This Week's Headlines welcome back to the decision 2024 brought to you by value tment where we pull together the election data week by week heading toward the election and we let the candidates talk because words talk and numbers scream I'm Tom ellworth the bisoc I'm Amy Dangerfield and it has been a very dramatic week in the world of politics Vladimir Putin has now endorsed kamla harrus for president of the United States some say it's a positive some say it's a negative some say that he is playing chess while I was the playing checkers I think it was a sarcastic Outburst by Putin going into our debate week speaking of the debate Donald Trump debate with Kamala Harris prompts a major endorsement what was that endorsement none other than Taylor Swift maybe would have been a little bit more advantageous to do it a week or two before the election we also see that Trump apparently pushes a baseless claim about immigrants eating pets unsubstantiated is probably a better word yeah in Springfield Ohio we saw the way that went down in the debate last night it obviously wasn't received very well and the liberal media is using it every chance they get to try to discredit Trump so coming out of the Debate Analysis debate this week there was a lot of reaction and part of the reaction was some people thought that kamla Harris came off cold had that condescending side glance side eye going on on and was very obviously dropping some facts that were incorrect but was not being corrected by ABC News other people were very critical of ABC News saying what is this is this three against one Trump's having to fight other people pointed out hey Trump was dropping some bombs that weren't exactly true as well but overall Trump appeared driven direct was triggered in the post-debate focus groups he did particularly well but it's going to be the perception what people saw on TV that they carry to The Ballot Box or carry into the bounce coming in a week cuz it's going to take about a week to get those polls out of the box what did you think I thought it was very interesting when we take a look at the debate all together I think kamla Harris performed a little bit better than most of us would have expected it wasn't the word salad that maybe we had anticipated she was clearly very prepped some speculation that maybe she was wearing an earpiece we weren't entertain that idea too much until we have more sub substantiated evidence she did answer the questions well in the sense that she was able to deflect very efficiently however she didn't really get to the root of any of the issues that were being brought up or provide any substantiated explanation on the way her policies are actually going to be better than the previous administration that we've seen for the last four years Tom and when you wrap it all up there were tweets there was posts on Instagram there were memes that were very sarcastic and then there was analysis that was coming through of people who were trusted and informed voices who could be sarcastic but some of them were actually to the point such as Rich Baris the people's pundit who lines up with Mark Miller quite a bit from rasmon who lines up with us we're all kind of on Cut From the Same Cloth in the way we're approaching statistics but Rich Baris he says Hey folks the Reuters focus group of undecided voters broke two to one for Trump with one still being unsure so actually didn't go to Harris and this is Reuters conducting which is a liberal leading news organization conducting a focus group of undecideds that they had handpicked and guess what two for Trump and one still undecided then a comment from Rich David M of ABC who interrupted Trump several times attempting to fact check Trump several times hey DAV M prepare to be fired if the head of ABC who's a close personal friend of kamla Harris draw your own conclusions there and introduced her to her husband Doug includes you cost her the election so we've got facts and then hard hitting sarcasm drawing on facts from people's personal lives very interesting and so the bias that he had to face was National Polls tremendous So speaking of Ras musen let's dive in to the rasmon numbers and walk us through it as we can clearly see kamla Harris has not had one day in the last several days where she has had above 46 points on the other hand we look towards Trump's numbers and we can see that he hasn't had a day below 47 in the last several days so while they do appear to be neck a neck we can take a look at the overall Aggregate and see while this is changing daily Trump does seem to maintain his lead at least on a national basis when it comes to russas and daily reports so now as promised we are going to take you through a deep dive through Virginia now this isn't really a known Battleground State however many of you in the comments have been reaching out saying that you want In-Depth Analysis of Virginia to hear our Deep dive analysis on this state that it could potentially be very competitive between these two candidates so Tom what does the Virginia look back to 2020 look like well Virginia really kind of looks like three states you have the very dark red on the far west side except for the city you've got the lighter red in the rural east side and then the dark blue of the Cities themselves so there's really three virginas there is more sparse population here but they are fiercely conservative a little bit more moderate yet definitely conservative and then as you can see the cities the closer you get the darker it gets but now let's look at the relative size of those voting blocks represented by the population Bubbles as you can see there's tremendous blue population in Alexandria and Richard with Rowan Oak may be blue County but you can see it is more than balanced out by the size of the population in the rural areas a rural County similar with Northfolk and Virginia Beach you put it all together Virginia is an absolute Battleground by population not surprisingly it's also a Battleground historically and it has been shifting as the blue cities become bler specifically Virginia Beach if you take a look here 52.5 53.7 solid electoral victories but then it went blue starting with Obama and stayed blue even with Hillary Clinton