hey there i'm npr congressional
correspondent susan davis and i'm joined
by my friend and colleague domenico
montenarro hey domenico
hey sue so we're here to talk about the
electrical map just days before election
day i know you've got some rating shifts
so
let's start first with president trump
what are some of the states that have
shifted in his direction
well so far we have arizona which we've
moved from
lean democrat to toss-up and in joe
biden's direction
the big one is texas we moved texas from
lean republican to toss-up this is not
something
i did lightly but you know you just
can't ignore the polls they continue to
be close
and you can't ignore early voting texas
is up to almost 90 percent of its 2016
turnout just from early voting you know
that puts
president trump in a bit of a hole we
have joe biden at 279 electoral votes
with all the states that are leaning in
his direction
and president trump at just 125
electoral votes with all the states
leaning in his direction
what about states like new hampshire
well new hampshire we have
actually moving from lean democratic to
likely because the polls continue
to grow there and president trump is
just under water with his approval
rating
tremendously there she has a 58
disapproval rating there
take a state then like montana we have a
lot of these republican states that are
moving from likely
to lean republican montana is another
state where president trump
just like even as far as his approval
rating goes there's a competitive
senate race there where the democrat is
doing pretty well
and the look joe biden's probably not
going to win montana
but it's a high single digit race and
it's something to highlight
look new hampshire montana these are
states all states are important but they
don't have a ton of electoral votes
i am curious about what your thoughts
are on some of the states that have
bigger prizes specifically i'm thinking
about florida and north carolina which
we've been
focused so much on in the closing days
who isn't focused on florida right
the campaign certainly have they've
spent more than a quarter billion
dollars on tv ads
in florida for those 29 electoral votes
so yeah i mean this has traditionally
been one of the closest
races you know in presidential elections
in recent
past recent history and it's likely to
go that way again we've seen lots of
early vote they're headed for probably
record turnout
and both sides are really really pushing
to
to win that over i mean but it's more
key to president trump he has to win
that state right now
it's still a toss-up state but he needs
that he needs north carolina he needs
pennsylvania
if you were to give trump all of the
states that are in margin of error right
now that are toss-up states
he would be at 259 electoral votes joe
biden would be at 259 electoral votes
with pennsylvania the tipping point
state and that is something that
democrats and republicans
have been talking about since the
beginning of this election cycle
that pennsylvania could be the key state
well it seems fair to say that biden
going into election day has the
advantages he has the national polling
advantages
he's got polling advantages in some of
the key states but the trump campaign
will say that they just don't believe
the polls that the peace
his campaign is going to bring new
people new blood to the
to the electorate and pollsters are
missing it do you think that's possible
it's totally possible i mean pollsters
will tell you they've made huge
adjustments
from 2016 the biggest one on education
they didn't see
the big gap between whites with college
degrees and whites without college
degrees and that gap is even bigger this
time it looks like
according to surveys and they've really
tried to adjust for that which could
make a big difference
the trump campaign will tell you that
they think they can turn out
more whites without college degrees
because they only turned out at a 58
percent
rate in 2016 but they think that there's
more of them to juice to be able to turn
out
they'll also tell you that they've done
really well registering voters
especially in key states they've
outregistered democrats by a lot
in places like pennsylvania north
carolina and florida
i don't think we can have this
conversation uh and not remind
listeners viewers that we may not know
the answer to this question on election
night for many factors including the
pandemic and how people are voting this
year
how patient do you think the country's
gonna need to be
very patient you know the waiting is the
hardest part right as tom petty says
i mean the fact is like we just don't
know
you know in 2016 the associated press
who we rely on for calls called the race
at 2 29
a.m so you know get your coffee on stay
up late if that's what you want to do or
go to bed
and check it out in the morning i looked
back and checked at 306
am i wrote a post that said hillary
clinton might win the popular vote by my
back of the envelope math
so you know and she clearly did by 3
million votes because of how slowly
california
can count so that's going to have big
implications not just for the
presidential election
but for a lot of those down ballot races
house races and senate races
and you and i of course will both be
part of npr's live election coverage
which you can find on your local npr
station
we'll also be providing all kinds of
reporting on npr.org and of course
the npr politics podcast i'm npr
correspondent susan davis and i'm
domenico montana our senior political
editor and correspondent