[Music] welcome back to America's vote 2024 this is an extremely close presidential race that's an understatement it can all come down to who wins those key swing States according to decision desk HQ Harris is leading Trump in the Battleground States except for Georgia joining me now is Chris Berg the vice president of local content and nextstar Media Group and Scott TR director of data science for decision desk HQ thank you both for joining us good to have you here good to be here thanks for having me Scott I want to start with you who do you think gets the post debate bump right here we've spoken after all of these debates what's your takeaway and who do you think is going to get that momentum well interestingly enough I think we're going to see the polls look like VP Harris won the debate but I think a lot of these voters has already already decided so I'd be surprised to see any of these state base polls move more than a point or two which could be the difference but I'm not expecting a three four or five point uh bump for either candidate after this debate and Chris I want to get your takeaways right off the bat what do you think of the debate tonight and who do you think is going to come out of the debate after tonight with that momentum oh my I have so much to say about how this all went down tonight uh especially on how it was ran by ABC um a couple of things uh for starters number one kudos to uh uh the moderators I thought they were very fair in how they manage the time it's very difficult to go back and forth and try to keep on moving through the night that's one of the hardest things to do when you're on the anchor desk however they are going to get beat up mercilessly un mercilessly tomorrow by the Republicans because how many times they fact check Donald Trump versus the the fact checks with KLA Harris and that is going to be a point that will be beaten um uh uh up they'll be beaten up for um for the next several uh weeks and one of the things that was very striking to me when it comes to how they manag the questions um there were at least two questions to Harris where on the immigration side where um they didn't there was no follow-ups to her on her role she did not answer really the question some of these questions were excellent questions but there were no follow-ups and when you build a debate it's the followup question that really makes uh the moment in time and they did not follow up and with Donald Trump when when uh um KLA Harris mentioned you brought the Taliban to the camp David there was a perfect moment in time to say Mr Trump is that true did you bring the Taliban to Camp David and have that answer happen in the moment that's what really truly makes a debate special and I think they missed moments in that point in time to kind of separ separate themselves out from other debates that are out there to to get an answer to questions and and bring additional knowledge to the public a lot of talking points not nearly as much kind of fact-based things that you can you hang your hat on in this debate that I would have liked to have seen Scott I want to jump in here and ask you I've been I've been looking forward to asking you this question all throughout the leadup of the debate there was that New York Times Sienna poll that came out that had a really interesting statistic it said 90% of Voters said they knew everything they needed to know about know about Trump but smaller percentage 71% said they knew everything they needed to know about Harris she was pressed tonight on a lot of the issues the flipflops that she has made in recent years and she sort of had to reintroduce herself it was part of this reintroduction that she's been doing on the national Sage not as the vice president but as the presidential candidate do you think that that 71 number will increase after tonight's debate yes I absolutely do especially if they watch the debate for at least 30 to 45 minutes a VC did a good job of asking some of the big pressing questions in the first hour things about why she switched her position on fracking among other issues um now whether the voters like the answer or not that's a different question um but look the average voter only spends five or 10 minutes over the course of an election figuring out who they're going to vote for um and there was plenty of material tonight um that they can choose from Chris another question I want to ask you you know one issue that we heard a lot about tonight was foreign policy but polls have showed that that's really not at the top of of the list for voters in some of these really key swing States those areas where the election is going to come down to what do you make of the dynamic that you know the strong focus on for policy issues but sort of how it ranks in in the the importance of issues among some of those swing state voters well I kept track of all the questions uh tonight and there were nine economy questions which ranks between 45 and 50% of the most important issue in every swing swing state there were 10 foreign policy questions and took about 10 minutes longer than the the economy questions and uh foreign policy questions are about 1% or less in interest for the swing States so that's just it was just stunning to me that they spent that much time knowing what the swing States really want to know about um one a couple a couple of things that um I just also want to point out is that I was on the ground in Pennsylvania and in Michigan last week and one a couple things that struck me um they are really in the know on the issues that important to them you talk to an average voter on the street they are asking questions about what's important to them and one of the things that kind of slipped through tonight was the very nuanced answer by Comm Harris on our her fracking position we know in 2019 said she she'd say she'd all she U she'd Bann fracking and she said tonight as she said over uh through her Surat and over the past couple of weeks I for the past four years I've supported this position because that was Joe Biden's position a guy from Pennsylvania so I think a question that was one of the follow-ups that was missed I think is do you support the Biden position or is that your position on fracking and a couple of other just big picture issues that weren't mentioned that are important to voters there was no question on housing affordability that ranks as the second or third most important thing to voters in the swing States abortions another issue that we spent um four questions or five questions on um on in this in this debate that ranks at 5 to 7% for um uh voters out there but a question about um uh uh when it comes to the uh uh uh the importance to uh the uh thr of democracy we only had two questions on it and Pennsylvania is one of the largest senders of folks to Washington on January 6th Chris let me jump in important to Pennsylvania yeah this is interesting one let me jump in here because you mentioned Pennsylvania and that's one of these key swing states that we keep talking about Scott I want to turn to you it's been a crazy nearly 3 months of this election the Biden Trump debate Biden dropping out Harris coming in walls being selected the DNC I'm out of breath um give us a state of the race right now where do things stand and what is the status of Kamala Harris's momentum boost is that still there or have things recalibrated to be a really close race well when we opened up our forecast which is a quantitative look at the question you had Harris had about a 57% chance of winning today she sits at 55% and that's largely due um to some polls that look a little bit closer the New York Times Sienna one that you mentioned some State polls in Pennsylvania uh Michigan Wisconsin bottom line is is the race is much closer than it was when it was Biden Trump um and it's solidifying around basically a 5050 race which is about as close as we've had this century um if not the last over hundred years not since a Nixon Kennedy race was decided by a couple hundred thousand votes and was down to the down to the last state of Illinois have we seen something this close um any number of states and combinations um you could make the case for either Harris or or Trump the one thing I do know for sure is she's not going to run away with it five or 10 points and neither is Donald Trump close race absolutely Scott we're out of time but I have one more question I need to ask you coming here with some breaking news um Taylor Swift just said that she is going to vote for vice president kamla Harris it's a coveted endorsement for the Harris walls campaign do you see that affecting polls at all she's a very popular individual especially among young voters and they're key this election they are key and actually we have some data on this you know Taylor Swift in the 2016 election did a voter voter registration Drive in Tennessee and she increased voter registration by about three and a half 4% measurably um which you know not not uh out of this world but certainly measurable and and could make a difference in a small state where I think it'll help the most fundraising especially if she goes out on the trail for VP Harris money means votes because they can go ahead and do the get out the vote operations in the closing weeks and so yeah no I think the endorsement will certainly help the Harris's operation um both in fundraising and potential votes in some of these close States all right we have to end one quick note there though she came out in 2018 and endorsed the Democratic opponent to Bill Lee in tenness and Billy won so you know she definitely will raise help raise money but it doesn't guarantee a Democrat to a victory debate analysis with a side of Taylor Swift hot takes chrisberg Scott traner thank you so much for joining us tonight