The following is a lightly edited transcript of the November 4 episode of The Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
According to new reports, Donald Trump’s allies are not nearly as confident about his chances of winning as the campaign’s public posture suggests. They fear Trump’s hate rally in New York might have badly hurt him, and worry that the campaign’s internal polls aren’t getting it right on how shaky his standing is in Pennsylvania. All this fretting comes as new data shows real movement among women and undecided voters toward Kamala Harris. But the race remains a coin flip. How real is this movement among those groups? Today, we’re talking about what’s really happening on the ground with Danielle Butterfield, executive director of the Democratic Super PAC Priorities USA. She’s going to tell us what has to happen now if Harris is going win this thing. Great to have you on Danielle.
Danielle Butterfield: Thanks for having me. Happy GOTV.
Sargent: Happy GOTV Day. Tim Alberta reports for The Atlantic that none other than Stephen Miller believes that the racist joke at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, which compared Puerto Rico to a pile of garbage, was a “huge unforced error” that might do profound damage to Trump’s chances. Meanwhile, The Guardian reports that Trump aides are “jittery” about his standing in Pennsylvania, with some doubting the accuracy of the campaign’s internal polls of the state. Danielle, you’re in Pennsylvania right now. What are you seeing on all this? Is the hate rally resonating?
Butterfield: A really big difference between people hearing Trump’s words and Trump’s allies words in this context is that they have a retrospective understanding of not just his words but his actions and how the two can be really related to each other. When we heard messaging at the MSG rally last week, there was a really easy ability to then connect that to how he handled certain situations when he was president. It’s not just a flippant joke but a representation of how he actually acted. For example, we’re running an ad right now targeting Puerto Rican voters in partnership with Somos Votantes across the battleground, particularly in Pennsylvania, that really ties together the joke about Puerto Rico being an island of trash up against how Trump handled Hurricane Maria. That ad is testing really well amongst Latino voters, in particular Puerto Rican voters, because it reminds them, and it really contextualizes, that this isn’t just words, it’s his actions. That’s a really big shift that we’re seeing this year in terms of our ability to show Trump’s impact.
One other thing that we are seeing is that young voters are hearing audio from Trump’s Billy Bush interview where he said grab them by the p-word—they’re hearing that for the first time this year, even though it leaked originally in the 2016 cycle. This is really important because these voters who are voting for the first time in 2024 were 10, 11 years old when Trump was first elected in 2016. So when these voters are hearing this horrible sound and this horrible audio interview from Trump with his graphic depiction of how he views women, they’re hearing it in the context of him being proud of overturning Roe v. Wade. The context of how his words have actually had a disastrous impact, it’s just landing a lot differently in this cycle.
Sargent: One of the big stories of this race is this weird “forgetting” about what Trump’s first term really was like. You have that in a pronounced way among low-propensity young and nonwhite voters. Additionally, you’ve got this cohort of young voters who was in high school during Trump’s first term and really are only tuning into who this guy is now. It sounds like those two things together, the MSG rally plus various other assorted things he’s been saying lately, at least give you a chance at reminding these voters, and, in some cases, educating them from the ground up on who this guy actually is. Is it working?
Butterfield: Absolutely. We talk a lot about how there’s a difference between talking about Trump the person and Trump the policy shaper, the person who failed us in his first term. People’s opinions about Donald J. Trump the person and how he feels and his racist behavior, that’s probably more baked; people’s understanding and their memory about what he actually did when he’s in office, that’s where there’s work to do. The way that we think about that work [is] it’s not just retrospective reminding people of what it was like under his first term but really demonstrating that when you look at Harris versus Trump and their vision for the future. It’s night-and-day difference between what Harris is promising and what she’s laying out as far as her economic vision specifically versus Trump who all he could promise us was a concept of a plan. So really making sure that we’re not only looking backward, but reminding voters to look forward as well. That is certainly working really well, and we saw that play out in the Harris closing arguments for sure.
Sargent: A quick recap of the latest polls: The highly regarded Des Moines Register poll finds Harris up three in Iowa, which Trump won by eight points in 2020. It seems unlikely Harris will win that state, but the poll could very well be registering real movement and it shows independent women breaking toward her pretty hard by 57 to 29 and female seniors by even larger margins. Meanwhile, the New York Times/Siena polls find Harris up three in Nevada, up two in North Carolina and Wisconsin, up one in Georgia, tied in Pennsylvania and Michigan, and Trump up four in Arizona. Mixed bag, probably better for Harris overall. But here’s a key number: Among those who only recently decided on their vote, she’s ahead by 55 to 44. All of that suggests some surprising breaks toward Harris. Are you seeing evidence out there of shifts like this?
