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Today, Trump Campaigns in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan; Final Polls Show a Razor-Thin Race to the Finish; Harris, Trump Barnstorm Battlegrounds on Final Day of Campaign. Aired 10- 10:30a ET

Aired November 04, 2024 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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JIM ACOSTA, CNN ANCHOR: One day to go. We are in the waning hours of the last leg of the 2024 campaign. Today, the candidates are making their final pitches to voters and the closing messages from Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump couldn't be more different.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: We had the safest border in the history of our country the day that I left. I shouldn't have left. To get me somebody would have to shoot through the fake news, and I don't mind that so much. I don't mind.

KAMALA HARRIS, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT, DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: America is ready for a fresh start, ready for a new way forward, where we see our fellow American not as an enemy but as a neighbor.

We are ready for a president who knows that the true measure of a leader is not based on who you beat down, it is based on who you lift up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: Good morning. You are live in the CNN Newsroom. I'm Jim Acosta in Washington.

There's the music, we are almost there. Let's go straight to Raleigh, North Carolina, where the former president is holding a rally today.

CNN's Alayna Treene is there. Alayna, a big day of rallies for the former president. What do we expect Trump's closing message to be?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN REPORTER: Oh, well, Jim, happy election Eve. We are about 35 hours or so until the polls close. And, look, that closing argument that when I talked to Donald Trump's campaign, his allies, those who want him to win, they say they want it to be focused on three key things. One, right now, it is all about turnout. They recognize there's not going to be some sort of last minute strategy that is going to change the game when we are so close to Election Day. Instead, it's really about getting people to show up tomorrow, to make sure that his supporters are not complacent, that they're not going to sit this one out. That is the key message that they want Trump to drill into their minds today.

The other thing, though, of course, is to continue to argue that he is doing a better job -- he would do a better job of handling the economy, the border, the key issues that we have talked about repeatedly on your show, because they believe he is polling better on those issues than Kamala Harris.

However, Jim, I was at several of Donald Trump's rallies over the weekend, and I can tell you, he did not always articulate that closing message. Instead, he spent a lot of time going off script. He played some of that sound, at the top of this show, and some of it was, you know, spending more than ten minutes railing against polls that show Kamala Harris gaining ground on him.

You aired that clip about him talking about the media, but he also made claims about him thinking that he shouldn't have left the White House. He started to sow seeds of doubt in this upcoming election. These are the things that his campaign do not want him to be talking about. So, I think the key question is whether or not he will do that, whether here in North Carolina or later when he goes to Pennsylvania and to Michigan, Jim.

ACOSTA: All right. Alayna Treene, in Raleigh, North Carolina, a very important day of campaigning, obviously, thank you so much.

And with just hours to go before Election Day voting begins, the final polls are in and they tell the story of a race that is very much up for grabs.

CNN Senior Data Reporter Harry Enten joins us now. Harry, I'm glad you're still standing mostly upright at this point. We'll see how the day goes. And, yes, sneak in those naps when you can, buddy. What are the numbers tell us right now.

HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR DATA REPORTER: They just tell us we're in a historically tight race where nobody really knows what the heck is going to happen one day to go.

Let's just sort of walk through the swing states. You know that there are seven of them. We've been talking about them all along. Look, the largest lead on average is Trump by plus three in Arizona, well within the margin of error. Then you get a plus one, then less than a point lead in North Carolina, less than a point lead in Nevada. You jump over to the Great Lakes and you see more blue than red. But, again, when you're pointing out this less than symbol in there, you know it's really tight, less than a point lead for Harris in Pennsylvania, less than a point in Wisconsin, less than a point lead in Michigan.

What does that mean for the electoral map? Well, if the polls are exactly right, look at this, 270 electoral votes.

[10:05:00] You can't get any closer than that. Kamala Harris slightly favored because she carries those Great Lake battleground states. But when 270, and it's the road to 270, you know it's close.

But let's go back through history. How close is this from a historical perspective? Well, I looked at the final polls and every single cycle dating back the last 52 years, right now, Harris projected to get 270. If you took the final polls and projected it onto the electoral map in past years, the next closest race was 281 for Gore back in 2000 because the polls had him carrying Florida. Of course, the race ended up being won by George W. Bush by the slightest of margins.

But, of course, just because the polls are close, it doesn't mean we won't end up with a blowout. In fact, if you were to project it out and use the forecast that you know are out there, like Nate Silver, 538, whatever, will the 2024 winner get at least 300 electoral votes? That is a relative blowout in my mind. There's a majority chance, 60 percent yes, compared to minority chances, 40 percent no.

How the heck is that possible, given that the polls are so close? It's because polls are imperfect, Mr. Acosta. They are imperfect.

