Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Frank Luntz, famed polster and founder of fil Inc, is
Speaker 2: joining us now. Frank, thanks for being back with us
Speaker 2: on Bloomberg TV and radio. We have been talking about
Speaker 2: this entire cycle how tight margins were likely to be.
Speaker 2: Turns out they're not quite as tight in most of
Speaker 2: these battleground states as they were in twenty twenty. And
Speaker 2: I just wonder your takeaway here when it comes to
Speaker 2: whether or not the polls were adequately reflecting the reality
Speaker 2: in America once again. Doesn't it seem like Poles underestimated
Speaker 2: Donald Trump to a small degree.
Speaker 1: Yes, and that is about turnout that every Trump supporter
Speaker 1: became a Trump voter. That is not the case with
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris, and that's one of the reasons why she
Speaker 1: fell short. Certainly, the idea that Trump would get a
Speaker 1: majority of the popular vote is a surprise to a
Speaker 1: lot of people right now. And is the the Iowa
Speaker 1: poll which I want to draw attention to because that
Speaker 1: changed the actual narrative of the campaign.
Speaker 3: For the last forty eight hours.
Speaker 1: Trump ended up winning Iowa by about a dozen points
Speaker 1: or so.
Speaker 3: That the poll had Harris up by three.
Speaker 1: It was not only beyond the margin of err, it
Speaker 1: actually changed how the race was being covered, which is
Speaker 1: really one of the rare times when survey research actually
Speaker 1: becomes part of the narrative. I think that there's a
Speaker 1: lesson for Americans in the future which has spent a
Speaker 1: lot less time talking about who's winning and losing, and
Speaker 1: a lot more time talking about what the candidates say
Speaker 1: they're going to do and why either we should believe
Speaker 1: them or distrust them.
Speaker 4: Sounds like people were wrong about a lot, frank They
Speaker 4: were wrong about the protesters showing up at the DNC,
Speaker 4: they were wrong about violence around polls, wrong about pole watchers,
Speaker 4: wrong about, in some cases even though our polls were tied,
Speaker 4: the idea that there was momentum behind Kamala Harris as well.
Speaker 3: I'm wondering if there's a reckoning here for posters.
Speaker 4: Was there an overcorrection in the sample?
Speaker 3: And what's going through your mind today?
Speaker 1: Well, what's going through my mind, because I've been asked
Speaker 1: this in almost every show, is.
Speaker 3: This is the media.
Speaker 1: The posters did get it wrong, but the media went
Speaker 1: all over this IOWA survey when all over trying to
Speaker 1: see some trends, some movement in one direction or another,
Speaker 1: and that they're the ones who drove this. I tend
Speaker 1: not to talk about polling when I do shows like this,
Speaker 1: I talk about policy. I talk about language, what the
Speaker 1: public wants to see and hear, and whether the politicians
Speaker 1: are doing it or not. And so much of this
Speaker 1: is actually driven by those who ask the questions rather
Speaker 1: than people like me who answer them, because we wouldn't
Speaker 1: answer them if we weren't asking them. I don't want
Speaker 1: to make a blanket statement because I take this so
Speaker 1: seriously and I so approve of the way your show
Speaker 1: handles politics the best shows in all of television or politics.
Speaker 3: But I do think that there needs to be a
Speaker 3: reckoning for.
Speaker 1: What we choose to focus on and how we cover it,
Speaker 1: because in the end it becomes misleading or even detrimental
Speaker 1: to the political process, as that Iowas survey clearly was well.
Speaker 2: Frank, we appreciate the kind words, and of course, there
Speaker 2: always is room for critique when we consider how the
Speaker 2: narrative is shaped in America, and media plays a role
Speaker 2: in that as well. I think we can all agree.
Speaker 2: Earlier on in this cycle, there was a few conversations
Speaker 2: that happened in quick succession, one being whether or not
Speaker 2: the media was putting too much focus on the age
Speaker 2: issue for Joe Biden. Then became whether or not the
Speaker 2: media was complicit in covering up how deep those issues
Speaker 2: may have run for the current president. And I just wonder,
Speaker 2: as we consider the role of Joe Biden and all
Speaker 2: of this, his late withdrawal from his reelection campaign, if
Speaker 2: ultimately you think that made a difference, if the timing mattered,
Speaker 2: or if it was never going to be possible for
Speaker 2: an incumbent administration given the kind of inflation experienced during it,
Speaker 2: to keep hold of the White House, don't I don't
Speaker 2: believe that.
Speaker 1: I challenged the narrative which has been put forward now
Speaker 1: for weeks. Vice President Harris had one of the sharpest
Speaker 1: fastest rises of any candidate modern history. She went from
Speaker 1: five points down when she got into the race to
Speaker 1: three and a half points up in a matter of
Speaker 1: a few weeks. Because she was joyful. She talked about
Speaker 1: the things she wanted to do, instead of the negativity
Speaker 1: which he decried again and again. She was hopeful and
Speaker 1: optimistic and talked about all the things that she wanted
Speaker 1: to get done. But then after the convention, she turned dark,
Speaker 1: she turned negative. It sounded as much like a Trump
Speaker 1: campaign as it did a Harris campaign.
