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00:00To the US now. And in an election year, this is the week when the race for the White House
00:07usually begins in earnest. There's around two months to go until the big day itself
00:12and things are pretty much neck and neck. According to the FiveThirtyEight.com election
00:19polling channel, their average of the polls, the current Vice President Kamala Harris has
00:25a slight lead. She's on 47% whilst Donald Trump is at just under 44%. Well part of what
00:34explains that is an apparent gender divide that exists in the US electorate. Take a look
00:41at these figures from Ipsos, ABC News and the Washington Post. Since the Democratic
00:46Convention, Kamala Harris has the support of 54% of women and 46% of men. For Donald
00:55Trump, it's the opposite. He has the edge with male voters, 51%, but only has 41% support
01:03with women. So why is there such a discrepancy between male and female voters? Well, some
01:10have suggested that just one of the problems for the Republicans might be Donald Trump's
01:15running mate, JT Vance. He's faced some criticism in the past for comments like this. We're
01:22effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs by a bunch of
01:29childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've
01:33made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too. Well I'm joined
01:38now by Democratic pollster Joel Benenson who's worked for both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton's
01:44presidential campaigns. Thank you very much for joining us. Just first of all, what's
01:50your assessment of the strength of both candidates at the moment? Well, I think we're headed
02:00for a very close election. You know in our country, unlike yours, we have this electoral
02:10college which means the state votes matter. You have to pile up a number of electoral
02:18college votes and right now it still shows it's a very close race between Vice President
02:28Harris and Donald Trump. Now we are seeing, we look typically at a lot of battleground
02:36states we call them. These are states that are essential if you're going to win the electoral
02:45college, as I said, where you have to get it to a certain number of votes among a collection
02:54of states to get to winning in the electoral college, which is we, you don't have popular
03:03vote elections here. It's not a parliamentary system. Right now we're seeing in recent polls
03:10a very close race. State of Pennsylvania, which is a large battleground state right
03:18now is tied. I think it leads towards Harris a bit. She's also leading in some of the Midwestern
03:26states, Michigan and Wisconsin. Georgia in the South is very close. That's a one-point
03:33race. So I think we're looking at what's going to be a few weeks coming up here, particularly
03:43with our televised debates happening, a critical few weeks. I also think Donald Trump keeps
03:52digging a hole for himself. You know, he had a terrible week. He went to Arlington
04:03National Cemetery, which is, of course, where we have a lot of military heroes who are interned
04:12there and buried there. You know, and he went there and he's he has been a critic of people
04:23who fought in wars, called them suckers and losers, didn't know why they would go. He
04:32never went. You know, he had bone spurs in his heels, supposedly during the Vietnam era.
04:40So he's got some self-inflicted damage here. And in some of the states he needs to win.
04:50It's very close. States like Nevada, it's basically a one-point race right now, pretty
04:57much tied. Arizona also pretty much tied. North Carolina, again, Trump only has a one-point
05:06lead there. And the state of Georgia is tied. You know, I think that my my comment about
05:14Trump is that as a candidate, he has what I call no reparative skills. He has no humility.
05:26He will never admit he's wrong. He will never apologize. Those are not traits that the
05:33American people find attractive. Well, the point is, you know, in a free world.
05:41Yeah. I mean, in terms of what you've just said, though, that clearly it is very, very
05:44close. And obviously there's been momentum after the convention for the Democrats and a
05:51surge of enthusiasm. But there is this gender divide, it seems, in the polling. Is that
05:58gender gap also there in the battleground states? And what do you think explains it?
06:05Well, generally, what explains it here is that the Republican Party has, you know, been
06:15the party that's responsible for the overturning of women's right to decide what to do with
06:24their own bodies. Donald Trump appointed the justices to the U.S. Supreme Court that
06:30overturned the protection of Roe v. Wade, which gave women the right to choose when
06:38and if they would, you know, go to full term when they were pregnant or not. And that choice
06:49should be left to women. And he has also got a terrible track record. He has famously recorded
06:59on videotape bragging about sexually assaulting women and saying he could get away with it
07:06because he was a celebrity. So and women tend to turn out a little more than men in our
07:15presidential elections. They are more reliable voters. And I think that is a weakness that he
07:22has never addressed. He's never apologized for anything because he thinks that's a sign of
07:29weakness on his part. And, you know, women are the more reliable voters here and in particular
07:39in some of the swing states, as I've mentioned. So, you know, unless he can repair some damage,
07:47which I don't think he's capable of, I think Harris, you know, has the advantage now as we
07:56head towards Election Day in November. OK, we will have to leave it there. But hopefully we'll
08:02speak again in the next couple of months. Joel Benenson, thank you very much indeed for talking
08:07to us today. Thank you.