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S2 Episode 13: US election update
5 Plays7 months ago
Join us today as we sit down and discuss the latest developments in the US election race. Along with this, we will be sharing our final predictions for the outcome.
Do feel free to reach out and email us at debatablediscussions1@gmail.com
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Transcript
Introduction to Election Discussion
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Debatable Discussions podcast.
00:00:03
Speaker
Today, me and John will be talking about the US election and we'll give our thoughts, opinions, and as well a bit of information on what has happened and what will happen in our opinion.
Trump's Speech in Pennsylvania
00:00:15
Speaker
So, yes, the US election is fast approaching and we are seeing this battle between Trump and Harris really heating up.
00:00:24
Speaker
I mean, only yesterday, by the time this comes out, Trump would have been in Butler, Pennsylvania, at the site of his assassination, giving another speech to a pretty quite large and proud crowd of MAGA supporters.
Analyzing the VP Debate: JD Vance vs Tim Walz
00:00:38
Speaker
However, what's really been on the news recently is the vice presidential debate and this was obviously between J.D.
00:00:45
Speaker
Vaart and Tim Woltz.
00:00:47
Speaker
So Diane, can you perhaps quickly give your perspective on this debate?
00:00:52
Speaker
Yeah, so I thought, I watched the debate, I thought JD was the clear winner of it.
00:00:58
Speaker
You could tell a big difference, I thought, in not only media training that JD has had a bit more than Tim Walz, but also a difference in characters.
00:01:09
Speaker
In my opinion, you could see JD Vance a bit more of an introverted intellectual.
00:01:13
Speaker
Tim Walz, on the other hand, he's a teacher.
00:01:18
Speaker
more sort of folksy, if I could say so.
00:01:21
Speaker
He's, you know, he's at the rallies, he's like, oh, with the crowd.
00:01:25
Speaker
But on a one-on-one topic, conversation on policy, he got completely outcast by J.D.
00:01:31
Speaker
Vance.
00:01:33
Speaker
Also, it's very important to note that JD was very different in the debate to how many people expect him to act.
00:01:40
Speaker
So he was very nice.
00:01:42
Speaker
I thought, first of all, I'd like to commend both for having an actual debate and not screaming at each other, you're the worst.
00:01:51
Speaker
I haven't seen anyone be worse at your job, you know, how hard.
00:01:55
Speaker
yeah, you're fired and all that stuff.
00:01:57
Speaker
They've had an actual debate on policy, which was respectful.
00:02:01
Speaker
And I thought JD clearly won.
00:02:03
Speaker
What do you think, John?
00:02:04
Speaker
Yeah, I agree with you.
00:02:06
Speaker
And with JD, before this debate, everyone's perspective of JD was as this rather slightly wild...
00:02:14
Speaker
you could almost say bizarre, lunatic American politician.
00:02:18
Speaker
I mean, it's best summarising how Tim Walz called him kind of weird because he was quite weird.
00:02:23
Speaker
However, in the debate, he was not like that at all.
00:02:28
Speaker
He came across as, I guess you could say, quite mild, not really at all like his past sort of activities which have been dug up.
00:02:37
Speaker
And he came across as a better candidate to Tim Walz.
00:02:41
Speaker
And another quite nice characteristic of this debate, as you mentioned, was these, and I think I saw it, and this is how you could best say it, the cordial clashes between them.
00:02:52
Speaker
With Harris versus Trump, they're fierce clashes.
00:02:55
Speaker
There's little respect.
00:02:57
Speaker
I think in this debate, I think there was an element more of respect.
00:03:01
Speaker
And yes, there's primarily an element of greater respect, but J.B.
00:03:06
Speaker
Vance did come across as the better candidate, which was to most people's surprise as well.
00:03:12
Speaker
I was expecting it, though.
00:03:14
Speaker
I'm going to have to be fully honest.
00:03:15
Speaker
I think JD today is probably the best debater in American politics.
00:03:21
Speaker
And to me, that isn't very surprising.
00:03:23
Speaker
If you look at his past achievements as being editor of the Law Editorial at Yale, he's obviously very bright.
00:03:31
Speaker
Again, I think he's one of the more socially awkward intellectuals that you find, but he's definitely a very bright guy.
00:03:40
Speaker
And I also thought, you know, talking about respect, they agreed with each other.
00:03:43
Speaker
They said, I agree with Senator Vance, or I think Tim has the right approach on this.
00:03:49
Speaker
I think he wants to solve the issue, but I don't think Kamala Harris does.
