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Front Burner Transcript for November 5, 2024

Host: Jayme Poisson

SOUNDCLIP

DONALD TRUMP: I shouldn't have left.

JAYME POISSON: Hey, everybody, it's Jayme. I'm in studio with my colleague Paul Hunter, CBC's senior Washington correspondent. We are recording this on Monday, just a day before the U.S. election. Paul, hi. How's it going? How you feeling?

PAUL HUNTER: Hey, Jayme. Good to see you in person, by the way. This is a first.

JP: It's so great! It's so nice to have you right in front of me. Paul is here today to help us get ready to watch all the results coming in tonight. Think of this as a primer for parsing out all of the election coverage.

[Music: Theme]

JP: All right. So Paul, before we get to how to watch the election, I just want to get your thoughts on the last couple of days of campaigning, the final stretch. Let's start with the Harris campaign. What do you think is worth us talking about here?

PAUL HUNTER: Well, what I've thought was interesting was how her message has changed back to positivity and forwardness. What kind of America do you want, has been the question from her.

SOUNDCLIP

KAMALA HARRIS: And we have the momentum because our campaign is tapping into the ambitions, the aspirations and the dreams of the American people. Because we are optimistic and excited about what we can do together.

PAUL HUNTER: It's been a real kind of messaging roller-coaster from the Harris campaign I think. It started out all rainbows and unicorns after she sort of ascended to the, [JP: Yeah.] to being the nominee.

JP: Coconuts...

PAUL HUNTER: Yeah, exactly. All that kind of stuff. The memes and things like that.

SOUNDCLIP

KAMALA HARRIS: You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? [laughs]

PAUL HUNTER: And then it got dark in terms of attacking Trump. Um, an unserious candidate, a fascist...

SOUNDCLIP

KAMALA HARRIS: It is clear from John Kelly's words that Donald Trump is someone who, I quote, "certainly falls into the general definition of fascists." Donald Trump is increasingly unhinged and unstable. And in a second term...

PAUL HUNTER: And it was almost like there was a realization that, well, people have their opinions of Trump kind of cast in stone at this point, so you're not going to change anything with that. So she's gone back to where it began, which is, let's, let's turn the page. Let's move forward.

SOUNDCLIP

KAMALA HARRIS: We have to stop pointing fingers and start locking arms. It is time to turn the page on the drama and the conflict, the fear and division. It is time for a new generation of leadership in America.

[crowd cheers]

PAUL HUNTER: So that messaging, combined with where she has been -- she's spent a lot of time in Pennsylvania. Obviously, you know, the seven swing states, the battleground states, uniquely, effectively speaking for her and for Trump. But a lot of time in Pennsylvania, as if to underline the recognition that that is the place where this is going to turn.

JP: And what about the Trump campaign?

PAUL HUNTER: Darkness. Um. I will say, what has struck me about Trump in the last few days, was that he looks old and is sounding old.

JP: Yeah.

PAUL HUNTER: You know, the kinds of things that, you know, big media railed on about Joe Biden. But now he... You know, when it became Harris/Trump, everybody commented that now Trump's the old candidate. And then, you know, people kind of moved on from that because the news cycle, because, you know, doesn't last long these days. But the last few days he has looked tired, looked old.

SOUNDCLIP

DONALD TRUMP: I don't even sleep, you know. You know, I've gone through sixty-[indistinct] days, 62 days without a day off.

[crowd cheers]

DONALD TRUMP: Every single day.

PAUL HUNTER: Which I found interesting. But beyond that, it's resorting to attack, attack, attack, attack. If this goes to Harris, it's the apocalypse, right? It's, nothing will ever be the same again, darkness darkness darkness, scary scary scary, to the max.

SOUNDCLIP

DONALD TRUMP: This election is a choice between whether we will have four more years of gross incompetence and failure, or whether we'll begin the four greatest years in the history of our country. They're going to be the four greatest.

DONALD TRUMP: We start from a very bad place. We're a nation in decline. We're a nation in decline like we've never seen a decline. What they've done to our beautiful country is just, just so horrible.

PAUL HUNTER: And again, focusing on the states that matter. What-- Of the states, for him, it was interesting to see him go to North Carolina. That has been a dream of Democrats for some time now. The fact that Trump has been there the last couple of days suggests to me that Republicans are a bit nervous about what's going on in North Carolina. We'll see.

[music]

JP: Okay, so let's talk about some of those key states now and discuss what we can expect on election night. So you have a map that you actually...

PAUL HUNTER: I do.

JP: ...you actually drew out.

