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Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees
Still Tight Race Two Days Before Election Day; Surprising Iowa Poll Showing Harris Up by Three Points; Trump Stokes Fears About Voter Fraud in Pennsylvania Speech; Unprecedented Security Plans for Election Day in Many Cities. Aired 8-9p ET
Aired November 03, 2024 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[20:00:00]
JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Real concern for what's going to happen post-election day.
ERIN BURNETT, CNN ANCHOR: Right.
CARROLL: And why so many voters now at this point say they just want it all to be over.
BURNETT: Right. People just want it over.
CARROLL: Yes.
BURNETT: Whatever it's going to be, they want it to be over.
All right. Jason, thank you very much.
And thanks so much to all of you for being with us on this Sunday. 29 hours away from those first votes cast on election day in New Hampshire. We'll be here with you. Thanks for joining us. "AC 360" starts now.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Tonight on 360, down to the wire. Both candidates spent this final Sunday before election day blanketing the battlegrounds. We'll take you there and show you the potential paths to 270 for each. Also tonight a new pole out of Iowa stuns many. Does it signal a late shift in the race? I'll talk to the pollster who conducted it.
And the Trump campaign continues to tell stories about election fraud in Pennsylvania. Laying the groundwork to challenge the vote if he loses. We'll talk to Pennsylvania's top election official about what the campaign is claiming.
Good evening. Thanks for joining us. With just one full day of campaigning and more than 70 million early ballots already cast, take a look. This was what Sunday looked like for Vice President Harris, the former president, Tim Walz, and J.D. Vance. Four battleground states plus New Hampshire. The vice president overnighting Detroit after speaking there this morning and in East Lansing just a short time ago. She did not, by the way, mention the former president by name.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KAMALA HARRIS (D), VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Two days to go. You ready? You ready? In one of the most consequential elections of our lifetime. And we have momentum. It is on our side. Can you feel it?
(CHEERS)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: The former president speaking tonight in Macon, Georgia, after making news at a prior stop in southeastern Pennsylvania. He said he wouldn't mind if someone shot news crews and reporters in the audience.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I have a piece of glass over here and I don't have a piece of glass there. And I have this piece of glass here. But all we have really over here is the fake news, right?
(LAUGHTER AND CHEERS)
TRUMP: And to get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news. And I don't mind that so much because --
(LAUGHTER)
TRUMP: I don't mind.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: A campaign spokesman said he was, quote, "actually looking out for their welfare far more than his own," which only makes sense if you don't actually listen to what he said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: And to get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news. And I don't mind that so much because --
(LAUGHTER)
TRUMP: I don't mind.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Later in North Carolina, he seemed to think he was in Pennsylvania.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We have great Republicans running. And you have one of the best of all right here. David McCormick, you know that. Where's David? Is he around? Some place.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: He wasn't there. He then corrected himself, saying, you know, we just left him, he's a great guy. North Carolina, five other battleground states are all within the margin of error. In the final "New York Times"-Siena poll the race. But it is this poll from Iowa's "Des Moines Register" which is getting a lot of attention. It shows Vice President Harris within the margin of error but three points ahead of the former president in a state he won by more than eight points. We'll talk to the pollster behind that later on in the show.
CNN's John King starts us off at the magic wall where the potential paths for each to 270.
So, at this point, John, I mean, which candidate has the advantage in the electoral college, if any?
JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: If you look at the data, neither essentially. You just put up the seven battleground states there. It's essentially a tie in all of them. Harris claimed some momentum. You can see some nuggets in the polling that suggests maybe. Anecdotally, I was on the road last week, on your program every night, a little bit of momentum for Harris maybe.
But this presidential race number 10 for me, Anderson, and I have never been here on a Sunday night with a race so close and so complicated. So let's walk through where we are.
If you just go through the average of the poll shows dead heat. So either candidate can win all these states, right? You see the seven yellow states here? Those are toss-up states. Either candidate can win them all of they could have a back and forth. They could have a heavy weight match where somebody wins a round. Somebody wins the next one. If you just look at the polling right now, Harris has had a small but a consistent lead in Michigan and Wisconsin. So you put those two for her, right?
If you look at the average of our Poll of Polls, of all of our battleground states, well, then Pennsylvania is a tie. So we'll leave it there. Trump has a slightly -- either candidate can win this race. Let me be clear about that. But if you just take our averages literally at the moment, Trump has the lead there and Trump has a slightly out there. That gets you to 262 for Trump, 251 for Harris, if they played out exactly as our averages are right now. Again, they could break.
So what does that mean? If it played out that way, well, the conversation we've been having since the beginning. The biggest prize, battleground Pennsylvania, would decide it because no matter who won, under this scenario, Harris won that, it gets her to 257, Trump wins that, it gets him to 268. So either way you would need one more and the only thing left on the board is that, the 19 in Pennsylvania.
[20:05:06] So if you look at this race and you come back to this, the, quote- unquote, "easiest path" for the vice president is just win the blue wall. She wins those three states, she's the next president of the United States on this Sunday night. Can she do that? Yes. But is it also possible Donald Trump wins all three of those states like he did in 2016 to upend American politics, that is possible, too.