So, if you go back through history -- yes, we are. I am certainly far from perfect. My girlfriend would definitely let you know on that one.

Swing state polling averages, if you look at the average error since 1972, it's 3.4 points. All seven battleground states are within three points. So, if you have an average error and it all goes in one direction, what does that mean for the electoral map? Well, if the polling error benefits Kamala Harris, look at this, she gets all the way up to 319 electoral votes, she carries those Great Lake battleground states, she carries those battleground states in the Southeast, Georgia, North Carolina, and, of course, she carries Nevada and Arizona in the southwest, but there's no guarantee, no guarantee that the polling error would benefit Kamala Harris. It could benefit Donald Trump. He'd win up in the Great Lakes, the southeast, the southwest, and he'd get up to 312 electoral votes.

The bottom line is this, Mr. Acosta. As we stand here one day before Election Day, I really don't know what's going to happen. It could be razor tight, or it could be a blowout in either direction. I've known -- I've never known less going into Election Day. The only thing I know is we're both two terrifically good looking men.

ACOSTA: Well, I appreciate that very much. But you could have said all that in about 20 seconds, but I'm glad you had the T.V. time, you know, not that you haven't had enough, but --

ENTEN: I'm going to go sleep now. I have a pillow right over here.

ACOSTA: I hear you. I think you should take advantage of much -- as much of that as you can.

All right, Harry Enten, thanks as always, great job this cycle. See you on the other side. We appreciate it. Let's discuss with CNN Political Commentator Karen Finney and former Spokesman for Governor Doug Burgum's Presidential Campaign Lance Trover.

And, Karen, let me start with you first. I do want to show this extraordinary number from this ABC News poll that came out over the weekend. Let's put this up on screen, the gender gap among likely voters. Harris has an 11 point advantage among women over Trump. Trump has just a five-point advantage with men. But look at on the far right of your screen, under 30 years old, Harris is plus 40 over Donald Trump among women. That is a staggering number. I don't think I've ever seen anything like that, a gender gap like this.

KAREN FINNEY, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Agreed. And I'll tell you, if that's how the election ends up, and we see that kind of a gender gap, it tells you a lot about particularly how the former president has campaigned, you know, by making this appeal to younger men. Some of the things he said have actually turned younger women off.

And we've seen younger women, particularly black and Latina women, leading in voter registration and early turnout. And these are women who feel -- I think a lot of women feel like our lives are on the line, our freedom is on the line, but also they're excited and they're energized by Vice President Harris. I mean, you've had so many young women and young people come forward and say, I wasn't so enthusiastic, but then when she became the top of the ticket, it made them pay attention to the election in a way that perhaps hadn't been.

ACOSTA: Yes. Well, and we're also looking on the right side of your screen, this Trump rally that's going to get going in Raleigh. We're going to dip into that. Listen to what the former president has to say.

But, Lance, let me go to you first because, I mean, we need to talk about the elephant in the room. There was this other interesting poll this weekend in Iowa, a state that hasn't gone blue since Obama in 2012. Harris, according to the Des Moines Register, is leading Trump by three points. Of course, this could end up being an anomaly, but this is according to the well-respected Des Moines Register poll and Seltzer out there who has legendary status in terms of predicting elections. What did you think when you saw that?

LANCE TROVER, FORMER SPOKESPERSON, 2024 BURGUM PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN: I've done a lot of campaigns in my life, Jim, and let me tell you something, there's nothing more jarring than getting an outlier poll. It happens way more often than pollsters or any campaigns like to admit it. Those are the kinds of polls that campaigns do not leak out there, but they come in.

The key to what you need to do in this type of situation is look at all your other data points and do all your data points point to the direction of there's been a trend moving this way, what have other elections been like.

[10:10:04] I think in this case we saw the Emerson poll that shows it's up ten. We've seen how Iowa has been trending over the course of the several years. To me, this is 100 percent an outlier poll. I agree with you, the Des Moines Register is a standard barrier there. But, again, every pollster has an outlier poll. It happens all the time in elections.

ACOSTA: And, Karen, I do want to talk about what Trump was doing over the weekend, in addition to talking about people shooting at the media and saying he should have stayed in the White House after the 2020 election, he was spreading more false claims about election issues in Pennsylvania. Let's listen to this.

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TRUMP: They found, as I understand it -- I mean, I don't know what's happened in the last day or so, but they -- in Lancaster, they found. 2,600 ballots all done and by the same hand. In other words, the same exact penmanship, the same hand, the same everything. It was all done by the same pen, the exact same pen. And then they go and they say, well, this is a conspiracy theorist.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: I mean, that's false, but, Karen, you know, I guess the question here is, is he planting the seeds? Is he chumming the waters, laying the groundwork to say, even if he loses, to say he won?

