Morning Wire XX
[0] With control of Congress on the line, the two political parties make their final appeal to voters.
[1] You're going to elect the incredible slate of true America first Republicans up and down the ballot.
[2] How of the closing arguments from Republicans and Democrats differed, and what reasons for optimism do the two sides have?
[3] I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor -in -chief John Bickley.
[4] It's Tuesday, November 8th, and this is Morning Wire.
[5] As Republicans have gained ground in the polls in the closing weeks of the election, Democrats have repeatedly sounded the alarm over alleged misinformation and voter suppression.
[6] We discussed the risks and rewards of that electoral rhetoric.
[7] And the MorningWire team took to the road in recent weeks to talk with candidates and voters.
[8] We hear from both in the key battleground state of Arizona.
[9] Thanks for waking up with MorningWire.
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[19] Today, Americans will get the chance to decide the outcome of crucial state and federal elections and make their voices heard at the ballot box.
[20] With just hours to go before results start rolling in, we're joined by Daily Wire Senior Editor Cabot Phillips.
[21] Cabot, you're going to be live throughout the evening as part of our election coverage.
[22] It's going to be a very fun night, John.
[23] It's going to be a long night.
[24] Get ready.
[25] Now, candidates have been making their final push for votes all week.
[26] What do we hear from both sides?
[27] Well, the closing message from Democrats focused on two main things, abortion and the state of our democracy.
[28] And in the final month before the election, Democrats have spent $214 million on ads related to abortion.
[29] That is almost half of their entire spending budget.
[30] And the other big message we've heard from them is that Republican control of D .C. would be an existential threat to democracy.
[31] For example, here's a video with President Biden describing the supposed threat host by Republican candidates, along with the caption, The Fate of Democracy is in Your Hands.
[32] This is a path to chaos in America.
[33] It's unprecedented.
[34] It's unlawful.
[35] And it's on America.
[36] Okay, so that's the Democrats' final push.
[37] But Republicans have taken a very different approach.
[38] What was their closing message?
[39] Their message has been really consistent all summer.
[40] And that is the economy, crime, and immigration.
[41] But chief among those has definitely been the economy.
[42] And for good reasons, as we all know by now, it is overwhelmingly the top issue for voters.
[43] For example, here's President Trump talking about inflation last week at a campaign rally in Texas.
[44] Biden and the Democrat Congress created the worst inflation in 50 years, 9 .1%, but it's much higher than that.
[45] You see your bills.
[46] It's much higher.
[47] So Americans are out voting now.
[48] What's one thing giving each side reason for optimism?
[49] Yeah.
[50] So there's definitely more to choose from for Republicans right now in that front.
[51] But it's not all bad news for Democrats.
[52] Obviously, they've still got a good shot to take the Senate, especially if they can hold Nevada and Georgia and then pick up a seat in Pennsylvania.
[53] But increasingly, Democrats are optimistic about their odds in some statewide races, especially the governor's races in deep red Kansas and Oklahoma.
[54] Polling there shows a near toss -up, which would be a huge shock when you consider that Trump won those states by 15 and 33 points respectively.
[55] Yeah, that'd be a big surprise.
[56] Yeah, and Democrats are also hopeful that polling this cycle is actually under -representing Democrat support.
[57] But a number of legacy polling outlets say that they've now corrected this go -round and have taken steps to include more Republicans in their samples.
[58] Yeah, we've talked a good bit about the submerged voter effect among many Republicans who don't like taking polls.
[59] Exactly.
[60] And what about Republicans?
[61] Why should they be optimistic?
[62] Well, at first, there's a lot of optimism about the way that independent voters are breaking at the last minute.
[63] We've seen a number of polls that show Republicans winning with independence by anywhere from 10 to 20 points, and the main reason is that independents do tend to blame Democrats for the poor state of the economy.
[64] For context, every year Gallup tracks voter sentiment right before the election and found that during the 2018 midterms, Independence said they leaned Democrat by an 11 point margin, and Democrats obviously had success there.
[65] This year, though, that same poll found independents leaning Republican by a six -point margin, so 17 -point swing over the last four years.
[66] Well, a few more hours, and we see how it all plays out.
[67] Cabot, thanks for reporting.