There is a little bit of data that suggest a slight advantage for her. But I would just caution everybody to say we'll count them Tuesday into Wednesday, and beyond. This one is that close.
COOPER: So how does all this compare back to 2016 and 2020?
KING: Right. That's where it gets interesting. I want to remind you on this night in 2016, we had Hillary Clinton projected to win 268 electoral votes. She was leading in all of the blue wall states, she lost all three of them. So again be careful. Let's get through the election. There are surprises out there.
On this night in 2020, on the other hand, we had a pretty clear sense. We already had Biden over 270 in our likely or solid states. He went on, in this map you're looking at, to pick up Georgia and Arizona as well. So in 2020, we had a clear climate. In 2016, we had advantage Clinton, although there were some evidence of late Trump momentum.
Back in this campaign right now, you come back to where we are tonight, you have a campaign where you have seven battleground states, as close as they can be with perhaps a smidgen of evidence of late Harris momentum.
COOPER: All right. John King, thanks very much.
Perspective now from our CNN political commentators, Alyssa Farah Griffin, David Urban, Ashley Allison, and David Axelrod.
David, you've seen a lot of campaigns. This is just exhausting.
DAVID AXELROD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I have made it very clear, I think I know nothing.
COOPER: Yes. Exactly.
(LAUGHTER)
COOPER: I mean, I feel like we've had this conversation every day for I don't know how long.
AXELROD: Yes. Look, I think I've said before, I think humility is the order of the day because no one really knows. It's so close. Nothing would shock me. It wouldn't shock me if one or the other candidate took five of those battleground states or more. It wouldn't shock me if it was a, you know, very close advantage to one or the other.
But I will say this, when you have a situation like this, you look at the campaigns at the end of the campaign and it is a profound difference because Kamala Harris, you know, people have criticized her for being cautious. She cautioning and being deliberate, and being -- and executing at the end of a campaign, that's a real advantage.
Her message is down. It's in coordinated with her TV. But here's the other thing, Donald Trump is as out of sync as she is in sync. You know, he --
COOPER: Well, it's interesting just to see them juxtapose.
AXELROD: Yes, who looks like the winner out there?
COOPER: Talk about low energy.
AXELROD: Who looks like the winner up there? You know, he said in an interview in "The Atlantic," Tim Alberta wrote another amazing piece in "The Atlantic," imbedded in the campaign. And he reported that someone said to Trump, complimented him on the fact that his campaign was very disciplined, the most disciplined campaign. And he said, discipline, discipline, what does discipline have to do with winning?
He may find out on Tuesday because he's been so undisciplined that he's taken the campaign off its message every night. Now we're showing footage of him talking about reporters getting shot. Do you think anybody in his campaign headquarters wants that to be the story on the Sunday before the elections?
So, I mean, I think that if Donald Trump is keeping an enemies list at the end of this campaign, he might want to pencil in Donald J. Trump on the top line because he will be the guy who beat himself.
COOPER: Ashley, I mean, do you think this is as close as the polls show?
ASHLEY ALLISON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I'll remain humble as our wide stage on the panel is telling us. It is close but what I do think is different is that he is saying things about the press. He still had the rally from a week ago. That actually feels like it was a month ago at this point.
COOPER: Which one?
ALLISON: That Madison Square Garden, like that. When we think about how time is moving with this campaign, especially since she's only been running for 100 days. I think that there are people who will leave out of their house on Tuesday morning and make decisions based on this comment. Because I -- one thing I won't become one is that I made a mistake and said I don't think there's that many undecided voters. I actually think there are.
I think there are people who are looking for pathways to vote for Kamala Harris, and Donald Trump is giving them to them.
ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I would not be surprised if it went either direction. Both campaigns come down to fundamentals. That's really all we have at this point. The data seems to be telling us nothing other than that it's statistically tied. So I look at who has the better ground game and who has the stronger closing message. And very much, that is Kamala Harris. If you look at the stats and the number of doors that they're knocking
in every one of the battleground states, it's massively outpacing where the Trump campaign should be. And they've outsourced a lot of that infrastructure. Now Elon Musk is behind some. The RNC is doing some of it. But a lot of money has been diverted to this election integrity effort whereas Kamala Harris has what we call screw-you money. Like she's got an ad taken out at the Sphere in Las Vegas.
AXELROD: Is that what they call it?
GRIFFIN: She's had --
ALLISON: I like that.
GRIFFIN: So you've got that and then --
[20:10:01]
COOPER: It's what many people dream of.
GRIFFIN: I know.
(LAUGHTER)
GRIFFIN: On top of that a disciplined closing message. She's not talking about Trump. She's not calling him a fascist. She's talking about a future looking, turning the page message. Juxtapose to Donald Trump who in 2016 there was a core message. It was better trade deals, America first, securing the border. Now I could not tell you what the message is. It's all over the map. So the momentum is on one side, but I still think it's statistically so close.