FINNEY: Absolutely. And we've seen several stories over the last week, and one of the organizations that I work for cataloging the many instances. And it's not just Trump. You've got Donald Trump doing it. You've got a surrogate doing it. You've got a legal strategy in play where they are trying to. It's like 2020 on steroids. There are fake electors ready to go. There are all kinds of lawsuits ready to go.

Thankfully, I would say Democrats are prepared because we have seen this movie before. But I think the most important thing to remind people is to just get out there and vote and we will have to make sure that every vote is counted and then we will have to make sure that those votes are certified in proper due time and that the process moves smoothly the way it's supposed to move.

And part of this goal is just to create to wait get the sense of chaos so that he can then -- this is what we saw him do in 2020, to say, oh my goodness, the count is taking so long, something must be wrong. Nothing's wrong. The process just has to unfold the way it unfolds. And I think our job is going to be, over the next couple of days, to really help people understand what's happening and that it's okay if it takes a little longer to count the votes and to try to push back on the disinformation.

ACOSTA: Yes. We need to remind our viewers back in 2020, I was at the White House that night. I mean, Trump was saying that he had won before all the votes were counted.

FINNEY: That's right. ACOSTA: You know, it's funny that they were saying, stop the steal when, you know, he was trying to stop the counting on election night, when we had still votes coming in from Philadelphia and Detroit and so on.

Lance, I do want to ask you about this comment that Trump made over the weekend. He said at a rally yesterday that he wouldn't mind if someone tried to shoot through the media to get at him. Let's play that moment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I have this piece of glass here. But all we have really over here is the fake news, right? And to get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news, and I don't mind that so much.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: Your response to that, Lance?

TROVER: I've said it before and I'll say it again. Both sides do better when they stick to the issues. I mean, again, for the last month, I mean, I've talked about it on here. I wish he would stick to the issues.

ACOSTA: It's not a both sides thing. I just want to, you know -- it's on both sides --

TROVER: It kind of is. I mean, let me -- yes. Look, you know how I feel about this, Jim. I say it time and again, I wish you would not say this type of thing. We've seen the Harris campaign amplify violent rhetoric with fascism, Nazis and Hitler. They have, it's a fact over the course of the last month. So, again, I wish both sides would stick to not talking about this type of this angry, violent rhetoric.

I will want to point to, though, I think there's an interesting juxtaposition going on here with the Harris campaign. The Washington Post had a story over the weekend. You've seen her go positive here in the last couple 48 hours, and I think that's actually quite telling about where they're headed in this campaign because The Washington Post had a story over the weekend which said her super PAC had been advising them for weeks that they needed to get off the attacks on Donald Trump, that the attacks about fascism and all that other stuff were not working. And I think this is a sign to me over the course of the last 24 hours that they know they still have work to do with some of the voters out there.

FINNEY: But, Lance, that's not exactly what it said. They recommended that -- that was part of what the super PAC was seeing. And if you actually over the last couple of weeks, she has, in particular last week, increasingly, talking less about Trump and more about herself and more about the vision that she has for this country.

And, frankly, last night, and I will tell you through the end of this campaign, she's not going to talk about Trump. Why? Because she doesn't need to. She wants to make this election it's about the people it. Trump is the one talking about anger and grievance and violence. And she is trying to make this election about the American people and our future.

ACOSTA: Yes. And I do want to say -- go ahead, Lance, quick last word.

TROVER: I just want to say that's just not accurate. I mean, she they have spent the entire month of October attacking Donald Trump. That was the fact. I mean, the story reported out that the super PAC was saying her campaign was stalling out because she was spending too much time on Donald Trump.

FINNEY: That's not what it said, Lance. I've read that memo. I know that organization. I've talked to them. So, please don't misstate here and misrepresent the truth.

ACOSTA: Yes. All right, I appreciate the time. We're going to go to this Trump rally here in a few moments. I do want to say, though, you know, the hard working men and women of the press, they shouldn't be talked about in that manner. I just want to say, having been out on the campaign trail at those rallies, you know, they're human beings, too.

All right, guys, thanks so much.

Coming on the road of the White House runs through Pennsylvania. Up next, the message Vice President Kamala Harris is delivering to voters there. That's coming up.

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ACOSTA: Just a day away from one of the most consequential elections in American history, perhaps the most consequential one. And today, both campaigns are focused on the electoral prize of Pennsylvania. Vice President Kamala Harris will be crisscrossing the battleground state with five different stops. Look at that.

Joining us now, Democratic Congressman Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania. He's a surrogate for the Harris-Walz campaign. Congressman, how do you think the vice president is going to do in Pennsylvania? What do you think?