Butterfield: Last night was a fun night on the internet, between Harris appearing on SNL and getting that Iowa poll back. I was talking to our analytics director who obviously has a really good finger on the pulse of what’s going on—her name is Chelsea Bukowski—and her response to me was exactly on point, which is that good polls get their accuracy wings when everyone knocks doors during GOTV. So a good poll is always going to feel good, and a bad poll is going to feel bad, but there’s so much work that we need to be doing over the next several days, up through Tuesday night, to make sure that we’re turning out every single possible vote that we can.
It certainly felt good to see that Iowa polls, particularly her numbers with white suburban women and older voters. Even if we don’t win in Iowa, it’s a signal that we’re going to do well in the upper Midwest. It’s a great sign of what’s to come for Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania. But it doesn’t change our strategy. Neither of these polls change our strategy at this point, which is that we need to continue to persuade and mobilize these voters in the final stretch. The thing that doesn’t necessarily get reported as much is that we’re doing it with such joy. Seeing all these Harris volunteers out on the doors with their rogue merch that they made at home and their friendship bracelets and having just an amazing back and forth on SNL last night about Harris’s ability to drive joy in this final stretch. That’s giving me a lot of hope.
Sargent: What are you seeing on the ground? Are you seeing some shifts?
Butterfield: Priorities is lucky to have a digital presence, so I can certainly speak to the digital game with a lot more credibility than the ground game. From seeing reports from yesterday, we knocked over 800,000 doors in Pennsylvania. There’s just no way that the Trump campaign can compete with that. That certainly adds to the enthusiasm and optimism column.
Sargent: Your group Priorities USA recently did a polling presentation laying out how ultimately one of the big targets of your final push will be among voters who skew young and nonwhite. Seems like Harris is still not where she needs to be with these demographics quite. Is this primarily what’s keeping the race close? What’s going on with these groups as of now?
Butterfield: We’ve known for months that young people and people of color are the voters that we need to consolidate, especially to get to our 2020 Democratic coalition. Harris made significant gains amongst these voters when she entered the race. She’s frankly doing the work now to win them over and get across the finish line and earn their vote. We’ve seen Harris and Walz crisscross across the country, delivering a really powerful closing argument. They’re on every screen imaginable. We were really excited even to see her smile on the Las Vegas sphere. We’re doing everything that we can to win these voters over in the final stretch. Again, when we see these these positive polls in our direction, it’s evidence that we are certainly moving closer to winning these voters over in the final stretch.
Sargent: Danielle, in your polling presentation, you guys said that young men are breaking slightly toward Trump, but that young women are breaking more toward Harris. Is there any chance of improving things with the young men at this point? And will the young women be enough to offset them? Can you talk about the split?
Butterfield: Certainly. The gender divide is going to be one of the most important stories that we tell at the end of this cycle, win or lose. There’s been a lot of talk about how we’ve been losing young men, but our polling suggests that while yes, we have seen slippage amongst young men, the amount of gains that we’re making with women is a far more important headline and one that we have a lot of reason to be excited about. Across men and women, we see a lot of consistency with the messaging that does break through and does resonate. I’ve always said that if in the final weekend or week of this election that voters are thinking about abortion and they’re thinking about their fundamental freedoms, we’re going to do well—so making sure that the salience of abortion and what’s at stake in that regard ... That’s not just a women’s issue. We’ve seen significant evidence that that is also moving men in our direction.
Sargent: You seem to find in your research that reproductive rights really does motivate these late-deciding, low-propensity voters, particularly the women. I still think the story of young women and reproductive rights is not really broadly understood. Can you talk about that? That’s really what’s driving these young, nonwhite women to shift toward Harris now, right?
Butterfield: It’s understood in that every time abortion has been on the ballot since Trump entered office and since the Dobbs decision came out, voters really have woken up and understood what’s at stake in filling out that ballot. It’s what gives us so much confidence as long as voters are thinking about abortion and they’re thinking about the power of their vote in that regard. It’s certainly an important issue alongside health care, alongside the candidates looking out for people like you, where we certainly have a heavy advantage on voters trusting Harris above Trump such that we just fundamentally believe that if voters are thinking about abortion on Election Day, we’re going to do really well.