00:03:53
Speaker
Also, what I thought was quite interesting
Impact of VP Debates
00:03:56
Speaker
from J.D.
00:03:56
Speaker
Vance was when Tim Welts talked about his son witnessing a shooting.
00:04:01
Speaker
Oh, yes.
00:04:02
Speaker
I thought that was, I don't know, I'm going to be honest, I don't know if he actually feels sorry or if it's just his political instincts came out.
00:04:09
Speaker
But whichever one, brilliant move from a PR perspective, frankly.
00:04:14
Speaker
Yeah, and you just wouldn't see that with Trump versus Harris.
00:04:17
Speaker
There's so much hatred between them.
00:04:19
Speaker
And that element of respect came across quite nicely, as you said there.
00:04:24
Speaker
I think the other characteristic which really came across is just how, in many ways, they showed why the vice president debate really isn't that significant.
00:04:34
Speaker
And that is in how they were attacking each other's running mates, mainly.
00:04:38
Speaker
And that's because whilst the vice president, you know, it can affect the result of the election.
00:04:45
Speaker
At the end of the day, you're voting for a president.
00:04:48
Speaker
And with vice presidents, you either have the active type or you have the inactive type, but the American people don't really know.
Election Strategies and Future Contests
00:04:56
Speaker
And in the past, I mean, if you think about it, Kamala's tried to be a bit more of an active vice president, but someone like Mike Pence,
00:05:04
Speaker
If you voted for Trump because you wanted to vote for Mike Pence, you'd been basically disappointed because you never heard from Mike Pence.
00:05:12
Speaker
So at the end of the day, whilst the debate has a bit of significance, the presidential debates are really the ones that matter.
00:05:20
Speaker
Yeah, I agree with that.
00:05:21
Speaker
And I think maybe here there was a bit of a...
00:05:26
Speaker
mistake on Kamala Harris's side on not picking Josh Shapiro.
00:05:32
Speaker
I thought he was the clear, clear pick for the VP role.
00:05:38
Speaker
I mean, governor of the biggest swing state in the US, very young, dynamic, vibrant, good match for JD Vance.
00:05:48
Speaker
No concerns about age or anything else, frankly.
00:05:53
Speaker
I think he would have been a very, very strong opponent in that debate.
00:05:56
Speaker
I thought here we could see that Tim Walsh's sort of lack of experience at this level of scrutiny kind of showed.
00:06:04
Speaker
He's very good at the rallies, again, very good with people.
00:06:07
Speaker
But when it comes to high levels of scrutiny on a one-on-one policy-based conversation, he got completely outclassed.
00:06:15
Speaker
Yes, Shapiro, as you said, he was the immediate front, like the front runner, basically to be Harris's vice president, because as you just said, then he's young firstly, but also he is most importantly, the governor of Pennsylvania, a huge swing state.
00:06:30
Speaker
And I mean, I've just looked at the results and well, the forecasting predictions and the Democrats are just slightly ahead in Pennsylvania.
00:06:39
Speaker
But that margin of victory or victory,
00:06:42
Speaker
of win would be so much larger had she had Shapiro's support so I think for him as well he will recognise when he sees Tim Walz's debate and he sees the results he will probably know that he could potentially have done a better job yeah I think definitely if let's say Trump does end up winning the election I think the 2028 election will likely be a match between J.D.
Polling and Election Predictions
00:07:08
Speaker
Vance and
00:07:11
Speaker
Josh Shapiro, in my opinion.
00:07:14
Speaker
If Trump wins, they are the two likely candidates who will be carrying on the mantle, as they say.
00:07:20
Speaker
So moving on now to a bit of a more general outline.
00:07:25
Speaker
Could you tell us, John, a bit about the polls?
00:07:27
Speaker
What are the polls saying?
00:07:29
Speaker
Who's leading?
00:07:30
Speaker
And is anyone leading or is it too close to call?
00:07:34
Speaker
So, yes, the polls at the moment do have Harris narrowly leading over Trump.
00:07:40
Speaker
And it is actually quite interesting because basically since the assassination attempt on Trump, there was a short period, a short-ish period of which Trump was leading.
00:07:50
Speaker
And then since it's just been Harris's support has gradually increased,
00:07:55
Speaker
And now actually over the past few weeks or so, it's sort of plateaued in reality, the support for her.
00:08:02
Speaker
But she is about 3% higher than Trump, which she'll be happy about.
00:08:06
Speaker
But the margin for victory, well, the margin she has over Trump is so small that it makes this election sound predictable because it's only about 2-3%.
00:08:17
Speaker
So really anything can happen, the smallest error, and that could just be reversed completely.
