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Inside Politics
Polls Show Wide Gender Gap In Presidential Race; Michelle Obama's Appeal To Men: "Take Our Lives Seriously"; Julia Roberts Voices Ad Reminding Women That Voting Is Private; Harris Needs Strong Turnout In Philadelphia To Win The State; CNN Poll: Most Voters Don't Trust Scotus With Election Decisions. Aired 12:30-1p ET
Aired October 28, 2024 - 12:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[12:33:59]
DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: This presidential race could be a battle of the sexes. We're not talking about the candidates, but the voters. Poll after poll show a clear split. Trump winning men, Harris winning women. Though black and Hispanic men will still almost certainly choose Harris by double digits, Trump may be cutting into her margins.
Former First Lady Michelle Obama had a message for men over the weekend in Michigan.
(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)
MICHELLE OBAMA, FORMER FIRST LADY: Let me warn you, your rage does not exist in a vacuum. If we don't get this election right, your wife, your daughter, your mother, we, as women, will become collateral damage to your rage.
(END VIDEOCLIP)
BASH: Trump and his allies are still leaning hard into the hyper masculine bro culture. Here he is Saturday welcoming the Penn State wrestling team to the stage.
(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I don't know if this platform can hold them because that's a lot of muscle. You know muscle is much heavier than fat. They tell me fellas, is that right? But I'd love to have the team come up here.
AUDIENCE: By DJ Trump.
TRUMP: I was just thinking maybe they could take over the gang. They could knock the hell out of those guys.
(END VIDEOCLIP)
[12:35:14] BASH: For our guide to the gender gap, I am joined by two expert pollsters, Republican Neil Newhouse and Democrat Anna Greenberg. Hello?
ANNA GREENBERG, DEMOCRATIC POLLSTER: Hello.
BASH: You were just saying in the break that you guys are done with your polling. Now you're just --
NEIL NEWHOUSE, REPUBLICAN POLLSTER: We're observers. We're --
BASH: You're observers. All right, good.
GREENBERG: We're just crashing (ph) websites like everybody else.
BASH: Well, you know what? You are expert observers, so I'm glad to have you here. I just want to start on the Michelle Obama message. I'll start with you, Neil. Is that, do you think, going to help with some Republicans who are kind of on the fence, Republican men, or even Democratic men?
NEWHOUSE: I mean, if you look at Michelle Obama's numbers, she's not particularly popular among Republican men. So, it's going to fall on deaf ears. It's -- that's not a resonant message among Republicans right now.
You know, she can say it, but the more effective message probably was Trump with the Penn State wrestlers in Pennsylvania. That has a specific goal, a specific audience, and a target group, and a key state.
BASH: Are there enough of the people in that audience and when you -- and describe what you mean by that audience.
NEWHOUSE: First of all, you talked about the gender gap. Democrat -- women have voted for Democrats in every single presidential election over Republicans since 1980. That's when we were kids, more or less. You know, men are inclined to vote Republican. Women are inclined to vote Democrat. And in Pennsylvania, when you're looking at lower educated men, that's what Trump's trying to really kind of push the margins on and that's what that rally was for.
BASH: But let's look at some of the actual numbers just based on the current polling. This is ABC/Ipsos, Trump among men up 6, Harris among women 14, CBS, Trump up 9, Harris up 12, our poll CNN is Trump plus six among men, Harris plus six among women.
GREENBERG: Right. And women are actually a bigger portion of the electorate and they actually have higher turnout rates.
BASH: Do you agree that the gender gap is just, it is what it is since 1980 or is it broader now, or is it deeper now?
GREENBERG: It's deeper now because since Trump was elected, we've seen a massive shift of college educated women to the Democratic Party. And if you -- and it's endured. So in '18, '20, and '22, and now in '24, and that is, so it's a bigger margin among -- I mean, Mitt Romney won white college educated women, now 60 percent of white colleges are going to vote Democratic, voted for Biden, are going to vote for Harris, so it's deeper.
The other thing we're seeing is an early vote. While it's very difficult to make any predictions about anything with early vote, we are seeing more women vote early than in -- as a proportion than we have seen, including Republican women. And that, I think, suggests pretty high turnout, pretty high enthusiasm among Democrats, I mean, among women voting for Democratic candidates this year.
NEWHOUSE: And Dana, what -- I mean, Anna nailed it, too. What we're seeing, not just a gender gap, but an incredible education gap. And that's, I mean, that's even wider than the gender gap. I mean, lower educated voters are voting overwhelmingly for Donald Trump, higher educated voters voting overwhelmingly for Kamala Harris.
