you have we have you know, we're increasingly in the United States. We're increasingly polarized system where if you're a centrist or a moderate, you don't have a really good choice anymore. You either choose someone that's to your right, a Republican, or someone that's to your left, a Democrat. And certainly moving Joe Biden off the ticket and, Volkina, Kamala Harris to that position has pulled the Democratic ticket to the left, Regardless of what fake leaves they put on in terms of a more moderate Democratic governor, the reality is you're going to have one of the more progressive senators, in the Senate during her tenure, Kamala Harris, from one of the sort of iconic progressive states, California, potentially running the nation. And so that's going to actually scare a lot of those moderate Republicans who don't like Trump, but also don't, you know, believe that someone like Harris would bring California style policies to the federal level, which from their perspective would be disastrous.

Mark: 11:20

And, you know, the California policies haven't worked all that well out in California. I mean, California still is a very prosperous state, but it's almost in spite of many of its policies, not because of it. If you, you know, if you want to see what California is like without the natural beauty of California or Silicon Valley or Hollywood, just look at Illinois. That's a state that's adopted similar progressive policies, and it's effectively in a death spiral.

Markham: 11:47

What about, the question now? And this is I have to a little bit I'm a little amused by this because, there was a big debate over, Biden's age at 81. Trump's only set I mean, he's 78. He's only a few years younger, and and that was almost ignored. And there are questions around his cognitive abilities.

Markham: 12:08

I mean, his his his, not debate style, but his speech is a manner of speaking in his speeches has been, you know, disjointed, perhaps, we might say. But will Trump now face more scrutiny over his age and some of these other issues?

Mark: 12:27

No. Without question, before he was effectively insulated from it because whatever you would say about Trump applied double or triple to Biden. Now that's no longer the case with Kamala Harris where you can't make the case based on age. So he will be vulnerable to those critiques. He though has had, you know, a remarkable ability to be sort of a Teflon type candidate and that regardless of what he does, he doesn't really lose his base.

Mark: 12:53

But this may be you know, end up being an election more where, it's decided by people who are either Trump supporters but will or will not turn out to vote, people who are anti Trump supporters, are anti Trump type people who may or might turn out to vote, and the small number of people who are undecided between what they view are 2 undesirable options, but at the end of the day, we'll turn out to vote and vote for 1 of them.

Markham: 13:20

Well, speaking of those candid those voters that are, up for grabs, What impact, if any, on their decision, will Trump's, criminal convictions play?

Mark: 13:36

Most of the survey work we've done on that suggests that that's already pretty much baked in. That is that it's you know, people have an opinion that's negative Trump, and that may reinforce it, but it doesn't really do much to erode support from him because they either don't believe it and they believe it's more a political witch hunt out of a liberal a liberal judge and a liberal prosecutor and a liberal jury in New York, or they believe it happened, but they really don't care. So I doubt I doubt much is going to happen with that, and that case just keeps getting delayed month after month. So right now it's going into September until and we even then, we may not have a resolution of it.

Markham: 14:18

Mark, it's it sounds like that you're doing polling, and you've got data, and you're probably, I'm I'm sure, looking at other the data from other polls. What is the size of the political base of Trump versus the Democratic Party?

Mark: 14:35

I mean, really, Trump has a hardcore base of support depending on the state that, like, if we're talking about nationally, that's right about in the low forties. And there's not much that you can do to push it any lower, than he has a group of people in, like, the mid forties that adamantly oppose him. The the key to, like, US elections increasingly is really twofold. For the candidates, You have 2 goals. 1 is to mobilize your likely voters to turn out as at higher margins than your opponents because you know who's who is going to vote for you or is likely to vote for you if they turn out to vote.

Mark: 15:13

So mobilization is increasingly important within the US context. It's not so much convincing people to vote for you who are undecided. There still are some people in that category, but every year, they are smaller and smaller. It's really sort of motivating people who are on their fence on the fence about turn about turning out to vote. But if they do turn out to vote, they will vote for you.

Mark: 15:36

So the campaigns will really be sort of trying to do 2 things at the same time, that is mobilize those people who they know are going to vote for them. And then for those small number of swing voters, try to convince them that even if those swing voters don't like the two options, that they are the that you, the candidate, are the lesser of 2 evils.

Markham: 15:55

I'm old enough to remember when, wooing the undecided was everything.

Mark: 16:00

Right.

Markham: 16:00

And it seems now you mentioned that that, the US has become increasingly polarized. And is this a a function of, a characteristic of a polarized political system where there just aren't that many undecideds, and it really is all about mobilization and getting your your base excited so they show up on on election day?

Mark: 16:22

It's increasingly that way. And, you know, I think there's a media focus often on the undecided voter because that sort of sounds sexier, and it's the idea that these are people that are weighing the pros and the cons, and that's the traditional way. But that's really the way elections are won today is much more by getting your people to turn out at higher rates than their people. And the campaigns, because of technology, I can identify via someone's voter file how they're going to vote with roughly 85 to 90% accuracy. So it's really it's real so it's and I know if they're going you know, what if they're likely to vote or not likely to vote.