00:08:22
Speaker
Trump could be leading.
00:08:24
Speaker
So, I mean, obviously one of the things we thought about is can we give a prediction?
00:08:28
Speaker
But it's so hard at this point.
00:08:31
Speaker
It's not really in the past where you've got a clear front runner.
00:08:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:37
Speaker
I mean, yeah.
00:08:38
Speaker
I agree with you completely.
00:08:40
Speaker
I think it's...
00:08:42
Speaker
I think we'd be doing more harm than good by giving a prediction, to be honest, because it is way too close to call.
00:08:48
Speaker
I don't think there's any election in the past in US history that's been this close, this close from the election.
00:08:56
Speaker
I mean, we're very, very close.
00:08:58
Speaker
We're approaching the last sort of 100 metres of the election, if you could say so.
00:09:04
Speaker
And a 2% difference in a poll-based system means nothing because, you know, polls...
00:09:12
Speaker
I don't know how the accuracy level of this one, but many polls do say they have a 5% sort of margin of error.
00:09:20
Speaker
And if this one follows that sort of margin of error, then it doesn't mean anything.
00:09:26
Speaker
Yes.
00:09:27
Speaker
I mean, the only other election that I could really compare with how I think this one will sort of turn out is obviously the Al Gore in 2000.
00:09:37
Speaker
Al Gore Bush.
00:09:38
Speaker
I mean, he was so close.
00:09:41
Speaker
Really, really, he can almost feel it.
00:09:43
Speaker
I mean, he did win the popular vote, but it's not the electoral college.
00:09:47
Speaker
And so I can sort of see this election turning out like that.
00:09:50
Speaker
I think it will be close.
00:09:53
Speaker
However, that's from the perspective of this moment.
00:09:57
Speaker
We've got Trump, a very unpredictable person.
00:10:00
Speaker
And we've got Kamala, who's... Is her campaign that great?
Swing States Focus
00:10:04
Speaker
No.
00:10:04
Speaker
I mean, she talks the most about her weakest issue, foreign policy.
00:10:09
Speaker
And she talks the least about her best issue, which is abortion right now.
00:10:13
Speaker
So I think she really needs to change the direction.
00:10:16
Speaker
I think you can see as well that she is a bit experienced.
00:10:21
Speaker
She hasn't been through an open convention or even the primaries.
00:10:24
Speaker
So, I mean, she has been in the past with the primaries, but it's a bit different when you're actually winning the primaries because you get a bit of scrutiny from other candidates and you can work a bit on your positions.
00:10:36
Speaker
I also don't think that it's helping her because, frankly, the past five years of Biden,
00:10:43
Speaker
But four years of Biden haven't been fantastic.
00:10:47
Speaker
And she can't really say, well, you're happy with how it's been in the past because it's kind of her fault.
00:10:53
Speaker
So, yeah, I think her campaign probably isn't that great.
00:10:58
Speaker
I think she does need to focus more on her abortion policy.
00:11:02
Speaker
And I think, again, Trump is going to battle Pennsylvania.
00:11:06
Speaker
I, for one, think that is going to bring him a bit of support.
00:11:09
Speaker
It's going to revive a bit of the Trump cult.
00:11:13
Speaker
But again, it's very unpredictable.
00:11:16
Speaker
We frankly don't know anything about this election because it's one person who's inexperienced and then Trump who's, you know, Trump.
00:11:27
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, as you said there, her track record as a vice president was just rather dismal.
00:11:32
Speaker
I mean, she failed on immigration.
00:11:34
Speaker
She couldn't really get much policies elsewhere.
00:11:36
Speaker
I mean, she tried hard, but she reached little success.
00:11:40
Speaker
The other thing, which is obviously a key factor and which we slightly earlier on slightly alluded to, is the swing states.
00:11:47
Speaker
So I thought I'd quickly go through how all the swing states are looking.
00:11:52
Speaker
So the largest swing state, as we mentioned, is Pennsylvania.
00:11:56
Speaker
So they've got 19 electoral college votes.
00:11:59
Speaker
So it's significant winning it.
00:12:02
Speaker
At the moment, it's the Democrats just slightly winning.
00:12:05
Speaker
However, with Pennsylvania and Trump, he's really focusing a lot of effort on a manpower on Pennsylvania.
00:12:12
Speaker
It really could go either way.
00:12:15
Speaker
I mean, it's hard to predict, but I do see it perhaps going slightly towards the Democrats.
00:12:21
Speaker
But the margin of victory overside would be so narrow.
00:12:25
Speaker
I wouldn't.