GREENBERG: If they're white.
NEWHOUSE: Well, even -- across that, but I mean, it is -- it's astounding. It's like a 40-point gap by education level across the country.
BASH: Yes. It's education. It's which is -- it's socioeconomic status.
GREENBERG: I mean, the challenge for Trump is that the group that he's appealing to are the lowest turnout voters, right? They are people who didn't vote in 2020, they are people who voted very quickly, they're younger, they're less educated, they're the kinds of people who are not reliable voters.
That plus the fact that he doesn't really have much of a field operation. So I understand what you're saying, Neil, you know, you're right about the Penn State wrestlers is just sort of the right --
NEWHOUSE: Yes.
GREENBERG: -- message to this group, but they are the hardest people to get out to vote.
NEWHOUSE: And this is a huge change from a decade ago. When Republicans were higher educated, Democrats lower educated, easier to turn out our vote. We always look for lower turnout election. Now this year, the higher the trend of the election, probably the better Trump does.
BASH: That is so fascinating.
GREENBERG: Right.
BASH: I want you to look at part of an ad from a group called Vote Common Good. They're an evangelical, progressive group, and they're looking for what has now been dubbed the shy Kamala Harris voter.
(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Your turn, honey.
JULIA ROBERTS, AMERICAN ACTRESS: In the one place in America where women still have a right to choose. You can vote any way you want. And no one will ever know.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you make the right choice?
ROBERTS: Sure did, honey.
(END VIDEOCLIP)
BASH: Sure did, honey. I mean -- and that was Julia Roberts narrating.
[12:40:03]
NEWHOUSE: It's hard to really assess that. I mean, we -- in the '19 -- I mean, sorry, in the 2016 election, we had about 19 percent of voters who were shy Trump voters, who didn't tell anybody they're voting for Donald Trump.
We even tested it this time on either Kamala or on Trump. It's an interesting approach.
BASH: It isn't the point you can't test it?
NEWHOUSE: Well, you -- well --
BASH: But it's harder to test because by definition they're shy?
NEWHOUSE: It is, yes, it's really tough to test. But we know what's really interesting is, every poll indicates this is a dead heat race, I mean, a tie race. I mean just every state is within, you know, a couple of points, I mean, at most.
Ads like that could make a difference on the margins, potentially, and this race can be decided on the margins. So you don't know.
GREENBERG: Sure. I mean, I think it's a little bit of a sexist idea that there's a bunch of women who are sort of not able to pub, you know, be who they are with their spouse and so they have to secretly go vote a certain way.
I sort of, I'm a little bit skeptical and a lot of the things I've seen about this are sort of speculation, anecdotal and not really based on any kind of data. We're at such a polarized electorate with such siloed information.
I would be shocked if there's a lot of shy voters. Most people aren't in spaces where they can't be who they want to be politically.
BASH: Yes. I mean, I was on -- in Pennsylvania with some volunteers and they were saying that they were knocking on doors. The man at the door saying we're voting X way and the woman didn't say anything. So, we'll see.
GREENBERG: Hopefully. BASH: Thank you both. So fantastic to get your expertise --
NEWHOUSE: Thank you.
BASH: -- and to see you both.
NEWHOUSE: OK.
BASH: Thank you.
NEWHOUSE: See (ph) you again.
BASH: Coming up, the land of cheese and steaks and, excuse me, cheese steaks, never going to be allowed in Pennsylvania again. And Rocky Balboa could decide the next president. We're going to break down the power of Philadelphia, next.
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[12:46:16]
(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)
KAMALA HARRIS (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: And victory runs through Philly, runs through Pennsylvania.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
HARRIS: You all have been doing such extraordinary work and truly the path to victory runs through Philly and it runs through Pennsylvania and it runs through all of you.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
(APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEOCLIP)
BASH: That was Vice President Harris yesterday in Philadelphia. She spent the day talking to voters at a black church, a barber shop, a black owned bookstore, a youth sports center, and a Puerto Rican restaurant. If she's going to win the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, she is going to need a very strong turnout in the city of brotherly love.
Phil Mattingly is here for a deeper dive into what we see. I mean, we talk about all the time how important Pennsylvania is.
PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR & CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: Yes.
BASH: And, in particular, the cities for her as a Democrat. Show us the numbers.
MATTINGLY: We'll drill into Philly in a second.
