Latest / Pod Save America / Pollercoaster with Dan Pfeiffer - Preview | Trump leading Biden?

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Pollercoaster with Dan Pfeiffer - Preview | Trump leading Biden? · Pod Save America

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, it's Dan Pfeiffer.
• 0:01
  Speaker 2: The Crooked staff is often enjoying their last moments of
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: rest before 2024 hits, so today we're bringing you a
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  Speaker 2: special preview of my brand new Crooked subscriber-exclusive podcast series,
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: Polar Coaster. Polar Coaster is my chance to sit down
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  Speaker 2: with expert guests who break down the latest polls, unpack
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  Speaker 2: what they actually mean, and decide whether it's time to
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: completely freak out. The full first episode is already available
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: to our subscriber community, but if this preview piques your interest,
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: head over to crooked.com slash friends to learn more and
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: sign up. Happy holidays, everyone. Welcome to Polar Coaster. Today,
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  Speaker 2: I'm joined by Cornell Belcher, the founder and president of
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: Brilliant Corners Research and Strategies, an NBC political analyst, a
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  Speaker 2: pollster for President Obama, and the author of the book,
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: A Black Man in the White House. Cornell Belcher, welcome
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: to the Polar Coaster.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Thanks for having me on the Polar Coaster, I think.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: Well, you know where a Polar Coaster comes from.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: It's when it is in 2011-12 when.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: People like our mutual friend, Jon Favreau, would be freaking
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: out about every individual Gallup poll. David Plouffe, our campaign
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  Speaker 2: manager in 08 and White House senior advisor in 2011, 2012,
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  Speaker 2: would tell him to get off the fucking polar coaster.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: And so we have taken that brand because it is
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: a wild and nauseating ride, and we've applied it to
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  Speaker 2: this brand new podcast here at Crooked Media.
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  Speaker 1: So I love that, by the way. I remember Plouffe
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  Speaker 1: used to say, we're not going to play the polling game.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: That's right.
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  Speaker 1: He had this back and forth with all the reporters
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  Speaker 1: about every single poll, which is exactly what they continue
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  Speaker 1: to do now.
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  Speaker 2: Which is why he's probably deeply disappointed in me for
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: starting a podcast entirely about the polls. So here we are.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: All right. We are less than one year out from
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  Speaker 2: the 2024 election, and every day seems to bring another
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  Speaker 2: incredibly alarming poll showing Donald Trump surging and Joe Biden sinking.
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  Speaker 2: Just this weekend, we woke up to a new Wall
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  Speaker 2: Street Journal poll showing Trump leading Biden by six points.
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  Speaker 2: This is the first time Trump has ever led Biden
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  Speaker 2: in a single Wall Street Journal poll. And at 38%,
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  Speaker 2: the president now has his lowest approval rating to date.
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  Speaker 2: All really fun stuff. In this first ever episode of
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: Polar Coaster, I just want to take a moment to
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  Speaker 2: put the polls this far out from the election in
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  Speaker 2: perspective and give people a sense of how to think
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  Speaker 2: about them. Cornell, how do you think about polls this
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  Speaker 2: far out? Do they matter at all?
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  Speaker 1: How do you think?
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  Speaker 2: How do you use them?
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  Speaker 1: There's a couple different ways, right? Polling is a really
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  Speaker 1: insider thing. My biggest gripe about the mainstream media right
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  Speaker 1: now is they're using polls to drive stories and narrative.
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  Speaker 1: And it's lazy. I was doing Meet the Press this
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: past weekend, and we spent all this time talking about polls.
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  Speaker 1: And what's missing in the conversation is, and it's not
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  Speaker 1: beating up on just the television media, but newspapers as well.
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  Speaker 1: But my criticism here is more broad. Because Every story
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  Speaker 1: that we run about a poll where we're making polling
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  Speaker 1: and the horse race something enticing, it's like what we've
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: done with cooking. We have all these cooking competitions, and
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden cooking has become like a spectator sport.
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  Speaker 1: We'd be doing a much better service to our listeners
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  Speaker 1: and our readers if, in fact, we told them what
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  Speaker 1: the difference is between the candidates on issues that matter,
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  Speaker 1: as opposed to saying, You know, Donald heads ahead in
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  Speaker 1: this state or Biden's ahead in this state. Why not
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  Speaker 1: talk to them about what the implications of a Trump
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  Speaker 1: or Biden presidency would mean to them on a number
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  Speaker 1: of issues? So that's my broad complaint about too much
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  Speaker 1: polling because I think it's become lazy. The other part
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  Speaker 1: here is and why the average person shouldn't be paying
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  Speaker 1: a lot of attention to polling. Because the least important
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  Speaker 1: number in a poll, Dan, is a horse race number.
