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More Than $10 Billion Has Been Spent On Ads In The 2024 Election; Harris, Trump Tied At 48 Percent In Pennsylvania; Battle For The House Heats Up Ahead Of Election Day. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired November 01, 2024 - 12:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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DANA BASH, CNN HOST: If you live in a swing state, maybe watch the World Series, perhaps watch cable news. We hope you do a lot. You have seen a lot of political ads. Over $2 billion have been poured into broadcast TV ads in the past three months.

Democrats are outspending Republicans overall on the airwaves. $1.4 billion versus the GOP's 896 million. And that dollar lead holds across all seven battlegrounds. It's not just about the money, of course, we want you to look at who these ads are targeting and how which messages work, which don't seem to be.

And we know that by what is actually the closing message for each of these campaigns as we get to the final days. With me to talk about all of that, two of the smartest political brains, CNN senior political commentators David Axelrod and David Urban. The Davids.

David Axelrod, if you were inside the Harris campaign now, as you were in both Obama campaigns, what would your sort of overall takeaway be at this point? Where do you honestly feel like they are and they need to be?

DAVID AXELROD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: In this race. Look, I think that the reality of it is that they really need to focus on those three northern industrial states that touch the Great Lakes, the blue wall. I think that's where this race is coming down.

There's, you know, they -- maybe they will rally in some of the Sun Belt states, but I've felt that Biden never worked those states very hard because he was always focused on the northern states. And so they hadn't been worked. And I think they're a little bit behind there.

So I think those states are most important. Pennsylvania is still the essential state, Dave's home state. And I think if she wins those three states that she'll be president, and if she loses one or more of them, it's going to be difficult.

BASH: David Urban, as I get your sort of big thought, I want to play for you and for our viewers a brand new Kamala Harris campaign ad which has and features the governor of Pennsylvania.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) GOV. JOSH SHAPIRO (D) PENNSYLVANIA: This election, it's bigger than us. It's about the future. Do you want more chaos or like me, are you ready for some common sense? That's why I'm with Kamala. I've known her for two decades. She's practical and she gets stuff done.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[12:35:08]

BASH: David Urban.

DAVID URBAN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, look, I talked to Josh yesterday. He's a great guy. I think perhaps maybe that campaign is lamenting the fact that it's not Harris-Shapiro ticket in Pennsylvania. I think he might be doing a little bit better.

You know, Dana, interestingly, you know, David's right on the spending and on the working on these three industrial states. I saw a statistic that in the state of Pennsylvania, there have been $538 million spent on ads by both sides. $178 million more than the next battleground state of Michigan. So half a billion plus in Pennsylvania. I heard Axe joked about that he got out of the business too soon. I do agree. I think --

AXELROD: Why do you think I was joking.

URBAN: -- too soon. But, you know, but look, Josh Shapiro is incredibly popular, and that's helpful. You know who's not in that ad is Bob Casey. Right. Bob Casey's running ads with Donald Trump. And so it's kind of, you know, it's a curious dichotomy.

I think people are going to look at that and say, well, Josh is in an ad with Harris and Casey's in an ad with Trump. Scratch your chin. What does that mean in Pennsylvania?

BASH: David Axelrod, I'm going to play for you. MAGA Inc. The super PAC supporting Donald Trump. And the ad it released today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENATIFIED MALE: After four years, Kamala Harris made us less secure, releasing millions of illegal immigrants into our towns. We're less safe. Violent crime is rising and we're less stable, paying more and getting further behind. Kamala Harris broke it, but President Trump will fix it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: David Axelrod.

AXELROD: Yes, I mean, that's their basic message. That's been their message from the beginning. I have, you know, from -- as a practitioner who made thousands of these, I think it's a little kind of parody of a negative ad. But the content is what their message has been. The paradox of the Trump campaign is that their message has been very

consistent. And I've said this to Dave before and to you. They have run a very rational campaign based on Biden's standing and based on the right direction number of the country.

Trump is not a rational candidate, however. And so we're spending a lot of time talking about stuff that has nothing to do with any of that. And that's a detriment to them in the final days of this campaign. You want to harmonize the message of the ads with what you're telling voters because you're being covered very intensively.