[68] That's Daily Wire's senior editor, Cabot Phillips.
[69] And again, we'll hear more from him this evening during the election coverage at DailyWire .com.
[70] Coming up, Democrats warn about election misinformation and voter suppression.
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[78] With polling showing that Democrats face a tough election night, the party has increasingly warned about the impact of election misinformation and voter suppression.
[79] Here to discuss is Daily Wire Culture reporter Megan Basham.
[80] Now, Megan, in the final days of the campaign, it's really sounded like Democrats are sounding the alarm about democracy itself should the vote go the wrong way.
[81] Yeah, they have.
[82] And, you know, it's an interesting strategy for Democrats to pivot to these issues that are somewhat more abstract and arguably a lot harder to frame in clear legislative terms.
[83] So, namely, as you said, protecting democracy and also fighting misinformation and combating voter suppression.
[84] Now, these warnings about alleged misinformation and voter suppression have turned a lot of heads because critics say they appear to be building up expectations for a loss, and that could undermine confidence in the election.
[85] So probably the big moment that marked this shift was President Biden's Union Station speech last week.
[86] During that, he repeatedly called up the image of the January 6th riot that was almost two years ago, and he tried to make the argument that Maga Republic.
[87] pose an ongoing and existential threat to democracy.
[88] We can't take democracy for granted any longer.
[89] With democracy and the ballot, we have to remember these first principles.
[90] So from there, Biden went on to say that our Democratic norms are under assault due to voter intimidation and suppression.
[91] And that's something that Democrat candidates have been echoing on the campaign trail.
[92] To give you one example, this was Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams on MSNBC Sunday.
[93] We know that black voters are often discounted, and unfortunately this year, black men have been a very targeted population for misinformation.
[94] But we're actually looking at potentially record voter turnout this midterm season.
[95] So how does that square with Democrats' message that voter suppression is a big issue?
[96] Right, and that is a very good question.
[97] And Abrams essentially answered it by saying that what Democrats are talking about is targeted suppression of minority voters.
[98] Suppression has never been about stopping all voters.
[99] It's about clogging the arteries of the process and stopping certain voters.
[100] And there is a precision to voter suppression.
[101] But what we're hearing very little about from Democrats right now are those issues that Republicans are hammering, things like inflation and crime.
[102] And that's likely because it's been really hard for them to find an angle on those topics that favors them.
[103] So instead, what we're really seeing here is just a last -ditch effort to re -orror.
[104] orient the discussion.
[105] Now, is there any sense that this shift in messaging is working?
[106] You know, I don't think so.
[107] What you're already starting to see are the intra -party recriminations that inevitably follow any rough election season.
[108] To give you just one example on CBS last week, California Governor Gavin Newsom said this.
[109] And it goes to my fundamental grievance with my damn party.
[110] We're getting crushed on narrative.
[111] We're going to have to do better in terms of getting on.
[112] on the offense and stop being on the damn defense.
[113] In response to that, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, who's been out stumping for the Democrats, pushed back.
[114] She said on CNN that Newsom doesn't see what's happening accurately because he's in California while she's traveling all over the country.
[115] So this tension among Democrats suggests that they don't feel confident that the messaging that they settled on in these closing days of the election is going to be effective enough to change the trajectory.
[116] Well, I guess we're going to all find out later tonight.
[117] Megan, thanks for reporting.
[118] My pleasure.
[119] That was Daily Wire Culture reporter, Megan Basham.
[120] The final poll show a tight race for governor in Arizona.
[121] Republican candidate Kerry Lake holds a slim but persistent lead over Democrat Katie Hobbs.
[122] Now, Georgia, you spent a day in Arizona over the weekend and you talked to candidates and voters.
[123] What did you learn?
[124] Well, I really got the sense that Arizonans maybe more so even than residents of other states are dealing with national issues right up close.
[125] So when they're talking about closing the border and especially about getting fentanyl off the streets, I sensed that they're pretty desperate.
[126] Now, here's some sound from a Blake Masters event I attended at an RNC community center in South Phoenix.
[127] The fentanyl is outrageous, out of hand.
[128] It's worse than heroin.
[129] You see young children looking at the ground tripping out.
[130] You can see when the drug dealer shows up because they're all getting high, and it's sad.