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  Speaker 1: And we always, we want the polls to predict the future.
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  Speaker 1: They're not. If you take the polling at 2011, at
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  Speaker 1: the same time in 2011, and you know this well, Dan,
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  Speaker 1: because we spend a lot of time beating up reporters
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  Speaker 1: on this. Barack Obama was behind in the New York
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: Times polling. And they were writing articles about, is Barack
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  Speaker 1: Obama toast? And there was op-eds literally saying Barack Obama
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  Speaker 1: shouldn't run again because he's because he's showing so poorly
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  Speaker 1: in the polls. Well, fast forward, you know, he won
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  Speaker 1: back-to-back majorities. What polling, for us, from a campaign standpoint,
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  Speaker 1: is polling identifies what our problems and our opportunities are.
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  Speaker 2: I think there are a couple things that are important,
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  Speaker 2: and this is sort of one of the founding principles
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  Speaker 2: of this podcast, is that every person who cares a
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: lot about this election is very nervous and and rightfully
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: freaked out about the idea that Donald Trump can win,
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  Speaker 2: wants the polls to tell us what's going to happen, right?
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  Speaker 2: That's not what they're for. That's not what a campaign.
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  Speaker 1: Uses them for.
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  Speaker 2: It's not even really what the media uses them for.
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  Speaker 2: What they are is they're telling us where things are
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  Speaker 2: right now. And you can believe in your head that
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: Joe Biden has a very real path to winning. And
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  Speaker 2: I think we'll talk a little bit about how the
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  Speaker 2: numbers show that to happen. And he's in a not
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  Speaker 2: great place right now. And I think the Biden campaign,
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  Speaker 2: a lot of folks say, Historically, incumbents are losing in
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  Speaker 2: the off year, right? Even Ronald Reagan was tied with
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  Speaker 2: Walter Mondale in 1983. Bill Clinton was tied with Bob
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  Speaker 2: Dole in 1995. Obama was tied or losing to a
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  Speaker 2: generic Republican in 2011. I think, but if we want
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: to be like perfectly frank with people, there are some
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  Speaker 2: flaws in the Biden-Obama comparisons. In both, in 84 and
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  Speaker 2: 83 and 95, there was like one polls and then
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  Speaker 2: the incumbents jumped out to large leads, which they never
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  Speaker 2: surrendered for the entire time. In the infamous Nate Silver
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: trolly headline that said Obama has a 17% chance of
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  Speaker 2: winning was written in November. But even at that point,
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  Speaker 2: by the time Nate Silver had written it, Obama had
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  Speaker 2: both in a lot of public polls pulled ahead of Romney.
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  Speaker 2: in part because the Republican primary, if you remember, engaged
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  Speaker 2: in those debates in the fall where they were booing
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  Speaker 2: gay service members, the audience was. Every one of the
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  Speaker 2: Republican candidates said that they would rather basically cut the
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: entire federal budget than raise taxes $ 1 on a single
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  Speaker 2: rich person. And by the time we got to here,
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: we're recording this in early December, Obama had actually sort
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: of come back to sort of bounce back to a
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  Speaker 2: decent place, like not all the way there. So Biden
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  Speaker 2: is behind where Obama was. It doesn't mean he won't
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  Speaker 2: be in a better place. It's a very different race.
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  Speaker 2: It's a different democratic coalition.
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  Speaker 1: And that's another point about the polar coaster is, you know,
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  Speaker 1: you do six or seven different polls depending on, and
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  Speaker 1: I think this is important for the viewers here, depending
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  Speaker 1: on the poll, you don't know what that universe is.
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  Speaker 1: There's a conversation out there right now about CNN's polling,
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  Speaker 1: and they have an oversample of showing Biden's not doing
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  Speaker 1: as well among young people. That's really different than Harvard's
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  Speaker 1: IOP poll that has a large swath of young people
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  Speaker 1: that show he's not completely cratering. We kind of got
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: to get in the weeds here. When polling is wrong
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  Speaker 1: these days, Dan, it's not because of the science of polling. Right.
