STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Former President Trump will be the 47th president of the United States, according to a race call earlier this morning by The Associated Press. So let's talk through how that happened with pollster Christine Matthews. She's the founder and president of Bellwether Research and Consulting. And we should mention that she most recently worked for Larry Hogan, the former Maryland governor, who lost a race for Senate last night. So on a very personal level, anyway, condolences to you and to your side, Christine, and thanks for joining us this morning.
CHRISTINE MATTHEWS: Thank you so much.
INSKEEP: And let's talk about the national picture here - the huge news that former President Trump is going back to the White House. There's a contradiction, a seeming contradiction, that's on my mind. And maybe you're going to help me make sense of it. Analysts thought that Trump finished very badly in the last couple of weeks - rambling speeches, he seemed out of control, very dark, talking about demonic Democrats, he's at Madison Square Garden, his supporters are talking about Puerto Ricans and making references to Nazis, RFK, vaccines, fluoride. You could go on and on and on. But exit polling suggests that people who decided how to vote late broke for Trump. How could both of those things be true?
MATTHEWS: Right. So we were starting to get some indications that the late deciders might likely vote for Harris. We saw the venerable Ann Selzer's poll of Iowa that showed the surprising, you know, Harris lead in Iowa. So there was sort of this, like, feeling, this vibe shift that late deciders were going to Harris. But ultimately, they went to Trump. And what I think may explain that is when we were saying that, you know, as analysts were looking at how Trump was closing out his campaign with what looked like a lot of faux pas, a lot of, you know, alienating statements, that sort of thing, that ultimately didn't matter to voters.
So when I'm looking through the exit poll and also AP VoteCast, which, you know, ultimately is early, and will, you know, they'll be weighted to final results. We'll get more clarity later. But the voters are telling us they don't really like Donald Trump, and that's OK with them. He - they don't think he's honest and trustworthy. They don't think he has a moral character to be president, but they think he's a strong leader and he would be good at handling a crisis. So what they decided was they wanted someone to come in and disrupt the system, shake things up. Things are going badly.
And so we as analysts are like, well, he's increasingly unlikable. He's increasingly alienating. And what voters were saying is like, yeah, that's true, but we don't care. And early on before Biden dropped out, we really focused on the voters who were unfavorable to both candidates. We called them the double haters.
INSKEEP: Yeah.
MATTHEWS: And we thought they would decide the election. Well, in the exit polling, they're about maybe 8% of the sample.
INSKEEP: Yeah.
MATTHEWS: And they broke overwhelmingly for Trump so that, basically, they don't have to like Trump to vote for him.
INSKEEP: That is fascinating because there was a lot of speculation that Harris being a new face, a fresher face, a younger face, would get to those double haters and change the equation. The opposite seems to have happened. I want to bring another voice into this conversation. NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith is here in Studio 31 and has a question for you.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Yeah. I did want to ask you. You and I have talked over the years about women and women voters and the suburbs. And the Harris campaign was clearly aiming for those voters, and it doesn't seem like she made any ground there compared to Biden's performance.
MATTHEWS: Tam, that was one of my surprises and one of my failed predictions. I went out on a limb, and I thought for the first time since 1996, we might see white women go for Democrats. That did not materialize. In fact, there was really no difference. White women performed as normal. And what I find really, I don't know, difficult to understand, I think, is, you know, both Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, two women candidates for president, didn't do anything to change the dynamics of the gender gap.
And this year, particularly, not only was Kamala Harris a woman, but we also had, you know, the whole sort of boy versus girl election where Trump was really making a strong pitch to, you know, hypermasculine, you know, boy world. And she was making the pitch, not only - not, like, the glass ceiling pitch that Hillary Clinton made, but more, I'm going to protect your freedom. Abortion rights. We're not going back. And that's a strong message to women. But ultimately, I didn't see the kind of margins I thought we would see among white women, among white suburban women, even college-educated women. While they supported her by a big margin, not blowout-level margins, and that made the difference.
INSKEEP: So is it possible that it was people who were already decided who followed all of these ads, ads about women voting secretly and hiding it from their husbands and all the different details of this, and the late breakers, the late deciders, had their general impression and ignored most of the campaign?
MATTHEWS: Could be. Yeah. I mean, here's - I think my number one takeaway is this. Inflation is really bad for an incumbent administration. When you look back over time, the administrations with the highest inflation rates resulted in one-term presidencies. Carter.
INSKEEP: Jimmy Carter, yeah.
MATTHEWS: Ford. And now, Biden-Harris. And, you know, I think she ran - Kamala Harris ran a - just an outstanding campaign. But you can't do anything about that. That came with her. That, you know, that was baggage that she had to carry.
INSKEEP: What the professionals call fundamentals worked against Harris is what you're saying?
MATTHEWS: Yes, headwinds.
INSKEEP: Christine Matthews is a center-right pollster with Bellwether Research and Consulting. Thanks for your time and your insights this morning. I really appreciate it.
MATTHEWS: Thanks for having me. Have a good one. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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