Sargent: One thing that I was really struck by in the research as well is that these young voters and nonwhite voters are hearing messages about Trump’s mental unfitness for the presidency. That seems to actually be penetrating to them. That would, if right, dovetail with Stephen Miller being upset and fearful about Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, which was absolutely unhinged and crazy. There’s a weird tendency in our punditry to just dismiss that kind of thing as “baked in.” But as you point out, we’re talking here about a lot of voters who were in high school when Trump was first in office, who don’t really know him as well as you might think. Also about other young voters, maybe in their 20s, mid-20s or something like that, who maybe just don’t quite have the same focused picture of who Trump was in the first term as we do. It seems like this mental impairment issue does break through a bit. Can you talk about that?
Butterfield: We’ve certainly seen that the idea of Trump’s fitness and losing his mind has certainly increased in salience over the last couple of weeks. One of the things that worries me about this notion is that just simply raising this salience of Trump’s fitness and his demeanor is not sufficient to win over voters. We have to do the work to then connect the dot of how that behavior ultimately leads to the impact on their day-to-day lives and making sure it’s clear that his chaotic behavior ultimately is a threat to their lived experience. And until we make that connection, it’s just not sufficient to raise the salience of his fitness.
We saw strong evidence of that back in 2016. The reason that we had success in 2020 is that his chaotic leadership ultimately led to all of the issues that we ran into in the pandemic. It did impact people’s lives and they were able to connect that dot. We’ve certainly seen an increase in people seeing that on their screens, but we can’t just poke fun at it. We have to make sure that we’re connecting the dot with voters, that it is going to have an impact on their lives.
Sargent: And are you guys doing that? Are you seeing these voters connect those dots once you explain it? What happens with that process? Does it work? Is it working?
Butterfield: Yeah, absolutely. That’s why the Madison Square Garden speech is having such an impact at this stage—it’s because of folks like us and Somos and the Harris campaign are doing a really good job of saying, Look, this isn’t just him rambling on a stage. It’s about how he actually thinks about policy. Puerto Rican voters in particular have a very visceral memory of what happened during Hurricane Maria. To be able to say, Look, it’s not just something he’s staying on a stage, but it’s how he actually treated you when push came to shove—that is why that message is resonating.
Sargent: Really interesting. You’ve got these influencers pounding away at that message, right? Jennifer Lopez just did in Nevada and it was really powerful, I thought. Do you guys have a sense of what penetration this type of stuff is getting in the social media worlds of these younger voters? You guys look pretty hard at that problem, which is how do you get to voters who don’t pay attention to politics and really have a very fractured media diet or whatever. They’re not getting their news from the same sources that you and I are, to put it very, very mildly. Do you guys find that this stuff is getting penetration into their spheres?
Butterfield: Absolutely. In addition to doing a bunch of polling on horse race and who’s up, who’s down, we’re also looking really closely at recall and what messages are actually landing with folks. We certainly see that these messages are resonating. We’ve seen so much organic energy on places like TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, etc. where voters are sharing beautiful imagery of Puerto Rico alongside the audio from the rally. It’s pretty awesome to see that. They’re, like I said, sharing the Billy Bush audio, using his comments about how Harris’s rally with Beyoncé was silly and flippant and dancing along to that sound. There’s almost a through line here between when Harris entered the race and there was just so much enthusiasm, people were really utilizing the coconut memes and the brat memes and felt really joyful about her entering the race; that same enthusiasm is still playing out on social media, but there’s just a little bit more meat on the bones as far as connecting the enthusiasm to the real issues.
Sargent: Final thoughts, what has to happen for Harris to get across the finish line here? Can you see the path? What is the path?
Butterfield: Absolutely. We are going to win this race. Like I said, Harris and Walz, they’re moving across the country. They’ve got an army of surrogates following them that are able to tap into different messages. They’ve got a diverse set of messengers that are delivering. We’re knocking on an unprecedented amount of doors, running a impressive digital game. We’ve obviously said for a long time at Priorities that we’re going to win or lose this election online, and we’re just very impressed with the Harris campaign’s ability to just center digital in everything that they’re doing. We’ve said for a really long time that if we’re centering people of color and young voters and that our message checks three boxes—one, that we’re articulating a forward-looking vision for the future; two, we’re contrasting that vision with Donald Trump’s lack of vision and the threats that he brings; and three, we’re centering the voters in everything that we do—we’re going to have some really positive numbers on Tuesday.
Sargent: Sure hope you’re right. Danielle Butterfield, thanks so much for coming on with us.
Butterfield: Thank you.
Sargent: You’ve been listening to The Daily Blast with me, your host, Greg Sargent. The Daily Blast is a New Republic podcast and is produced by Riley Fessler and the DSR Network.