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  Speaker 1: And I know there's a lot of back and forth
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  Speaker 1: about cell phones and how you reach people. But the
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  Speaker 1: truth of the matter is, Dan, I have an ability
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  Speaker 1: to reach more diverse, younger segments of the electorate today
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  Speaker 1: than I did when we were trying to elect John Kerry.
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  Speaker 1: Because today I can actually reach that 22-year-old Latina walking
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  Speaker 1: around the campus of UNLV I have ability to reach
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  Speaker 1: her today in a way I just could not, we
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  Speaker 1: could not in when John Kerry was running for office.
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  Speaker 1: And so the challenges today really isn't about the science
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  Speaker 1: of it because the science is still sound, right? And
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  Speaker 1: it's still based on the theory of randomness, right? That
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  Speaker 1: everyone in that universe has the same probability of a
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  Speaker 1: likelihood of being selected. So the theory of randomness is
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  Speaker 1: still working fairly well even though it's particularly with so
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  Speaker 1: much of our polling being done on cell phones. That said,
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  Speaker 1: when polling is wrong, it's not the science, it's the art.
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  Speaker 1: And good polling is both a science and an art.
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  Speaker 2: Every poll is based on an assumption of what they
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  Speaker 2: think the electorate's going to look like. How many Republicans,
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  Speaker 2: how many Democrats, how many young people, how many Black voters,
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  Speaker 2: Latino voters are going to turn out. And if you
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  Speaker 2: guess wrong, then you're going to be completely off. And
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: there's a very famous or infamous article that Nate Coen
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: of the New York Times did back in, I think
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  Speaker 2: it was 2020, where he gave three different pollsters the
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  Speaker 2: raw New York Times Siena data and told them to
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  Speaker 2: say what they thought the head-to-head race between Biden and
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  Speaker 2: Trump was. And you got three radically different views. And
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  Speaker 2: in 2020 and 2016, the pollsters universally, media pollsters, independent
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  Speaker 2: university pollsters, pollsters for the campaigns guessed wrong. They underestimated
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  Speaker 2: turnout among Trump voters in both of those elections, which
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  Speaker 2: is why you get media polls showing Biden winning by
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  Speaker 2: 10 in Wisconsin two weeks before the election and Biden
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  Speaker 2: winning by less than a half percent or whatever that
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  Speaker 2: ended up being. So that's a very important point.
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  Speaker 1: Biden is underperforming, particularly among what I call that Obama
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  Speaker 1: continuum of voters, that Democrats absolutely do not get to
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  Speaker 1: a majority without this younger, more diverse cohort of voters who,
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  Speaker 1: you know, in our data, you know, Obama still has
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  Speaker 1: a thermometer among them in the 70s, but Democrats have
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  Speaker 1: a thermometer in the, you know, 48 thermometer. Obama has
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  Speaker 1: a 70 thermometer with them. But again, from a campaign standpoint, great.
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  Speaker 1: I understand where my problem is, and now I'm going
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  Speaker 1: to build a campaign and strategy to solve for that problem.
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  Speaker 1: And I think what you're going to see over the
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  Speaker 1: next couple of weeks, couple of months, and they've actually
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  Speaker 1: begun to do it already, is building a strategy to
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  Speaker 1: solve for that problem.
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  Speaker 2: In the Wall Street Journal poll, and this is consistent
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  Speaker 2: with the infamous Time Sienna poll that everyone's been talking about,
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: but basically every poll is similar, is that Trump has
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  Speaker 2: big advantages on the economy, immigration, crime, Inflation, if they
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  Speaker 2: break that question out. And Biden generally has advantages on
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: abortion and democracy and climate change, if they ask that
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  Speaker 2: question as well. No president, no one has won a
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  Speaker 2: presidential election in modern history without at least breaking even
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  Speaker 2: on the economy question. How important do you think it
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: is for Biden to do that, to improve there? And
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  Speaker 2: what advice would you give them to make those gains?
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  Speaker 1: I push back on that a little bit because it's
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: about how you define the economy. Again, we'll go back
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: to grounds that we're most comfortable with. There is an
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: early polling on the question of who would do a
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: better job on the economy. Mitt Romney had a huge
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: advantage over Barack Obama. Mitt Romney was a businessman. He
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: had a huge advantage over Barack Obama on who would
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  Speaker 1: do better on the economy, who would do better in
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  Speaker 1: creating jobs. But where there was an opportunity for Obama
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: and then we pressed it was, well, who's going to
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: fight for you? right? Who's going to fight for the
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  Speaker 1: middle class? Who's going to fight for people like you, right?