BASH: OK. MATTINGLY: But I want to get some big picture as to why this state, sorry, Commonwealth Jake Tapper is so critically important beyond just the 19 electoral votes. And if you don't believe me, look at the ad spending since Joe Biden dropped out of the race.
Pennsylvania combines for almost 460 -- more than $460 million outside groups, plus campaigns, just since Kamala Harris got through (ph) to the race.
BASH: They're like literally out of airwaves. There's no more airwaves to buy there.
MATTINGLY: There's nothing left to preserve --
BASH: Yes.
MATTINGLY: -- unless you know a guy, which -- and people in Philly may. But, you compare that to Michigan, which is the next closest state in terms of the spend right now, it's more than $100 million than the next closest state. So, the spend tells a huge story, obviously. The candidate visits tell a huge story.
The Vice President spending all day yesterday in Philadelphia, the former president, J.D. Vance, Tim Walz, all constantly cycling through the states, visit after visit after visit. What are they looking to do here at the 2020 map? Obviously, because that was the last analog that we have at this point in time, but also because it's very similar to the strategy that both campaigns are using.
Let me simplify it for you. If you are the Harris campaign, this is essentially where you're looking. These counties, these are suburban counties based on how we can gauge things from the census. And when you look at these counties, you see some red counties, but in all -- but two of the red counties that we consider suburban, Donald Trump actually lost vote in terms of margin compared to his 2016 win.
In all of the blue counties, obviously Harris won. But it's not just that she won in these suburban counties, it's how she won in these suburban counties. If you tick through those collar counties, Chester, Delco, up here in the Montgomery, on almost every single one of them --
BASH: Is it Biden --
MATTINGLY: -- Joe Biden is winning these counties by 40,000, 50,000, 60,000 votes more than what Hillary Clinton was putting up in 2016. They were making huge gains in this area, similar somewhat to -- in Allegheny County with Pittsburgh. As for Donald Trump, it's quite simple.
Let's go to the rural counties in the state. What do those look like? You see all the red. There's a huge number of counties. Now, the population density is significantly less than what we see in the color counties, where Trump was running up huge margins, even in his loss.
Trump campaign wants him to run up even bigger margins -- BASH: Yes.
MATTINGLY: -- and hold down Harris and her battlegrounds.
BASH: Which is a huge reason why he's running the campaign he's running. He wants to get -- make all of those red areas even redder --
MATTINGLY: Yes.
BASH: -- with the margins. Tell me about Philly and the city because --
MATTINGLY: Right.
BASH: -- there's no question that the city of Philadelphia will go for Kamala Harris, as we've been saying with the collar counties, it's about the margins.
MATTINGLY: Margins are everything. Yes, they want to run up their numbers in their big strongholds. That's what Kamala Harris is trying to do in the Colorado counties. That's what Donald Trump is trying to do in Butler and Washington County around Allegheny and up here as well.
Let's go into Philadelphia. There's concern inside the Democratic Party about what happened in Philadelphia in 2020. And you'll say, what? Look at that margin. How is that even possible? The margin actually dropped from Hillary Clinton back in 2016, from Barack Obama back in 2012.
And the concern is that not the entirety of the city. As you know, Philadelphia is going to go very heavily towards Kamala Harris.
[12:50:00]
It's parts of the city, particularly some of the Latino wards, which is interesting, given what's happened over the last 24 hours, started shifting away to Donald Trump. So did African American voters as we've seen some strength with over the course of the last several weeks. That's a problem here. And that's why you saw the Vice President spend so much time in Philadelphia yesterday.
BASH: Yes, that is fascinating. They're huge, huge wins, but she needs it to be --
MATTINGLY: Huger.
BASH: -- huger.
MATTINGLY: Well, to get some more (ph).
BASH: I was going to say that. I'm glad you said it, not me. Thanks, Phil.
MATTINGLY: Yes.
BASH: Coming up, we have a new CNN poll of how voters think each candidate would handle a loss.
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[12:55:06]
BASH: This may not surprise those who lived through the 2020 election, but most voters think former President Trump will not concede if he loses next Tuesday. A new CNN poll shows only 30 percent of registered voters think he would accept defeat. 73 percent say Vice President Harris would.
And if the Supreme Court ends up having to get involved, the majority say they don't trust the justices to make the right decisions. Some troubling numbers there ahead of what could be one of the closest elections we've ever seen.
Thank you so much for joining Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts after the break.
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