COOPER: David Urban?
DAVID URBAN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes. so, look, as Axe, points out, I would rather be talking about other things in that -- his event this morning.
AXELROD: Probably right now you'd rather be talking --
URBAN: Right. Actually right. So I mentioned there was a great ad out, RFK, you know, CNN they put this ad out, on unity. It's just fantastic commercial, right? They've been running spectacular. But the messaging just isn't in sync.
I'll just remind everybody that, you know, I was on the ground in 2016. I was kind of driving the bus. And to think that there was some sort of coordinated messaging, there was a better message or tighter discipline, it just wasn't true. There was more enthusiasm. Trump is a leader of a movement, OK. He's not a politician. He's a leader of a movement.
COOPER: You're saying there was more enthusiasm in 2016?
URBAN: No, no. There's more enthusiasm now. I'm saying there is more coordination now. In 2016 it was chewing gum, tape. It was -- you know, there was no organization. There was no get out the vote effort. There was no anything. And we are running against the Clinton machine. And there was this grinding, griding every day.
COOPER: Is see the same candidate?
URBAN: Yes. He's the same candidate. Listen, I want to remind you, I was there. You remember the "Access Hollywood" tape? Gees, does anybody remember that? Like that was, Donald Trump --
AXELROD: Remind people. Explain what it was.
URBAN: Donald Trump is -- but, no, listen, listen. I was there. I did the first public event with Donald Trump after that came out. And I was going to that event thinking, let's see how many people show up. And it was packed, right?
GRIFFIN: But respectfully, he was a dynamic candidate in 2016. And he wasn't disciplined but he was dynamic, there was an energy. I was with him in 2020. And he sounds much different now than even in 2020. There is a lack of focus. There's a lack of (INAUDIBLE) don't even stick.
AXELROD: And energy.
(CROSSTALK)
URBAN: Listen, I agree in '20, the campaign in '20, I think it was, you know, kind of dead man walking. The campaign in '20, right? This campaign has energy. Look, he was talking about he was in the wrong state. Axe had been on these things. If you've been on the plane, you're in four different states in one day you don't know what state you're going to get off the plane.
(CROSSTALK)
AXELROD: David, look, you're doing an admirable job.
URBAN: That happens.
AXELROD: And I appreciate you.
URBAN: No, I'm just telling you.
AXELROD: But he is not the same guy. And let me just say one other thing, and Ashley, I'm stepping on your time. But just as a practitioner who has been through this, you know, one of the reasons why the comment that the vice president made on "The View" got so much after you guys trapped her there, when she said that, when she said, when she sort of said, no, I can't think of where I would differ with him, I think she was being polite. But it was the worst thing she could do because it seemed like she was affirming the message of the Trump campaign against her. He is everyday going out now and affirming her message about him.
ALLISON: About him. Yes.
URBAN: Yes, look, Axe, I agree. ALLISON: I do -- even if he is the same person from 2016 and 2020, and
2024, people are tired of it. There was a freshness about it in 2016. And I am not saying his base is not -- his base is riled up about it but we've been talking about floors and ceilings. And when you look at that gender gap, it just keeps growing and growing and growing. And when you have -- last Sunday, when you talk about somebody handling her, her pimps, women don't like to talked about like that.
URBAN: I disagree.
ALLISON: Take is as a form of -- we don't like that, OK. We didn't like the -- people didn't like the "Access Hollywood" tape but it was something different. But now eight years later, it's a little old. That's played out.
URBAN: And "New York Times," I will just say this real quickly. The "New York Times" has a really good editorial today where they go back, they talk about all these folks that they've interviewed, right? And they say, you may not like to hear this, but after interviewing like 800 people, we think Trump may win over four years, right. We think Trump may win. This is not -- you know, this isn't Breitbart. This is "The New York Times." OK.
(CROSSTALK)
AXELROD: Playing into the New York much?
ALLISON: He certainly could win. He absolutely could win.
COOPER: Much more ahead. We're going to check in with both campaigns. Also talked to Pennsylvania's secretary of the commonwealth after the former president accused election officials there of fighting so hard, he said, to steal the election. Also a look inside some of the unprecedented efforts to keep election day safe and secure. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:18:54]
COOPER: Looking there at additional fencing going up this evening around the Naval Observatory in Washington where the vice president and second gentleman live. Vice President Harris spent part of her weekend in what was many a surprise appearance on "Saturday Night Live" playing opposite Maya Rudolph, who portrays her on the show.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAYA RUDOLPH, COMEDIAN: I wish I could talk to someone who's been in my shoes. You know? A black, South Asian woman running for president, preferably from the Bay Area.
(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)
(LAUGHTER)
HARRIS: I don't really laugh like that, do I?
RUDOLPH: A little bit. Now, Kamala, take my palm-ala.
(LAUGHTER)
RUDOLPH: Because what do we always say? Keep calm-ala and carry one- ala.
HARRIS: Keep calm-ala and carry one-ala.
(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: CNN's Jeff Zeleny has been traveling with the vice president. He joins us now from East Lansing, Michigan.