PAUL HUNTER: Here it is. [chuckles]

JP: It looks great. [PAUL: Thanks.] And just describe it, just describe it to me.

PAUL HUNTER: Yeah, I look at a lot of maps [chuckles] in this gig these days. So what I wanted to draw was something that really just isolated the states that matter. These are the seven battleground states. As I look at this, and I'll go counterclockwise on the map of the USA. And indeed, it's a pretty good rendition, I'm going to say.

JP: Honestly, I'm impressed.

PAUL HUNTER: Thank you. [JP: Yeah.] Nevada, Arizona, Georgia. North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. And then I put in red numbers in the middle of each of those states the number of electoral college votes that each one is worth. Because that makes it easier to figure out what needs to be done by either candidate on election night. So, I'm going to make your head spin a little bit here with some numbers. If you figure that all the rest of the states are going to go the way they are predicted and the way they historically have gone, let's throw those out the window. Because these seven are the only ones in play.

JP: Right. California goes blue...

PAUL HUNTER: Gone.

JP: Florida goes red.

PAUL HUNTER: Texas, red. New York, blue. Exactly. So Democrats need 44 electoral college votes after you add up all the others. Republicans need 51. So as I look at this map... here's the math part, Jayme. Wisconsin, 10 electoral college votes; 15 in Michigan; 19 in Pennsylvania. You know what that adds up to? 44. [JP: 44. Yeah.] If Harris wins those three, it's lights out.

JP: Is that the blue wall?

PAUL HUNTER: That's the blue, that's the blue wall that matters in this election. The blue wall, technically, it includes a few more states. That's-- They say blue wall because these are states that historically almost always go Democrat. So the blue wall states in play are those three. So, for the 2024, let's call that the blue wall. If she holds the blue wall, those three states, it's game over. As I look down the Eastern seaboard, I see... I'm going to include Pennsylvania here. North Carolina and Georgia. 19 in Pennsylvania; 16 in North Carolina; 16 in Georgia. You add those up: 51. [JP: Mm-hmm.] If Trump wins Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia, it's lights out for Harris and Trump wins. It's the same, same math, with the one commonality there, Jayme: Pennsylvania.

JP: Pennsylvania.

PAUL HUNTER: It all comes down to Pennsylvania.

JP: And we've talked about this on the show before. A lot of people think that whoever wins Pennsylvania is going to win this election.

PAUL HUNTER: Uh-huh. That's, that's a yes. [chuckles.] Probably, I say with an asterisk.

JP: Right.

PAUL HUNTER: There are other paths, right-- [cross-talk]

JP: And there could be surprises.

PAUL HUNTER: --but it gets complicated. There could be surprises.

JP: Well, talking about surprises, on your map, you've got all the seven swing states, right, but you also have Iowa highlighted. Why do you have Iowa highlighted?

PAUL HUNTER: With a big red question mark next to it. And who would have thought I would write 'Iowa' on a map about wondering what's going to happen in this election. Well, because on the weekend, what's known as the Selzer Poll from Ann Selzer in Iowa, one of the most highly regarded pollsters in the United States, mythical status because she/they gets it right. Saturday, comes out with a poll in Republican Iowa that shows Kamala Harris leaping ahead. And I say leaping by, I think, three points.

SOUNDCLIP

COMMENTATOR: Wow, this has thrown the political world for a loop because neither party go back here. Neither party has been treating Iowa as a battleground at the presidential level. Remember, Donald Trump did incredibly well here in '16 and '20, won by more than eight points. This would be -- if this actually happened, Harris ahead by three over Trump in Iowa -- that would be an 11-point shift for Harris in Iowa.

PAUL HUNTER: My producer sent that to me on Saturday night, my hotel, and literally, the phone fell from my hand. It's like, you've got to be kidding. So what does that mean, right? Iowa has six electoral college votes. That, unto itself, it's no small deal, but it's not, it's not necessarily going to turn it for Kamala Harris, if this is true. But what it could signal and what a lot of people wonder if it signals is... like, try to imagine a school of fish in the ocean, right. Swimming along. And all of-- You know how schools of fish work, right? One moves, they all move. And all of a sudden, boom, they all turn left. [cross-talk]

JP: A late break.

PAUL HUNTER: A late break, exactly. Is that what this means? Does what's happening, if it's accurate, does what's happening in Iowa mean that's happening throughout the Midwest? That, let's say, women, for example, have decided that, well, actually, reproductive rights matter? This is my chance to say yes to that. And if I don't... So maybe if I'm a Republican, I'm just going to hold my nose and say, No, no, this matters more than that. And the poll would suggest that a lot of people are doing that.