Mark: 16:59

So campaigns often sort of do a reverse engineer. That is they decide who they what the elect what they want the electorate to look like and they focus on getting those people to turn out to vote. And in many states like Texas, you can do real time updating because so much of our vote is early. In Texas, more than half of our voters will vote before election day. So the the campaigns can effectively be running their models to know who's who which of the people that they believe should vote and they need to vote, have they turned out or not?

Mark: 17:30

And increasingly as the campaign goes on, focus more and more on their energies on those final group of voters who you believe are your voters if they turn out to vote, and you're trying you're focused far more than anything else on getting them to turn out. The idea of reaching across the aisle, reaching swing voters, that's usually a strategy that you only do if you're behind in a state. And because, you know, if you believe that if the natural sort of demographics politically play out in the state, you're going to lose, that's when you may say, okay, I'm gonna try to reach out to swing voters because I know if I pursue a pure mobilization strategy, I'm going to lose. So that could be a strategy that, say, you know, pursue in some place like North Carolina, where if it's just left up to partisan demographics, the republicans going to win.

Markham: 18:19

Now I've got the report, results of a, a Reuters Ipsos poll that I believe came out today. And if it's a two way race, Kamala Harris is at 44%, Donald Trump at 42%, which kind of mirrors the the base, vote that you just talked about. But then they ask questions about a three way race where r f where, Robert, f Kennedy junior, is included, and that actually changes the results, quite dramatically because, Harris drops to 42%, but Trump drops to 38%, and, Kennedy, junior comes in at 8%. What what is the possibility of, RFK Junior or some other, independent candidate coming along to act as a spoiler?

Mark: 19:08

Well, I mean, so the first thing to keep in mind is that in the United States, our election, you have 51 separate ballots of the state level. So not all of the minor party candidates are going to be on the ballot in every state. RFK Jr. Has the best ballot access team and the most money because of his vice presidential nominee, Nichole Shanahan, but and he was very wealthy. But those votes, you know, right now the polls, especially I don't have that Ipsos poll, if it was a registered voter poll versus a likely voter poll, registered voter polls are going to overstate support for Kennedy, and even likely voter polls are going to overstate support for Kennedy compared to what it will actually be in November.

Mark: 19:53

So, you know, so like we do we we've done polling on Kennedy and tracked him over time. He's down to about 5% in Texas. But even that 5%, if you ask a follow-up question about certainty, only about half of those people are saying they're certain they're gonna vote for Kennedy. But so he does I mean, it's not clear who he hurts the most, Trump. You know, it depends.

Mark: 20:16

It's probably a statewide phenomena. So it's really what impact does he have in Michigan, what impact does he have in Pennsylvania, what impact does he have in Wisconsin, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, the main swing states, and that's where it's really state level pull ins the best because at the end of the day, how he what effect he has in New York or California or Texas isn't as big a deal. But this could be one of those races where between Robert f Kennedy junior, who I think pulls for both candidates, it's just a question of how by what degree, or people like Cornel West who definitely would pull more from Harris than from Trump, and Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate who would pull more from, from Harris than from Trump. We put all those together, they may be consequential. We may have a scenario like we had back in 2000 when George Bush narrowly defeated Al Gore in Florida, but had Ralph Nader not done so well there, a progressive candidate, the belief was that Gore would have won, or it was also New Hampshire was the other state.

Mark: 21:21

Those were 2 states where Nader's votes easily eclipse the, margin of victory by George, w Bush. So they could definitely play a role, and you'll you'll you'll see efforts right now, and we already are seeing them by democrats to try to keep Cornel West in particular off the ballot.

Markham: 21:40

Yeah. I I we see the same kind of, debate going on in Canada because we have 3 major parties, the NDP, the Liberals, and the and the conservatives. And the, there's some discussion around whether the party on the left, the NDP, should voters should switch and and support the Liberals in order to stymie the conservatives, those kind of debates. And I imagine that happens fairly often in the US. But the final question mark, this sounds like the race is is close, and, ultimately, on election day, it will come down to execution.

Markham: 22:20

If that's the case, which party in your opinion, based on what you've seen, is more likely to execute better?

Mark: 22:29

I so I think it depends on on the execution. Certainly, logistically, the CARES campaign and Democrats will be logistically better organized in places like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. They have the unions largely behind them. They have stronger party apparatuses. Where Trump though can mobilize though is his more personal appeal.

Mark: 22:50

That is Kamala Harris has never been, criticized for being too charismatic. So Trump though is someone who may be so while organizationally Democrats probably will have the edge in terms of mobile, particularly in the northern states, less so in Georgia, and Arizona, but in the Northern states, a better, ground game in terms of their logistics. But Trump may have the ability, if he does it right, to make that emotional appeal that pulls people out. So one way to think about it is the Democrats will get people out by physically knocking on their doors and haranguing them and getting them to go. Trump will do it by just being on the media and have people being inspired to turn out to vote for him and to mobilize their friends and neighbors to vote for him.

Mark: 23:34

Which one of those will be more successful? We'll find out in November. But I think this will be a very close election that will likely be decided by in, you know, somewhere between 3 6 states.

Markham: 23:46

Very interesting. Well, we're gonna be watching the race with with wrapped attention. Mark, thank you very much for this. Really appreciate it.

Mark: 23:53

No. It's my pleasure. Thank you.