taking it in 2016 she took it with the continuing decline of the conservative red vote however in 2020 the decline was stopped as the conservative red vote was stable at 4040 so this is a 10-point spread 5444 so why do we call it a Battleground State because the polls are showing up now that it is no longer a 10-point spread we take a look at the Virginia voters and issues what does it look like out of a population of 8.7 million people there are 6 million registered voters it's a pretty impressive margin out of all of the residents who live in Virginia however much like the states that we recently covered in the blue wall is that these voters do not register by party affiliation therefore it is very important to look into the key voter issues that determine how this populace is going to cost their vote and we can see here what is very important to them there are some similarities to previous States but also some very stockk differences for example number one we do have inflation and the economy this has been a reoccurring theme aside from when immigration was number one in a couple of states that we looked at but everybody is feeling the heat of this economy of inflation of not being able to keep up with their bills and Virginia is absolutely no different so they rank that as number one when it comes to voter issues from there then we have education and this one is a little bit different it's education Tom it's the way specifically that history and race are taught in schools this is very important to them as a state and then finally we do have immigration again another common theme that we've seen throughout all of these different states the heat index varies from state to state meaning is it in your front yard or is it something that you're kind of hearing about here and there is it really affecting your daytoday well apparently for Virginia the answer is yes it is affecting their day-to-day the heat index is up high enough for this to full as number three of the top ranking issues when it comes to the people voting in Virginia and apparently in norfol and Virginia Beach there have been excessive numbers of undocumented immigrants have come to the US that have been Bust or flown to those cities leading the Virginia people to say we have a problem with immigration at the southern border why cuz once comes across the border it flies or gets on a bus here and we're trying trying to find homes for them they're part of the homeless population there's crime that's being attributed to them and there's no jobs for them and so they're coming to the the the service centers trying to get welfare and social services so you can see immigration suddenly comes up when it lands in your front yard it jumps up the list of things that are important and it's not merely a debate between two people living in Michigan about whether there's an immigration issue or not then we go to the Virginia polls and we just want to look at these last because this is what was coming in to this week's debate so the most recent polls we want to look at is the likely voter polls that are here and what's very interesting is it's no longer 1416 it is 88 there's a 10 and so the question that people are asking is Virginia starting to shift in the face of some of these issues and is it a toss-up State we don't think it's a toss-up State we think right now it is leaning definitely toward Harris however with the results of the debates and what we see come out of the debates as people have a more specific insight into who she is and how she has spoken during the debate will this shift we will know that in about a week but we wanted to dive in Virginia to show you that even though there's been little change since the last election in which side is going to win it the issues are changing and the margin is definitely changing could this go for Trump it's possible but right now it looks like it is is a solid lean to Harris and that's Virginia suggest States you'd like us to take a look at because next week based on what's coming out of the debate and what's coming out of the polls following the debate we are going back to Pennsylvania for a deeper dive into Pennsylvania to see how it's shaping up to be what we believe the single most important of the Battleground States absolutely and so Valuetainment Call now it's time for the value tainment call as you guys know this is the culmination of all of the data that you just saw from all of these different polling aggregators plus our earn analysis run through VT analytics to bring you Al call 8 weeks from the election so Tom we're halfway through the series what are we seeing right now coming out of the debates this week without any detailed polling analysis that may shape following the debate we are still 72 to 76% probability that Trump will win the election with Michigan still a tossup Wisconsin leaning enough that we could paint it but you could see that makes this 297 with Wisconsin still a toss up this is 287 still well over 270 but this is the way we see the map shaping up with Georgia Arizona and Nevada increasingly widening for Trump now we're looking at this on the data the way we dive in and we're following rasmon and we're following onpo politics because they are running models that are very similar to ours we have found a group of posters that we think are as objective as we are being cuz we just want the truth there's no profit in promoting a map that doesn't come true we are looking at this to find what we believe with our VT analytics engine where the election is going to shake out and we think right now 76% chance that it's 287 and a 72% chance that it's 297 but any over 270 doesn't matter so regardless of how you felt about this week's debate remember words talk but numbers scream while there have been some snap polls released we want to wait until next week to really dive into the hard-hitting data to determine how the people are feeling what is the sentiment truly about this debate and what is our next electoral map prediction going to look like we're going to have to wait and see for that but until next time my name is Amy Dangerfield and I'm Tom El with the bisoc and on behalf of value tment who brings you the decision 2024 we'll see you next week