What is the vice president's message in this final stretch tonight?
JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Anderson, on the Sunday night live version of that, Vice President Harris has just wrapped up her speech not long ago, her last Michigan rally.
[20:20:03]
You can see behind me people are clearing out. There were thousands of people here. Many of them have already voted but she was sending a message to those who haven't. She said her campaign is not about being against someone. It's about being for something. This is a dramatically different closing message than we've heard from her even in the recent days when she was drawing a deep contrast with Donald Trump.
That is over for this period. She is trying to end on an optimistic, on a hopeful message, trying to encourage her supporters to get out the vote. They believe this is a contrast in its own right because they see how former president Donald Trump is ending his campaign. She is doing so in a different way.
Again the Michigan part of her campaign at least involving her is in the books. Her campaign obviously with surrogates will be out throughout the day. And tomorrow it is all about Pennsylvania. She has stops across the commonwealth.
Anderson, her best strategy she believes her advisers tell us is through the blue wall, in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and of course that blue dot in Omaha. But there is no doubt they are feeling optimistic. But she also said this race is not over. She encouraged everyone here, particularly those who have voted, to find others who haven't -- Anderson.
COOPER: Jeff Zeleny, thanks very much.
Next to CNN's Kristen Holmes in Macon, Georgia, with the former president.
What's your sense of what the coming hours will look like? What have you heard today? We've played some of what he said today.
KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: You know, the former president's closing message is not exactly what his allies or advisers would hope it would be. I am being told by these allies, by these campaign officials that he was going to deliver a message of unity but that's just far from what we've seen.
As I'm sure you played earlier in the show, he had a number of clips earlier today where he seemingly was going off the rails on a variety of different topics. At one point bitterly complaining for at least 10 minutes about polls that came out that showed him trailing behind Kamala Harris. A lot of his speech was profanity laced. And he has had a sort of sluggish and hoarse voice at various times.
And I can tell you from talking to people close to the former president, that they are all exhausted and ready for this election to be over. But in addition to that, a lot of them are exasperated particularly some of his allies who really believe that he could win on Tuesday. However, they believe that the messaging he has been putting forward particularly what we saw today, is not the way to do it.
I had one ally say to me, how hard is it to go out there and just say Kamala Harris broke it, I am going to fix it. Instead, what we have heard him do is go off on a number of tangents. A lot of them with violent and dark rhetoric as he heads into Tuesday. Again, his campaign has been feeling hopefully optimistic or at least slightly optimistic. They have been looking at different tea leaves.
But every single person you talk to knows that every vote counts and they do believe that this kind of rhetoric is not helpful towards his campaign as he heads into Tuesday.
COOPER: Is it just my monitor, or can you not actually his face? Like is it --
HOLMES: He has a hat on and his coat, so it's underneath a shadow right now.
COOPER: OK.
HOLMES: It's kind of covered up. But if you look closely, you can see it up there. But he definitely has kind of a shadowy look going on right now -- Anderson.
COOPER: OK. I was looking in different monitors thinking like maybe it's just the monitor I'm watching.
Kristen, thanks very much. Back now --
HOLMES: NO, you can't really see his face.
COOPER: Yes. OK. Back with the panel.
Some lighting would be good. But was it a good idea for her to spend time on "Saturday Night Live"? AXELROD: I think so. You know it's a risk because you can go on there
and you can bomb and that's not good. But, you know, that was a really funny little skit. But the best part about it, she seemed very relaxed, she seemed very human, and she got to show a little self- effacing humor, which is always winning in a politician. So, you know, they took a little bit of a risk in doing it. They've diverted their schedule a little bit. I think it was a great thing to do on the final weekend.
COOPER: Alyssa, there was a moment from the former president's rally in North Carolina last night. He laughed at a, I guess, a vulgar joke someone told about the vice president in the crowd. I just want to play this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: It's terrible when Kamala says that she worked in McDonald's. She never worked there.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She worked on a corner.
TRUMP: But I did -- I did a little bit.
(CHEERS)
TRUMP: This place is amazing. Just remember, it's other people saying it. It's not me.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Yes.
ALLISON: I mean, we don't like to be called prostitutes as women. It's as simple as that. And -- but if the leader says it, his followers -- that's what followers do. They feel that they are given the permission structure which is why for the last four years many of us have said on and said there is a responsibility to stop this type of language and behavior.
I want to just point out one thing about that was discussed about that Jeff's reporting on the momentum. The word momentum when we talk about sports it means that you're either behind, but you have -- it's moving in your favor, or you're tied.
[20:25:04]
And that's what I keep hearing from the Harris campaign is that we're not winning yet, but we need -- we can score enough points to get over. Even if we just win by one point. And that's what she's asking her supporters to do. You also see this in the rallies. I know we talk a lot about comparison. I remember rallies in 2016. I remember Beyonce and Jay-Z and Bruce Springsteen. Let me tell you something. These rallies and these surrogates are not the same.