BASH: And speaking of rational or traditional, it doesn't get any more traditional than having an ad run about taxes. I want you, David Urban, to hear about the Harris PAC and what their message is to people on taxes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Out of money. I know about 20 of you and you're rich as hell. We're going to give you tax cuts. We're going to pay --

REBECCA F., JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA: I am not rich as hell. I work hard, I scrape to get by. Donald Trump wants to give tax breaks to billionaires, but Kamala Harris has plans to help us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: That's basically one of, in addition to some of the things that she has proposed. That's largely the Harris campaign's economic message.

URBAN: Yes, look, I think both sides have taken like an Oprah Winfrey esque approach to taxes. Right. You get a tax break. You get a tax break. No tax on tips, no tax on Social Security benefits, no tax on overtime, no tax on car loans. Right.

So I'm not sure that message lands as soundly as it would against a more traditional Republican. I know that they want to paint Trump as this billionaire who's only giving, you know, the ultra-rich tax break when lots of folks in the middle class got tax breaks in the last bill. And there have been so many proposals to help working class people. I don't know if that one's landing as soundly as others.

BASH: Go ahead, David.

AXELROD: Go ahead. I think if you sit in focus groups, what you'll find is that people do believe that Trump is very self-interested and that he does -- he is inclined that way. And so having those words come out of his mouth are probably what makes that spot work and what causes them to run it. I think people see him more as a tribune of the wealthy and perhaps they'll do better with her. That's certainly what they're betting on.

BASH: Well, I feel like we haven't, even though all of our viewers have seen a lot of ads, I feel like we haven't been able to break down them the way that we'd like to. So I'm glad were able to do it with your big brains. Both Davids, thank you so much for being here. See you Sunday on stage.

AXELROD: See you, Dana. We'll see you then.

URBAN: All right, thanks. See you, Dana.

BASH: Coming up, John King is live in Pennsylvania with the mini-magic wall in his hands and he is talking to voters in that crucial state.

[12:40:07]

We'll be -- there he is. Stay with us.

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BASH: More than one and a half million people have voted early in battleground Pennsylvania. And of that 900,000 are Democrats, more than 500,000 are Republicans. Breaking that down by gender, 900,000 women have cast ballots in Pennsylvania, compared to 700,000 men.

[12:45:00]

CNN's chief national correspondent John King has of course been hitting all of the battleground states this week. He is gone to one each day. Now you are in suburban Philadelphia. John, what are you hearing from voters with just four days left?

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: This is the biggest of the battlegrounds, as you know, Dana, 19 electoral votes, both campaign spending. You were just talking about more money here by far than in any other battleground state.

So one of the things we have done. This is our fourth or fifth trip here over the past year. I just want to show you where I am. I'm in Delaware County, which is just south of Philadelphia. When I started doing this is my 10th presidential campaign. This was Republican territory. As you can see, it is lopsided for the Democrats.

Now the vice President has to run it up in places like I am, where I am in Swarthmore, a college town. I want to blank this out a little bit. Just go north of Philadelphia, come back out and go up.

One of the most competitive of the collar counties is Bucks County. Again, that was a heavily Democratic county when I started doing this. Now it's much more competitive. Donald Trump gets a lot of those blue collar workers.

But there are plenty of Republicans listening here to Michael Pesce. He is one of 155,000 people who voted for Nikki Haley in the Pennsylvania Republican primary long after she was gone from the race. He says he will never vote for Donald Trump. So Harris will get his vote even though he's not sure if she wins what that means.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) MICHAEL PESCE, PENNSYLVANIA RESIDENT: No, I don't. And that's the scary part is, you know, I'm not voting for a candidate. I'm not voting for a policy. I'm voting against the candidate and policies and not even all the policies. Just, you know, the unstableness of some of the things he says are truly scary.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: It's so interesting, John, and I think that what you said, about 155,000 voters in the Republican Pennsylvania primary voted for Nikki Haley even though she had long been out of the race. That was a closed primary. These are Republican voters.

So when we hear the Trump campaign, look at the early statistics that we talked about before coming to you, they're hoping that those Republican voters are voting for him. It's not necessarily the case.