SOUNDCLIP

COMMENTATOR: You look at where Harris is drawing her support from in this Des Moines Register poll. Among women, 20-point advantage over Trump. This is particularly strong for her independent women and senior women. Trump obviously doing better with men. But one thing to keep in mind in Iowa, abortion has been front and centre there with that new six-week ban that went into effect this summer.

PAUL HUNTER: If it's... You know, one of the things you learn in this game is to not put too much emphasis on any one poll. [JP: Yeah.] But this comes back to the fact that this is the Selzer Poll and it's late in the game here. You know, the election is effectively now. So that was a big one.

JP: Yeah. People are saying possible that it's wrong. It's also possible that what's happening in Iowa is just happening in Iowa, I guess, too. I've heard that argument as well.

PAUL HUNTER: Indeed, indeed.

SOUNDCLIP

DONALD TRUMP: I got a poll I'm ten 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 Democrats and liberals? Why do they do that?

JP: You were talking about how mathematically it could work here, what states Trump would need to grab or Harris would need to grab to kind of get to that 270 number. I know that we won't know the patterns of how people will have voted night of, but just take me through who the campaigns have gone after here, what groups they think that they need to win. You already talked about women. Obviously, the Democrats have been courting them very hard. Just take me through a couple of the other big demographic groups.

PAUL HUNTER: Well, it's going to sound like I'm being facile here, but I don't mean it this way, because the truth is, it's a mosaic of groups that each party is going after. Women is one. And by the way, that's half the electorate.

JP: Yes.

PAUL HUNTER: Men--

JP: But obviously, women are not a monolithic group.

PAUL HUNTER: Not a monolith, for sure. Right. And other issues come into play for everybody. Men is another group. Not a [laughter] monolith, but also it's a big chunk of the electorate. There's been a lot of talk about men drifting away...

JP: Yeah, young men especially.

PAUL HUNTER: ...from the Harris side. Young men, especially. Which, by the way, speaks to how fleeting memory can be. Or for a lot of young men, they were not even of voting age during the Trump years, right, when Biden came in on an anti-Trump basis. Now, many people say, well, what was-- I don't really know anything about the Trump years. Right? The Hispanic-American group is a big part of the electorate now, and especially in light of the comments, not by Trump, but by obviously a kind of Trump surrogate, I suppose, at that rally in New York.

SOUNDCLIP

INSULT COMIC: There's a lot going on. Like, I don't know if you guys know this, but there's literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. Yeah. I think it's called Puerto Rico?

PAUL HUNTER: Pennsylvania, that we talk a lot about, has a-- [cross-talk]

JP: Big group of Puerto Ricans there.

PAUL HUNTER: --looooot of Puerto Ricans and Puerto Rican descendants. [JP: Yeah.] So how will that play? We talk a lot about the Arab American vote, the-- and Muslim American vote in Michigan. How will that play, especially in Detroit? You know, Harris has needed to walk that line. You know, the Biden administration has taken a lot of flak for its approach in the Middle East and the war in Gaza. All-- Even, you know, you talk about Hispanic Americans, and this goes back to 2016 when Trump was on the 'build the wall' mode. And I heard from a lot of voters in the southern states, and Arizona, being one of the battleground states, also a border state. They are not a bloc either, right? There are a lot of Hispanic Americans who say, yeah, build the wall, because illegal immigrants give me, the legal immigrant, a bad name. And I don't like that. So it gets complicated fast. But there really are all these, like, slivers of the electorate that both parties are targeting with their messages, and they have to hit all bases.

[music]

JP: I want to go through with you the various scenarios that could come up here. And just, when we're talking about how the night could end, what would be the tidiest way that it ends?

PAUL HUNTER: The tidiest way would be a big victory by one side or the other. And by big, I don't mean a large electoral college win. I mean large margins in individual states. [JP: Mm-hmm.] Winning by a lot in Georgia, winning by a lot in North Carolina, winning by a lot in Pennsylvania, Michigan or Wisconsin. Pick your state. The problem isn't the electoral college, it's the margins in the state. [JP: Right.] If it's clear that one person or the other widely wins in State X, Y, or Z, it gets a lot harder to challenge.

JP: Right. It makes it much harder to be like, oh, this county, we need to recount the votes in [PAUL: Exactly.] this county. It's too... [cross-talk]

PAUL HUNTER: If it's clear, it's--

JP: You know, there's only 100 votes separating...

