Swamp Notes: Why the polls aren’t budging
FT News Briefing
Forhecz Topher
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 2 November 2024
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In a campaign full of twists and turns, one thing has stayed surprisingly steady: the polls. On this final pre-election episode of Swamp Notes, the FT’s senior data journalist Oliver Roeder and deputy Washington bureau chief Lauren Fedor explain why the polls have barely budged this cycle, and how Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are motivating their voters in the race’s final days.
Mentioned in this podcast:
One week to go: what is the state of the US presidential race?
What the polls can’t tell us about America’s election
Trump rally’s Puerto Rico slur lands with a thud in Pennsylvania
‘Behind the Money’: US election betting is on a roll
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Swamp Notes is produced by Ethan Plotkin, Sonja Hutson, Lauren Fedor and Marc Filippino. Topher Forhecz is the FT’s executive producer. The FT’s global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Special thanks to Pierre Nicholson.
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The FT News Briefing is supported by Equinoor, the UK's energy partner. |
| 0:06.5 | Learn more at equinore.com.uk. |
| 0:12.2 | Hillary Clinton was ahead in national polls by six points going into election day in 2016. |
| 0:19.1 | Pollsters showed Joe Biden with an almost 10-point lead in November 2020. |
| 0:24.3 | But 2024 might be the closest race ever. |
| 0:28.5 | With just three days left, Kamala Harris leads Donald Trump nationally by just over one percentage point. |
| 0:34.9 | And the margins in swing states are even slimmer. |
| 0:44.8 | This is Swamp Notes, the weekly podcast from the FT News Briefing, where we talk about all |
| 0:49.8 | of the things happening in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. I'm Sonia Hudson. And this week we're |
| 0:56.6 | asking, who's going to be the next president of the United States? Just kidding. Predicting elections |
| 1:02.5 | these days is definitely a fool's errand, but we are going to talk about polling. And here with me |
| 1:09.1 | to do that is Lauren Fidor. She is the FT's Deputy Washington |
| 1:12.7 | Bureau Chief. Hi, Lauren. Hi, Sonia. And we've also got Oliver Rader, the FT's U.S. |
| 1:18.1 | Senior Data Journalist. Hi, Ollie. Hi. Thanks for having me. Thanks for being here. So, |
| 1:23.5 | Ollie, I posed a pretty straightforward question at the top here. |
| 1:30.1 | Who do the polls say will win the White House on Tuesday? |
| 1:35.9 | The polls, as I'm sure you know, don't say much at all. The polls have been historically close nationally. |
| 1:39.3 | The polls have been historically close in a number of swing states. |
| 1:43.9 | The polls have been pretty static over the last |
| 1:47.0 | couple months on top of being historically close. Not only they're close, they've been close for a long |
| 1:53.0 | time. The prediction markets that feed on these polls have been 50-50 for weeks and months now. |
| 2:00.1 | This is a genuine coin toss at this point. So we're all just |
... |
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