Like she has GloRilla out here. She has Cardi B who wasn't even going to vote four months ago coming out. They're reaching different people that are not traditional voters, that we talk about Donald Trump turning out low propensity voters. Cardi B reaches a lot of low propensity voters that if they go to the polls, they will vote for Kamala Harris.
AXELROD: That momentum thing was great. I felt like I'm sitting next to Coach (INAUDIBLE).
ALLISON: You know, my dad would be proud.
(LAUGHTER)
GRIFFIN: I mean, I think the most interesting thing to watch is the gender gap. And it could go either way. Donald Trump may have made a brilliant but high risk strategy of trying to reach out to these low propensity, largely white male voters, targeting people like Jake Paul and the Joe Rogan podcasts, and the sort of manosphere of characters. But do those actually translate to large numbers showing up at the polls? I don't know. And in doing so, they did alienate women.
There wasn't a direct overture to women. And on top of it, you fall into the trap of things like the Tony Hinchcliffe guy speaking at your rally and pissing off more women than you're bringing in. On the flipside, Kamala Harris has a 10 to 15-point advantage with women. So if you have more women turning out, that could end up -- that could end up determining the election. It's just which side turns out in greater force in the final days.
URBAN: Yes, and so we watched John King say that it could come down to one state, right, again, Pennsylvania.
GRIFFIN: You love that.
URBAN: I wish I was there right now, trying to help out a little more. But when you look at the numbers in Pennsylvania. I talked to Axe about this. I talked to David Chalian this morning about this a little bit. You look at the numbers, I mean, look at -- and I talked to some other leading Democrats in Pennsylvania. And I said, you know, where do you think she falls in the vote total? You think she's Obama '08, Obama '12, Clinton, Biden? Where does she kind of come in that total because that's what this is about, the math. Look at the math.
Does she outperform -- she is not going to outperform Biden in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre. She's going to fall short there. She's not going to outperform Biden in Philadelphia. Look, amazingly Biden got more votes than Obama in '08 in Philadelphia because he was viewed as a Philadelphian. He's viewed as a Pennsylvanian. So where is she going to win? Where is she going to win those big numbers?
Trump has been increasing his vote totals. He's not going to win Philadelphia. But he's been increasing his vote total inch by inch. Piece by piece. He had a 90,000 and 120,000, if he does 150,000, it's about losing less in the suburbs. I think he's going to do very well in Bucks County. And so if Kamala Harris doesn't crush it in the Philadelphia suburbs.
AXELROD: Right. URBAN: If she doesn't crush it in the Philadelphia suburbs, she's
going to lose.
AXELROD: But to the discussion earlier, it seems like he is intentionally doing things to pump up the vote in the Philadelphia suburbs.
URBAN: That's -- and that's one of the issues, you know. His ads have been running nonstop. You've probably seen it if people watching the show. This RJC ad that's been running in the (INAUDIBLE). It has like four Jewish mother sitting there, lamenting, you know, they don't like Donald Trump but they're concerned about their kids and antisemitism, and they think Trump is going to protect them and make them safer. This is some of the same narrative that you see in this "New York Times" piece. We don't like Trump. We're going to vote for him. Nikki Haley wrote an op-ed.
(CROSSTALK)
ALLISON: I think you want her to perform like Obama 2012 in Philadelphia, where he actually increased his black voter turnout by 4 percent. If she can do that -- people thought he had maxed out in some places, he had not. He found people who had not engaged in our democracy. And if she can do that, and that's what I mean with some of these surrogates.
URBAN: But his numbers are lower in '12.
AXELROD: That was one of the reasons the Romney campaign thought they were going to win with.
URBAN: His numbers were lower in '12 than they were in '08.
AXELROD: I just want to clarify something. I wasn't saying that he was pumping up the vote for himself. I think everything he's doing is pumping up the vote for her in suburban areas around the country and with women.
URBAN: I get it. But it's going to be coming down, again, this is going to be a game of inches. And it's going to be the Nikki Haley op- ed, that RJC, and look, we don't like Donald Trump, but on the economy, on Israel, on things we think he's just a better. Right? He's just better.
GRIFFIN: I think Nikki Haley might be one of the only Haley voters for Trump at this point, though. But listen, when you've got nearly half a million Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania, and then you have that gaffe and then the doubling down on it after the fact and not an effort to clean up, that is the thing that's going to matter. And then you've got icons of the Latino pop culture come out, like a Jennifer Lopez, that stuff does matters in the final stretch.
And late breakers are real. This is what I'm realizing talking to people is we say there are only whatever percentage are undecided, there are people who are making up their minds as we speak. I am hearing from them every single day. ALLISON: Yes. And they're not just independent, white voters.
GRIFFIN: No.
ALLISON: There's a lot of people -- there are people who are deciding. I think that in addition to the campaign's ground game, there are millions of doors being knocked by independent expenditures. I think SCIU knocked -- which is a labor union, knocked five million doors. People working in statehouse races knocking 100,000 doors. Those are the things that you also look to convert.
[20:30:03]
URBAN: I will just say one last thing, too. In the state of Pennsylvania, let's not forget we have a very, very big Senate race going on.