Speaker 3: And that was when she hit her ceiling.
Speaker 1: And then she and by changing this by being joyful
Speaker 1: and then being harshly negative, calling Trump a fascist, voters
Speaker 1: started to wonder who is she?
Speaker 3: Is she authentic? Is she genuine?
Speaker 1: How do you go from being joyful to damning your opponents?
Speaker 1: And then Biden, of course made the comment about Trump's voters,
Speaker 1: and it just it didn't ring true.
Speaker 3: That's number one and number two. She never articulated.
Speaker 1: Exactly what she wanted to do in the first hour,
Speaker 1: in the first day, first week, first month, first one,
Speaker 1: under days and so on. If she had done that
Speaker 1: in the CNN town hall where it's done live, if
Speaker 1: she'd done that in the sixty minutes interview or the
Speaker 1: Fox interview, any of these, if she had done that
Speaker 1: until voters exactly what she wanted to do, she would
Speaker 1: have done much better because then she would have been
Speaker 1: about policy, and that's where she was weakest. But instead
Speaker 1: she got driven around. She never answered the questions that
Speaker 1: voters had and so she never crossed that threshold. Whereas
Speaker 1: Donald Trump we knew him. There's nothing more we can
Speaker 1: learn about him. We knew his weaknesses, we knew his strengths,
Speaker 1: we knew his record because we saw for four years.
Speaker 3: So her criticizing.
Speaker 1: Him didn't add anything to her, did not detract from him,
Speaker 1: and I think that that's one of the reasons why.
Speaker 4: She are the diagnosis from Frank LUNs on Bloomberg TV
Speaker 4: and Radio. All of that said, Frank, what did we
Speaker 4: learn about our nation last night, particularly if this in
Speaker 4: fact was about men versus women?
Speaker 1: I love that question, and that's a question that we
Speaker 1: need to be talking about over the coming weeks and months,
Speaker 1: because there are some things that are more important than
Speaker 1: an election.
Speaker 3: It's the next generation. And what are they learning.
Speaker 1: They're learning that it's okay to tell your opponent apart.
Speaker 3: They're learning that there.
Speaker 1: Is no bounds to negativity, that there are right and
Speaker 1: wrong ways, but they need to learn that they're right
Speaker 1: and wrong ways to approach politics, to approach economics, to
Speaker 1: approach day to day life. And I'm just afraid that
Speaker 1: what we now learned is the wrong thing, which is
Speaker 1: as anything goes at any time for any reason, and
Speaker 1: that fightens me for the future.
Speaker 2: Well, Okay, So if we keep looking at demographics here
Speaker 2: and what the future may hold, Frank, I look at
Speaker 2: Donald Trump's victory in Miami Dade last night. We haven't
Speaker 2: seen a Republican win that county for decades. It obviously
Speaker 2: is majority Hispanic. We did see a sizable break among
Speaker 2: Latinos for Donald Trump in a way we haven't seen
Speaker 2: in the past. Obviously, movement for black voters as well.
Speaker 2: And I wonder if you think those demographic shifts are
Speaker 2: unique to this candidate who is now president elect, or
Speaker 2: if that may be something more permanent.
Speaker 1: It's unique to this candidate, but also to this time
Speaker 1: that it doesn't matter with your white, black, brown, It
Speaker 1: doesn't matter if you have trouble at fording food, put
Speaker 1: food on your tables, put gas in your car, or
Speaker 1: the healthcare you need and the housing that you want,
Speaker 1: And it doesn't matter what your ethnicity is.
Speaker 3: What matters is you're.
Speaker 1: Struggling, you're living paycheck to paycheck, and that's what's happening
Speaker 1: right now. And Donald Trump an empathy to that much
Speaker 1: more explicitly than Harris did.
Speaker 3: She tried to run away from it. Now.
Speaker 1: Trump's greatest weakness is he didn't focus enough on prices,
Speaker 1: on costs, on affordability that instead he got sidetracked by
Speaker 1: issues that did not matter.
Speaker 3: And in fact, I want to acknowledge something.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go back to that presidential debate that
Speaker 1: clearly she did relatively well and he did relatively poorly.
Speaker 3: In the end, it did not matter. I thought the
Speaker 3: debate performance would cost.
Speaker 1: Him his candidacy, and instead it actually did not matter.
Speaker 1: And that's another learning that America has to face that
Speaker 1: even when you put two candidates side by side, the
Speaker 1: outcome does not necessarily matter and who wins for president.
Speaker 4: Really great to have you back, Frank Frank Luntz, founder
Speaker 4: CEO FI L and just the voice we were looking
Speaker 4: to hear today. Thanks for being with us throughout this
Speaker 4: entire campaign.