How Pro-Palestinian Protests Could Impact Presidential Election: Political Scientist Weighs In

5 months ago

Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago Charles Lipson joined "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss polling for the general election.

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Transcript

00:00Now, recent general election polling shows Trump and Biden neck and neck in a head-to-head matchup,

00:06but recent polling in swing states show that Biden is gaining some ground.

00:11What do you make of all these numbers?

00:14The first thing to say, first, it's almost certainly will be a close election in terms

00:19of overall numbers. That doesn't always mean that the Electoral College will turn out closely

00:24because you could win four or five states in a very close election and win overwhelmingly

00:31in the Electoral College, but even lose the popular vote. But the key thing the audience

00:38needs to know about polling as it leads up to the election is that until Labor Day,

00:48they ask people who are registered voters. Registered voters aren't always the likely

00:55voters. So, for example, people who are very concerned about overturning Roe v. Wade,

01:04the Dobbs decision, they will be almost certainly be voters, right? But they may be overwhelmed

01:13in the polling by people who, it turns out, have sort of less intense views and may not show up.

01:21And one of the things that we're seeing also in polling is that there is less interest

01:28in the presidential election this year than in previous years. That may be because it's

01:33the first time two candidates who ran against each other before are running again since

01:40Eisenhower and Stevenson ran against each other in 56. But for whatever the reason,

01:49it's likely to be close. And I think a key state will be Pennsylvania. It would be hard

01:56to win the presidency for either candidate without winning Pennsylvania. It used to be

02:01Florida and Ohio. Those are now pretty securely Republican states. But Pennsylvania is a true

02:08toss-up. So actually is North Carolina and Georgia. These used to be solid Republican states.

02:19Well, at least a couple of them were. But we're seeing a change in the electorate. We're also

02:26seeing a change in the composition of each side's electorate. The people who would have been

02:35Harry Truman Democrats now vote Republican. They like Donald Trump. And a lot of the wealthy

02:45suburbs of Washington and New York and Chicago and everywhere else are now pretty reliably

02:53Democrat. One of the interesting questions, Brittany, is whether all the chaos on the streets,

03:02all the pro-Palestinian demonstrations and the riots at universities,

03:07which are pretty far removed from the kind of Democrats you see in the suburbs, whether that

03:15will either force them not to go to the polls or even vote Republican. So that's all up in the air.

How Pro-Palestinian Protests Could Impact Presidential Election: Political Scientist Weighs In

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