[131] It's sad.
[132] That needs to change.
[133] You need to start prosecuting these people and letting them, instead of letting them out of jail.
[134] And close the border.
[135] They need to close the border.
[136] It's ridiculous.
[137] And was fentanyl a big theme with a lot of people you spoke to there?
[138] Huge theme.
[139] Border, drugs, crime, those were huge, and it sounded like voters really connected them together.
[140] Now, you also spoke to some candidates.
[141] How are they addressing this concern?
[142] Gubernatorial candidate Kerry Lake has made closing the border a centerpiece of her campaign.
[143] She's actually promised to declare the situation an invasion on day one and to bring in the National Guard.
[144] I wasn't able to secure an interview with her opponent, Katie Hobbs, but Hobbs has also endorsed a secure border, but she's taken a softer tone compared to Lake.
[145] As we've covered before, Carrie Lake has been a lightning rod in the media, but the polls showed that a lot of Arizonans really connect with her.
[146] What was your impression?
[147] So I can see why the media hates her.
[148] She essentially declared war on them when she resigned from her post as a news anchor, and she openly accused them of colluding to control a political narrative.
[149] But when you look at public opinion polling, the majority of Americans are actually highly suspicious of the media.
[150] So it just doesn't surprise me that she's winning in the Court of Popular opinion on that one, despite all the negative headlines.
[151] She also has the advantage of being a household name for almost 30 years, which makes it really hard for Democrats to brand her as extreme in the 11th hour.
[152] Now, I also asked her what she thinks went wrong with the media.
[153] Here's what she said.
[154] When I first got into TV news, every station was owned either locally or by a family or they maybe owned one or two stations.
[155] And then those got bought up by bigger groups.
[156] Now it's down to five or six corporate owners who own every TV station across the country.
[157] That's five or six entities controlling all of the information.
[158] And that's when we started seeing people who had experience in television getting pushed out because they made too much money replaced with four or five people, out of journalism school where they're actually teaching them to be activists.
[159] And so newsrooms, which typically were leaning left, began to lean leftist, and began to be a really big problem.
[160] And it started to feel like we were being forced to lie about really important stories.
[161] Well, the biggest criticism you tend to see in the press is that Lake is a so -called election denier.
[162] What is her position on that?
[163] Yeah, so she was still a news anchor during the election, but after she was, resigned, she made some pretty specific claims about election corruption.
[164] And that's actually a particularly pointed charge, considering that her opponent, Katie Hobbs, is the Secretary of State whose job it is to oversee elections.
[165] And Hobbs oversaw the 2020 election in Arizona.
[166] And Hobbs is going to be overseeing the 2022 elections.
[167] And I also want to get behind what happened in our elections.
[168] We had a forensic audit.
[169] The media doesn't want to cover that audit.
[170] But when I go out to events and I ask people, do you want reforms to your elections so that you know on election night the results and you can live with the results whether your guy won or lost?
[171] Are you for that?
[172] The crowd goes crazy.
[173] People want election reform that leads to transparent, fair, and honest elections.
[174] Well, Carrie Lake has become a candidate to watch this election cycle.
[175] We'll see how voters in Arizona feel about her tonight.
[176] Georgia, thanks for reporting.
[177] The final polls are in and the real clear politics averages give Republicans the edge in retaking not only the House but the Senate.
[178] Trafalgar Group, which is partnered with Election Wire and Morning Wire for polling results, found Republican Senate candidates with a slight edge in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Nevada, and sizable leads in Wisconsin and Ohio.
[179] Trafalgar's Robert Cahley told Morning Wire that gauging voters' sentiment is increasingly difficult because of submerged Republican voters, who tend not to trust legacy media outlets and pollster.
[180] Taking into account the submerged vote, those Republicans who feel intimidated and refuse to take polls at all, I think we're looking at all the signs of a red wave.
[181] Thanks for listening to Morning Wire.
[182] We'll be back this afternoon with more of the news you need to know.
[183] And starting at 4 p .m. Eastern today, tune in to Daily Wire's election coverage, which will feature me in Georgia, Cabot Phillips, Megan Basham, and other Morning Wire contributors.
[184] The show will be streaming live at Dailywire .com throughout the evening.
[185] evening.