00:12:25
Speaker
Yeah, I wouldn't be so sure.
00:12:27
Speaker
I think I would actually, depending on the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, how that goes, I think that could change it completely because it's clearly going to bring...
00:12:36
Speaker
a big, big, big shift in the Republicans in Pennsylvania.
00:12:43
Speaker
He's going back to that place where he rose as this God-chosen leader, as he would like to claim it.
00:12:49
Speaker
And I, for one, would see the state going red.
Final Election Predictions and Future Candidates
00:12:53
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, but by the time of recording this, the rally has happened.
00:12:57
Speaker
So the rally has happened, and the Democrats still are slightly winning after that rally.
00:13:04
Speaker
So that's why I'm more inclined to say them, but it is just such a toss-up, but no one knows really.
00:13:11
Speaker
Even after the rally, they do have that slight margin of victory, which is favouring them.
00:13:15
Speaker
North Carolina is the second biggest.
00:13:18
Speaker
They're drifting towards the Republicans a little bit more significantly as well.
00:13:25
Speaker
So that's a slight indication of how it will be, but still, the margins of victory are so small.
00:13:33
Speaker
Yeah, and similar sorts of thing with Nevada, very small margin of victory.
00:13:40
Speaker
The only swing states where we see perhaps a slightly more dominant performance from either party are in Michigan and Wisconsin.
00:13:49
Speaker
So the Democrats in both of those places are winning by 1.6 points.
00:13:54
Speaker
However, that would just be a direct result of Tim Walts, who is from that Rust Belt area of America.
00:14:02
Speaker
Yeah, no, I definitely agree with the polls on those two.
00:14:07
Speaker
But again, Pennsylvania and North Carolina are simply too close to court, I think.
00:14:14
Speaker
I would see Pennsylvania going red and the other one going blue.
00:14:17
Speaker
The polls take a complete different.
00:14:20
Speaker
So I think we'll have to see.
00:14:22
Speaker
But it's definitely been a very, very interesting couple of weeks in the election run-up.
00:14:28
Speaker
So I think now for some closing sort of predictions.
00:14:36
Speaker
I think that Pennsylvania would be going to the Republicans, North Carolina to Democrats.
00:14:46
Speaker
And I'm not very sure who's going to win.
00:14:48
Speaker
John?
00:14:49
Speaker
I would say...
00:14:55
Speaker
Personally, I'd say North Carolina goes Republican.
00:15:00
Speaker
Also from that, even though it's a swing state, so it could go either way, just from the last election as well, how it is Republican at the moment.
00:15:08
Speaker
Biden won at the last, I mean, Trump won at the last election for the Republican.
00:15:15
Speaker
So I think, I see North Carolina personally going Republican.
00:15:20
Speaker
Pennsylvania is a lot harder to call because the margin is...
00:15:24
Speaker
significantly smaller than in North Carolina, which is already a very small margin of victory.
00:15:29
Speaker
At the moment, I would say it goes Democrat, even despite not having Josh Shapiro support.
00:15:35
Speaker
But Trump is really focusing on it because of the amount of electoral college votes, which he can gain from there.
00:15:43
Speaker
So I really do think it could go either way.
00:15:46
Speaker
I'd guess a very narrow victory to the Democrats.
00:15:53
Speaker
I think, yeah, I don't think it's possible to know for sure at this point, but I'm going to, just for the sake of having a bit of a right, I'm going to say it's going to be a very narrow victory to the Republicans.
00:16:05
Speaker
And then
00:16:06
Speaker
In 2028, I think we'll have a J.D.
00:16:08
Speaker
Vance, Josh Shapiro showdown.
00:16:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:13
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, for 2028, it's
Closing Remarks and Call to Action
00:16:15
Speaker
quite early to cool.
00:16:16
Speaker
But, I mean, the thing about them is that they're both young people.
00:16:19
Speaker
So they're both definitely viable candidates for the time.
00:16:22
Speaker
And obviously, from our perspective now, this seems the most...
00:16:25
Speaker
obvious choices so I think yes I think definitely from our perspectives right now for 2028 they're definitely the most obvious ones however we've got four years until then so I think yeah if there could be an emerging person who we just don't know but yeah
00:16:44
Speaker
Well, thank you very much everyone for listening to another episode of the Debatable Discussions podcast.
00:16:49
Speaker
I hope you enjoyed it.
00:16:50
Speaker
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00:16:57
Speaker
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00:16:58
Speaker
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00:17:10
Speaker
Thank you and see you next week.
00:17:12
Speaker
See you.