GRIFFIN: Yes.
URBAN: David McCormick is spending gobs of money.
AXELROD: I thought he was running in North Carolina?
URBAN: Spending money. Look, he were campaigning for him everywhere. But McCormick is -- McCormick is going to pull out a lot of voters. It may not be Trump voters. They're going to be coming to the polls. There's this unique dynamic. They're outspending Bob Casey. He's got Casey on the ropes. You don't have a second tier candidate. You got a big race there as well.
GRIFFIN: His ads have been very good, too.
URBAN: So it's going to be -- makes it much easier for people to vote for Trump and McCormick together.
COOPER: David Urban, Ashley Allison, Alyssa Farah Griffin, David Axelrod, thanks very much.
Coming up, more on that new poll out of Iowa. What it might signal for other more hotly contested states nearby? The pollster who conducted it has a long exceptional track record predicting Iowa races. She joins us next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COOPER: Well, earlier we showed you that surprising new poll out of Iowa. It shows Vice President Harris up three points over the former president Donald Trump at 47 percent to 44 percent, which is a big turnaround from the same poll in September.
[20:35:02]
Now that number is still within the margin of error. So there's no clear leader. But a swing like this and from such a well-respected pollster, with a long track record in Iowa, has some wondering if this could be an indication that Harris may over perform in the Midwest Tuesday night including even in battlegrounds like Wisconsin.
Today while speaking in Pennsylvania, the former president attacked the pollster and said the poll was intentionally skewed to favor Harris.
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TRUMP: I got a poll, I'm 10 points up in Iowa. One of my enemies just puts out a poll, I'm three down. Why do they announce a poll that's highly skewed toward Democrat and liberals? Why do they do that? When you read it, they interviewed far more Democrats than they did Republicans? Why do they do that? Why do they do that? And I guess there's a law that they have to stay that because they would have preferred not having to say that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Well, I'm joined now by J. Ann Selzer whose firm, Selzer and Company, conducted the poll, and back with us is David Axelrod and John King.
Ann, first of all, how surprised were you at these numbers? What do you make of them? And also obviously, you know, feel free to respond to what the former president said.
J. ANN SELZER, IOWA POLLSTER: Thank you, and thank you for having me. We first saw the numbers on Tuesday morning, Monday night was the first night in the field. And I walked into the office. I've seen overnight, I've seen the unweighted data and it had Harris leading. And my assistant said, did you see the data? And I said, I'd like to see weighted data.
So the weighting is how we take care of things that what would make our poll unrepresentative. We align things with unknown population and we extract from a larger group, the people who meet our definition of likely voters. And that is people who've already voted and people who say they will definitely vote.
So when former president Trump says we interviewed more Democrats, well, that's what came out of our data. We did nothing to make that happen. I'm a big believer of keeping my fingers off -- my dirty fingers off the data. So we did it the way we did it. When he won in our final poll twice in two election cycles, very same method.
COOPER: He said you're an enemy of his. Clearly that is not the case. You have had polls in the past which have shown, you know, that Hillary Clinton wasn't going to do as well in Iowa as a lot of people thought. So you have been, you know, delivered news which has upset Democrats and upset Republicans, and people all over the map in the past.
SELZER: Right. Without favor toward one side or the other. I think that the best news I can deliver, and this is true of my non-election related clients. The best news I can deliver is my best shot at what's true. Because then you know what you're working with. And you can make adjustments as you needed to. But I can't see that there is any advantage to me or my career in messing with the numbers to make it look a particular way. There is no upsides.
COOPER: Yes. I want to bring in John and David Axelrod because they all know you and respect you and I know they want to ask questions.
John, I know you've been reading through poll. What sticks out to you? And feel free to ask Ann for a rebut.
KING: Yes. Quick piece of history. First, this is the 2020 map. Let's just bring out Iowa. And you say, you know, a lot of people out there probably saying, now come on, that can't be possible. Look at that big Trump win in 2020 and look at this big Trump win 2016. But you have Mr. Axelrod at the table as well. It is possible. It is possible. It's been a while. But Iowa voted overwhelmingly for Obama in 2012 and 2008 as well.
The people of Iowa follow the news. And, you know, there are a lot of independents in Iowa. Here's what I want to pop up for Ann. And I do it, as I bring it up right now, I just want to say, despite what the former president just said, I have known Ann for a long time and I've known her work for a long time. She's one of the best in the business, Anderson. And she's absolutely right. The data is what the data is. And you report the data and then you talk about it.
So here's interesting, Ann, in your poll. Among female voters in Iowa, overall, a 20-point gap. 56 percent to 36 percent, number one. And now I want to bring up, you know, independents. You're always looking late in the campaign, where are the independents going, right? If the Democrats are loyal to their candidate, the Republicans are loyal to theirs, where do the independents go?
