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Hello, and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics, power and prejudices.

This year, 2024, is an election year in America, a presidential election year.

And so we will be doing two podcasts a week,

rather than our usual one, because we want to and because we know you can't get enough

Americano in your life. I am delighted to be joined here in London by Matt McDonald, who is

the spectator's managing editor in America. and we're going to be talking about the polls

because there's been two big stories this week which is Trump and the trial in Manhattan

and then a lot of speculation as I've written about and we did the last podcast about

about who's going to be his vice president and so on and also the debates I suppose so

three stories

that have been going on but there was this very interesting poll on monday which trump was very

excited about because it showed him doing much better and matt what struck me about it is that

recently the polling has been showing a tightening. Biden's national deficit has been reduced.

He seems to be ahead now on the national polling. But in the swing states, he is still behind,

according to this big poll. How do you see the polls shaping up at the moment?

Well, yeah, I mean, it's still six months out from the

election. And so I think every poll you've got to take with a pinch of salt, but clearly

swing state polls are more consequential than the national ones. It is deeply concerning for

...