REP. BRENDAN BOYLE (D-PA): Well, you know, the beginning of this year, even before we knew all that would happen in 2024, I thought Pennsylvania was destined to be very close in a one point race. That's exactly what it was the last two presidential elections. And most of our statewide races have been like that in presidential years. And here we are literally the very last day of the campaign. And we're basically a one point race.

I will say, however, I think Kamala Harris has closed in a very strong position. This past weekend was incredible. I was crisscrossing my entire congressional district in the Philadelphia area, all sorts of activity and events. I really didn't see anything on the other side, which surprised me. Going back to when George W. Bush was running and McCain and Romney, and even Trump the first time you saw, the other side having field offices and a lot of activity as well. Really, I haven't seen that so much in 2024.

But in the end, though, I'll end where I began. I think it will be incredibly close and we'll be up very late tomorrow night into Wednesday.

ACOSTA: And do you think -- I mean, we've seen how the polls are so deadlocked. Might it come down to the ground game, these get out the vote operations in Pennsylvania that might make the difference?

BOYLE: You know, I've seen that actually in my own race when I was first running for Congress, and it's impossible really to capture in the polling beforehand. A ground game can make a difference of a few percentage points and even in a presidential race.

I think one previous example unfortunate from my perspective, but well-documented, was in 2004, the Bush ground game in Ohio and elsewhere added a few more points to what their public polling was suggesting. And then they were able to win that. Of course, there've been other examples on the Democratic side as well, especially when Barack Obama was running in '08 and '12, where he would do a little bit better than the polling was showing.

So, I hope that in a very close race, all of that activity, all of that investment early on that first President Biden, and then Kamala Harris made into the ground game will end up making the difference here in the state that will make the ultimate difference.

ACOSTA: And I don't know if you saw this. I'm sure you did. We were just talking about this a few moments ago, this very surprising poll out of Iowa that shows Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump in that state. That has not been a swing state or a battleground state throughout this campaign, but perhaps it is. And the Des Moines Register, which is a very respected pollster, released this poll over the weekend.

Are there elements of the, of the electorate in Pennsylvania where you could see a similar dynamic at play and perhaps surprise people a little bit?

BOYLE: Well, you know, Ann Selzer's track record at polling Iowa over 25 years is truly remarkable. She was the first to pick up both in 2016 and 2020 that Donald Trump

was doing a lot better than the polling was suggesting in those cycles. Whether this poll is accurate or not, I don't know.

But I will say it's actually not the only poll from Iowa to suggest that the ground is at least shifting somewhat toward Democrats. We are now investing heavily in two to three Congressional races in Iowa. We feel very good. I say we, House Democrats, feel very good that we will win at least one of those, if not two or three. So, there has been other polling out there suggesting that Iowa is not quite as red as it showed in 2016 and 2020. Now, Iowa, of course, has a large white population, it trends older. Pennsylvania does also have a large white population and we are the second oldest state in the union. So, I hope that this trend we're seeing in Iowa bleeds into Wisconsin, Michigan and as far east as here in Pennsylvania.

[10:25:02]

ACOSTA: And I guess, finally, I mean, which message do you think, which issue is sort of to the top? Is it inflation? Is it the economy? Is it abortion that you're hearing the most from voters in Pennsylvania? I mean, might it be? And perhaps it's something that's caught everybody by surprise what was said at the Madison Square Garden rally for Donald Trump a week ago, where one joke appeared to really alienate a lot of Latino voters in particular Puerto Rican voters in your state?

BOYLE: Yes, not just in my state, but specifically in my congressional district. But, you know, all of those issues you mentioned and more certainly matter. But if you're attempting to encapsulate all of it, I think Kamala Harris has the best line in the final week, and that is she will go to the Oval Office every day with a to-do list while Donald Trump will go in there with his enemies list.

The reality is that she's fighting to preserve the freedoms and rights of the American people, fighting for ordinary middle class and working Americans, while Donald Trump is a billionaire who is for billionaires. And I think in the end of the day, the fact that she's actually talking about the people and their issues and what can make their lives better while Donald Trump is talking about God knows what. I mean, one minute he's talking or suggesting about harm should be done to Liz Cheney. Another moment, you know, he's talking about getting into a garbage truck that he can barely get into himself. The next moment, you know, he's trying to spread hate or other conspiracy theories, including here in Pennsylvania.

In the end, I would put my chips on the campaign that is actually talking about what's best for the American people and how to help them.

ACOSTA: All right. Congressman Brendan Boyle, thank you very much for your time. We appreciate it.

BOYLE: Thank you.

ACOSTA: All right, coming up amping up the rhetoric, more from Donald Trump's closing message of this campaign. We're also monitoring a rally that is about to --

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