These are independent female voters in Iowa. Look at that, wow, 57 percent to 29 percent. My question for you, Ann, would be, why? The six-week abortion ban in Iowa took place a couple months ago. Trump has been pretty dark in his rhetoric in recent days, insulting the vice president quite a bit. Is it something she's saying? Something he's saying? Something within Iowa that's changing the climate? All of the above?
SELZER: I'm going to go with all of the above because I can't single one thing out. I will note that our previous polls this year, in February and in June, Trump led with independents.
KING: Right.
SELZER: So what happened between June and September? Biden left the ticket. Kamala Harris joined it. There was a surge of enthusiasm. We saw it. There was a surge in the proportion of people we talked to who said they would definitely vote. That was our criterion in June. And now we have an additional criterion if you've already voted.
[20:40:03]
And especially among older people, it's over 90 percent incidents of people that we talked to in that age group who say they're going to vote. And they tend to vote for Kamala Harris. And women in that age group specifically and strikingly. AXELROD: Ann, let me ask you something. And I don't want to geek out
here because you sort of touched on it. But we hear a lot of pollsters and Nate Cohen wrote about this in the "New York Times" this morning, talking about nonresponse bias to try and explain why polls have been so off in the past few cycles in capturing some of this infusion of Trump voters that they hadn't spoken with and hadn't been included in their sampling.
So they've tried to find ways to wait their polls to account for that and cut that number down. You don't believe that that's the way to go. Explain it.
SELZER: Well, I can control what I can control. I can weight to known population parameters.
COOPER: By the way, when you say weight, I think a lot of people don't know what that means. What does that mean?
SELZER: It will sound very anti-democratic. It's some people get a little bit more than one vote, and some people get a little bit less than one vote. So if we end up in our sample, and we take a sample of all adults in the state of Iowa, and if we've got too many who are older, or too many that are women, we adjust it to look like the Census. So we're weighting within congressional district because they're not all aged appropriately. Some of them have state universities and so on. But we want to adjust our data so it looks like a cross-section of the state of Iowa when it comes to age, sex, geography in particular, race sometimes, education not so much anymore.
And then from that bigger pool, over 1,000 people, we pull out the 808 who met one of our criteria as to be a likely voter. They've already voted, or they say that they will definitely vote. And so from that, you know, cross-section, proper cross-section of the state, if older people are more likely to say they are going to vote, they show up in more plentiful numbers in our likely voter sample.
COOPER: I see.
SELZER: It's just that easy. So what I say is I'm allowing my data to reveal to me this future electorate. And the people who are using, you know, the exit polls or the recalled vote, which I don't think of as very reliable at all, I call that polling backward. So they are adjusting their data to fix the last mistake. I have always allowed my data to show me, without fear or favor, what my best shot at what this future electorate is going to look like.
AXELROD: Can I just second John's point? Which is I have worked with you, Ann, over the years. You've polled races I was involved in. And you are a person of great integrity and skill. So when you say something people listen.
COOPER: All right. Ann Selzer, really great to have you on. Thank you so much. David Axelrod, John King, as well, thank you.
Up next, the former president tries to scare voters in Pennsylvania about voter fraud and election security. The commonwealth's top election official joins us next.
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[20:47:49]
COOPER: In his speech earlier today in Pennsylvania, the former president spent several minutes stoking fears about voter fraud in Pennsylvania.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Look what's going on in your state. Every day, they're talking about extending hours. What -- whoever heard of this stuff? We should have one day voting and paper ballots. They spend all this money, all this money on machines. And they're going to say, we may take an extra 12 days to determine. And what do you think happens during that 12 days? What do you think happens?
(CHEERS)
TRUMP: These elections have to be -- they have to be decided by 9:00, 10:00, 11:00 on Tuesday night. A bunch of crooked people. These are crooked people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Well, I'm joined now by Pennsylvania secretary of the Commonwealth, Al Schmidt, who oversees the election process there.
Secretary Schmidt, I appreciate you being with us. The former president offers no evidence obviously for what he's saying. What do you say to these allegations? I mean, he's talking about one day -- there should be one day of voting, there should be paper ballots. He's claiming that if it takes 12 days to, you know, count all the votes, that there's -- he's making allegations that there's 12 days of cheating and voter fraud essentially.
AL SCHMIDT, PENNSYLVANIA SECRETARY OF THE COMMONWEALTH: Well, it must be some sort of misunderstanding because every voter in Pennsylvania, whether they vote by mail in advance of election day, or vote in person on election day is voting using a voter verified paper ballot. There's a paper ballot record of every vote that's cast in Pennsylvania to tabulate the results. And it's used in two audits to ensure those results are accurate.
COOPER: Yes. I mean, they have been making this-- I mean, they've been lying about paper ballots, you know, even the Dominion voting machines, which they have had problems, those have paper ballots. On Wednesday, a Pennsylvania judge did grant a request from the Trump campaign ordering a three-day extension to Bucks County deadline for in-person return of mail-in ballots. There were, you know, allegations of election interference from Republicans, from Trump allies.
[20:50:04]
Can you explain what happened there? SCHMIDT: Yes. In Pennsylvania we don't have early voting the same way
many other states have early voting. We have mail ballot voting in advance of election day and we have a voting in-person on election day.