KING: No. Some of them will go home, without a doubt. Some of them are Republicans by DNA. Some of them voted for Trump in 2016, Biden in 2020, and have told us because of Biden's policies, because of inflation, the cost of living, they're going back to Trump.

But remember, if you look, Joe Biden won this state by 80,000 votes. 80,000 votes, 81,000 votes. Harris doesn't need all of those Haley voters. But if she gets some of them on top of the growing Democratic support, and you mentioned the gender gap in Pennsylvania, that's the coalition the Harris campaign is trying to put together here.

Big black turnout in Philadelphia, high support here in the collar counties around Philadelphia, and then pick up some of those moderate Republicans, the Haley voters, people like that, who don't want to vote for Trump but might have doubts about Harris.

That's the interesting tension in the final days, especially down here. I just want to draw a line right here. If you look at Philadelphia and the suburbs around it, about a third of the vote, even more than that, closer to 40 percent will be cast right there. You see, it's all blue in the last campaign, right.

Donald Trump narrowly won this state. The challenge for Harris is in a place like Swarthmore, can she run it up? And then in the other suburbs, can she just be competitive? And it's flip -- let's flip that. Donald Trump won this state in 2016 because he did a little better. Let me just zoom in on this. He did just a little better. This is Chester County. This is further out. Let me get rid of the typing there.

Look at Donald Trump in Chester County, which used to be a solid Republican. He gets 40 percent in 2020. You go back to 2016, he gets 43 percent. Those margins matter. Right. So is Donald Trump better in the suburbs? He's not going to win these suburbs, but he's a little better like he was in 2016, then he can win the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. If Harris can match the Biden numbers and keep Trump down, then she wins the biggest prize of all. BASH: Yes, it's, I mean, the margins are so, so close, as the both

campaigns are saying. We're talking about inches here. Thanks so much. See you back in Washington.

KING: Thank you.

BASH: A reminder to watch CNN's live primetime coverage of the election results as they come in. Election Night in America begins Tuesday at 4:00 p.m. Eastern. Coming up, the battle for the gavel. Can Republicans hold the House? Amy Walter is still here. Does she have the answer? I think she does. Stay with us.

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[12:53:34]

BASH: The battle for the House. Can Speaker Mike Johnson hold on to his gavel or will Democrats close the gap? Amy Walter is still here with me and she's going to help answer that question. Amy, you have the believe the last forecast before the actual election. Yes. Take it away.

AMY WALTER, PUBLISHER AND EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, THE COOK POLITICAL REPORT WITH AMY WALTER: Yes. So our House editor, Erin Covey put together a fantastic forecast. Basically, we're looking at 22 seats. That's it. That will probably determine who controls the House. Out of the 435 races that are up, if those seats split evenly where 50 percent went down 50 percent Republican, Republicans would still have the majority by an even narrower margin.

Right now our forecast says that it's anywhere from Republicans picking up five seats, so they'd have basically an eight seat majority to Democrats picking up 10 which would give them a six seat majority.

So, Dana, we're still talking about whoever is holding that gavel has to keep together a conference, a caucus that is this narrow.

BASH: But holding the gavel is the ball game.

WALTER: But holding the gavel is the whole ballgame. Yes, you're exactly right.

BASH: And I had Richard Hudson on yesterday who was arguing that, you remember in 2022, the Republicans won the majority through New York, basically.

WALTER: Yep. And California seats.

BASH: And California picking up seats in New York and California that he still feels okay even though those states are going to go no question for Kamala.

[12:55:00]

WALTER: There's no doubt. And this is one thing that we've also been picking up in places like New York and California. Kamala Harris's numbers in those states are not as strong as Biden's were in 2020. So some of these districts, you look at them and you say, oh, this is a Biden plus 10. Well, Harris is not necessarily getting plus 10 there. That means less headwind for the incumbent. And you're right, there are incumbents there, even new ones, who have a pretty good base of support.

BASH: Thank you so much.

WALTER: You're very welcome.

BASH: It's good to see you.

WALTER: Good to see you.

BASH: Tune in on Sunday for State of the Union, when I will be joined by Democratic Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman and Republican South Carolina Senator Tim Scott. That begins at 9:00 a.m. Eastern right here on CNN and streaming on Max.

Thank you so much for joining us today on Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts after the break.

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