PAUL HUNTER: It's so much harder to debate that, exactly. Or to say that it's rigged if everybody voted a particular way. I'm overstating a little bit, of course.

JP: Now let's do the more complicated paths. And take me through those.

PAUL HUNTER: Well. [chuckles] That's most of them.

JP: Yes. I mean, obviously, the first one is that one side or the other side ekes out an electoral college win, right. Gets to 270. But there's lots of very close...

PAUL HUNTER: The flip side is if the individual states... it's the mirror of what we were just talking about I guess, eh. If the individual states are, are, you know, won or lost on narrow margins, Donald Trump has not been shy about making himself clear that he/the Republican Party will challenge results of this. And if it is close, it is a lot easier to say it was rigged, they eked out a few fake votes, or they -- whatever he says happened.

SOUNDCLIP

DONALD TRUMP: All this money on machines, and they're going to say, we may take an extra 12 days to deter--

[members of crowd shouting indistinctly]

DONALD TRUMP: And what do you think happens during that 12 days? They are fighting so hard to steal this damn thing.

PAUL HUNTER: The key to all of that, or the linchpin, I guess, is Pennsylvania. That one again, right. The thing in Pennsylvania is, unlike a lot of other states that learned lessons in 2020 about how to speed up the vote count, Pennsylvania did not. So Pennsylvania, it may not have a final count, almost certainly won't have a final count Tuesday night. If it's very close in Pennsylvania, which all the polls have suggested it will be, and we're late into the night and a lot of votes haven't been counted -- which, by the way, would be normal, because they have a lot of mail-in votes and they're not allowed to start-- in Pennsylvania, they're not allowed to start processing the mail-in votes until election day. That takes time. So it's normal that it'll go late. It's not indicative of any rigging of the system. If it's close, the expectation is that Donald Trump will say, Enough of this, let's move on. I'm the winner. Look, I'm ahead by X amount, let's call off the rest of it because it should be all counted today. Or whatever it is that he'll say. So keep an eye on what Donald Trump does late into the night as the votes are still being counted in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania was the one in 2020, it wasn't till Saturday [JP: Mm-hmm.] that they came out with it, right? Normal. So, to answer the question, the narrower the margins, the easier it would be, presumably, for Donald Trump to say, hey, something's fishy here. And then the question is, what-- not only the legal battles that will begin with that, which, by the way, Democrats are anticipating, but what will people, broadly, what will people out in the wild think or do or behave or how will they act if Trump-- I've been to so many Trump rallies, as you, as you well know. We've talked about them, Jayme. Um, a lot of nice people at these. MAGA has a lot of nice people, but they are true believers. And if Donald Trump says something, they believe him. So if he says he won, the system's rigged... 75 million people or thereabouts will vote for him in this election...

JP: Yeah, what are they going to do?

PAUL HUNTER: What are they going to do?

[music]

JP: What are you thinking about as we head into this election people say is among the most consequential of our time? You know, not just for the U.S., but for the world. What's at the top of your mind?

PAUL HUNTER: That we don't know what's going to happen. And yet... These are not two candidates with a nuance of difference in their view of where they want to take America. They are polar opposites. They are 180 degrees from each other. You couldn't find two platforms, two parties, two candidates with more differing views for this country. Obviously, you know, Trump's is dark. Harris has been -- I'm not trying to personally characterize anything, but hers, by and large, has been more positivity and let's move on from all that, and, and turn the page, etc. And yet we don't know. And yet it will come down to the wire. And yet the seven states that are in play are neck and neck, and neck and neck, and neck and neck. To me, that's remarkable. Usually you have a vibe, right? Usually you can sort of tell. It could go one way or the other. But it's not, but this is like, one way... [chuckles] and I'm stretching my arms out here. Or the other way. I, I... I find that hard to imagine. It kind of blows my mind, to be honest, that we've come to this at this point on this day, and we still don't, just don't have any idea how this is going to end.

JP: Paul, I really want to thank you for coming by. You and I are both going to be watching this very closely tonight. I know that you're going to be on CBC all evening on their TV special. So we'll tune in for sure.

PAUL HUNTER: And maybe into the next day, too. Who knows?

JP: It sounds like probably, right? [laughter]

PAUL HUNTER: It may well be. Exactly, yeah. Thanks, Jayme. It's always my pleasure.

[Music: Theme]

JP: All right. That is all for today. Just a note to say that we are going to be up very, very late Tuesday night, and we'll have an episode ready for you Wednesday morning.

A viewer's guide to U.S. election night - Transcript

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