There is an opportunity for voters to go to their local board of elections to apply in person for a mail ballot. So they file an application. The board of elections processes that application. And if approved, provides the voter with a mail ballot that they can complete on the spot and return right then and there. And Bucks County was one of the many counties that really had a lot of people showing up. And there was a court order to extend those offices, those hours to apply to vote by mail for three additional days.
It has been interesting, and it's a very peculiar phenomenon this election cycle because I ran elections for Philadelphia in 2020 that Republicans, and I'm a Republican, Republicans have gone from suing to close down board of elections offices for voting by mail, to seeking to have those office hours extended for days to have people vote by mail.
COOPER: How frustrating is this for you? I mean, obviously, this is just probably the tip of the iceberg of what we expect to see over the next few days or weeks, who knows. You're a Republican. You care about the sanctity of the vote. I mean, there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud. There hasn't been, these are lies. How frustrating is this for you? What do you say to voters?
SCHMIDT: And Anderson, I was a Republican election commissioner in Philadelphia, elected in 2011 and re-elected in 2015 and re-elected in 2019. I have investigated hundreds of allegations of voter fraud. And that's why I feel like I can speak with some degree of authority and knowledge about when it occurs and when it doesn't occur. And when it does occur the extent to which there's evidence of it, and allegations of widespread voter fraud in Pennsylvania are completely and totally unfounded.
Voters should have confidence that we will have a free, fair, safe and secure election in 2024 just as we had in 2020.
COOPER: Al Schmidt, I appreciate what you're doing and I appreciate your time. Thank you.
SCHMIDT: Thank you.
COOPER: Coming up next, inside election security preparations in one battleground state.
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[20:56:43]
COOPER: Police forces across the country increasing security efforts for election day and beyond. With deep divisions over the elections the long shot of January 6th attack on the Capitol, police in a number of cities are on alert. Our Shimon Prokupecz has more.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know where those polling locations are but don't go unless you're explicitly requested to respond.
SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): Police department in battleground states across the nation are gearing up for the 2024 election like never before.
CHIEF SHON BARNES, MADISON, WISCONSIN POLICE: I've been in this business for 25 years. I can't think of an election where we have had as much planning and preparation for safety. A lot of that has to do with what happened on January 6th.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, it is reported to us.
PROKUPECZ: CNN granted access to a Madison, Wisconsin, police briefing on what officers should anticipate.
DET. GRACE FAVOR, CRIMINAL INTELLIGENCE, MADISON, WISCONSIN POLICE: What we look for in criminal intelligence is not only day of protecting the ballot. If there's going to be any protest activity.
PROKUPECZ: It's interesting because the battleground states, the chiefs have really been -- I feel like you guys have all been talking.
BARNES: Yes. Me and thousands of police chiefs all over the country are really taking this very, very seriously. So if something happens in another part of the state, I want to be aware of it. I want to be able to let folks know, hey, this is what happened in Georgia, or Arizona, or Pennsylvania.
PROKUPECZ (voice-over): It's not only problems on the ground that worry police chiefs. They're concerned with social media.
BARNES: The disinformation worries me. We will be responsible for correcting that narrative.
PROKUPECZ: Cities say they're ready. In Philadelphia, courts are canceled on election day to free up hundreds of officers. In Georgia, panic buttons have been installed at precincts that will alert law enforcement. And in Arizona, plainclothes officers may deploy in parking lots of voting sites.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our first path is also going to be to de-escalate and to see if we can just diffuse the situation.
PROKUPECZ: A lot of focus on November 5th, election day, but law enforcement is also very concerned about the days after the election as votes are being potentially tallied. And also, the certification process, which takes place here at the Capitol in December.
BARNES: The apprehension is about what happens after that. If the will of the people, you know, isn't done, or people don't accept the result.
PAT BUTLER, ELECTION VOLUNTEER: This is your ballot, activated.
PROKUPECZ (voice-over): For Pat Butler, who's been an election volunteer for nearly five decades, she says she isn't worried.
BUTLER: For me to see people coming out to vote is just remarkable.
BARNES: Hop in.
PROKUPECZ: Do you feel like you need to prepare differently?
BARNES: We want to try to prepare for, you know, worst-case scenario. But I do believe that depending on who wins or who loses, the tenor of the conversation will change. We hope that there is a concession speech and it allows people to heal and move on, and put what appears to be a divided country back on the same path.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: And Shimon Prokupecz joins us now.
Have there been any specific threat against polling places?
PROKUPECZ: No. So far everything seems to be OK at polling sites. Again, it's what they're really worried about, Anderson, is really interesting is the days and weeks after. If there is this tallying -- it's going to take a while to get a decision here. That's what they're really worried about because they feel that's when people sort of are going to stew, and anger is going to build in. They're really just concerned about the days and the weeks after the election.
COOPER: Shimon Prokupecz, thanks so much. CNN's countdown to Election Day continues with Kaitlan Collins up next, Ill see you tomorrow.