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  Speaker 1: Mitt Romney may be, in fact, be good at sort
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: of the economy and understand the economy as a business person,
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  Speaker 1: but he's not going to use his business acumen, his
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  Speaker 1: knowledge to fight for people like you. He's going to
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: fight for people like him, right? So that is a trade-off.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: And look, going back to when I was doing work
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: for Dean at the DNC, Republicans have this advantage on
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: on sort of the generic economy. But Democrats have to
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: drive and open up an advantage on fighting for people
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  Speaker 1: like you and fighting for the middle class and fighting
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: for working class people. And I think that's where the
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: opportunity for Biden is, because look, he's, you know, he
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: is Joe Blue Collar middle class. So I think in
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: the end, I'm not worried about, you know, a generic
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: economy question where Trump has advantage. I'm not surprised he
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: has advantage as as a wealthy businessman, that he has
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: an advantage that people think that he knows business and
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: the economy. But in the end, I think the contrast
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  Speaker 1: is going to have to be who's fighting for people
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: like you, who's going to be on the side of
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: people like you. And so it comes down to how
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: do you define the terms of the debate, right? If
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: the debate is simply about who's going to be generically
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: better on the economy, We don't want that debate. We
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: want the debate to be about, in the end, middle America.
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  Speaker 1: Who's going to be on your side? Is it going
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: to be Donald Trump? Is he going to be on
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: the side of wealthy people like himself? Are they going
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: to be on the side of giving tax breaks to
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: big corporations and making sure big corporations don't pay their
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: fair share? Or is Joe Biden who's going to be
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: on your side? And I think that is the economic
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: terms of the debate that, from the Democratic standpoint, you
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: want to define the terms of the debate, uh, along.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: And then again, to your point about where we have
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: advantages and disadvantages, you know, I, I'll, I'll, I'll tell
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: you what, you know, Nicole Wallace or the Bush of
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: the Bush white house said to me on election day,
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: the top issue is going to be what we determine
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: the top issue going to be.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: Here's another thing that has a lot of Democrats freaked out.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: So 538, uh, has average approval ratings for Biden, Trump,
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: Obama at this point in their presidency. So here's where
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: recent presidents are, right? Jimmy Carter had a plus two
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: net approval. So if you understand, net approval is your
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: approval minus your disapproval, right? So he was two points
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: more approved than disapproved. Barack Obama at this point was
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: minus 3.4%. Donald Trump was at minus 11.9% and Biden
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: is sitting here at minus 18%. How much of that
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: is about Biden? How much is about polarization? Does it
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: concern you at all that Biden's below where Trump was
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: at this point?
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: What I'm most anxious about are these millennial voters. I'm not,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: these millennial voters where he's got to do 20 points
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: better among these younger voters than what he's currently doing
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: in the polls. And again, it's a snapshot, right? I'm
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: not freaked out about that. As a campaign professional, I
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: see where the problem is, and then I know where
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: to target and focus the campaign's time, resources, and attention at.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: And right now, young people, and particularly now, because of
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: the Israeli-Gaza conflict, young voters are particularly not happy where
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: they see, at least in polling data that I'm seeing,
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: where they do think that America and the administration is
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: not doing enough to help the Palestinians. And it's not
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: that they're against Israel, but they think that this is
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: a really lopsided, one-sided affair and not enough is being
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: done to help the Palestinians who they think are suffering.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: But on the end, the vast, vast majority of voters
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: in America think don't go into the voting booth thinking
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: about foreign policy. They go into the voting booth thinking
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: about a whole array of domestic issues that are a
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: lot closer to home.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: I think we should end this on a positive note.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: We do, because we are going to drive this roller
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: coaster metaphor into the ground, we try to take the
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: polls or the state of the polling in the moment
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: we're in and rate it on a nausea scale of
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: 1 to 10. I'd love to hear where you are.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: My sense is you're closer to 1 than 10 based
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: on this, but What's your sense of where we are?
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: Thanks for checking out this special sneak preview of Polar Coaster.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: To hear the rest and future episodes, plus a ton
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: of other great exclusive content, consider joining the Friends of
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: the Pod subscriber community. Visit crooked.com slash friends to learn more.