Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Henry Olsen: US Pollster on the debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump

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Henry Olsen: US Pollster on the debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

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  Speaker 1: Now you might be wondering what do the American people
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: think of the debate last night. Henry Olsen is a
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  Speaker 1: famous polster and Washington Post columnist who is joining us
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  Speaker 1: to break down exactly what the reaction has been. Just
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: want to read one reaction from one of our listeners
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: this morning, though, And I wonder how they feel about it.
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  Speaker 1: That misogynistic, illiterate, adulterous, inarticulate, fat, golf hacking, university degree cheating,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: climate change challenged, stupid culturalist, clueless, clown face painted comb over,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: wearing fallon, can't string a coherent sentence together and sounds
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  Speaker 1: like a five year old. Thank you very much for that, Marie.
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  Speaker 1: Let's go to Henry Olsen, who is in Washington, DC
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  Speaker 1: for us this morning. Henry, thank you for being on
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  Speaker 1: the show. What are people thinking? What are people saying?
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  Speaker 2: Generally, people think that Harris cleaned Trump's clock, that Trump
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  Speaker 2: was impulsive, negative, and failed to make his points, while
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  Speaker 2: Harris was good enough. And the fact that seems to
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  Speaker 2: be uniform from conservatives to progressives suggests that that's pretty
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: much what viewers saw.
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  Speaker 1: To Will it translate from what we know about previous debates?
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  Speaker 1: Will it translate into extra votes from swing voters.
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  Speaker 2: Well, that's the sixty four thousand dollars question. In the past,
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  Speaker 2: debates in the modern era, meaning like in the last
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  Speaker 2: twenty years, have had some effect, but not a huge effect.
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  Speaker 2: Of course, this race is so close it even some
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  Speaker 2: effect could transform Harris into a slight underdog into a
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  Speaker 2: slight favorite. I think it could, but we won't know
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  Speaker 2: for another week ten days until bulls come out.
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  Speaker 1: Tell us about the swing states, the battlegrounds Wisconsin and Michigan.
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  Speaker 1: I was reading use today the polls. They have consistently
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  Speaker 1: understated support for Trump. That happened in twenty sixteen, happened
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  Speaker 1: in twenty twenty. Is that happening now? And could that
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  Speaker 1: mean that we can't rely on the polls as they
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  Speaker 1: are today for those battlegrounds.
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  Speaker 2: I think that's accurate that polls have traditionally and consistently
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  Speaker 2: underestimated Republican support in those states. It's also underestimated Republican
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  Speaker 2: support in North Carolina. That in twenty twenty, polls showed
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  Speaker 2: that Donald Trump would lose North Carolina and the Democrat
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  Speaker 2: would win the Senate seat. The fact is Republicans won
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  Speaker 2: the Senate seat, and Trump won by about a point
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  Speaker 2: and a half to two points. I would look more
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  Speaker 2: at the national polls than I would at the state
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  Speaker 2: level polls, because there's a pretty clear relationship between state
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  Speaker 2: voting habits and national results. And the national results show,
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  Speaker 2: as Nate Silver points out on his Silver Bulletin website,
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  Speaker 2: that if the election had been held yesterday before the debate,
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  Speaker 2: Donald Trump would have been the favorite to win the
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  Speaker 2: electoral college. We'll see in a week or so whether
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  Speaker 2: that's still the case.
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  Speaker 1: All right, interesting, We will wait and see for those numbers,
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  Speaker 1: and in the meantime, I guess just remember that it
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  Speaker 1: is largely all noise. Henry, thank you for that. That's
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  Speaker 1: Henry Olsen with us. He is a polster in the
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  Speaker 1: United States, a Washington Post columnist, and obviously an expert
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  Speaker 1: on exactly how you look at the popular vote versus
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  Speaker 1: the electoral college and who that might put ahead. For
• 3:24
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• 3:28
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