starts right now. hi. thank you so much. i am ari melber and whoop there it is. election day within three weeks. early voting has begun, including in new key states. and we begin with something special. i m not going to hide the ball. i m going to show you the two chairs. howard dean who ran the dnc. michael steele who ran the rnc. in our opinion, no two better people to walk us through and it, they are here right now. let me tell you the context. 2 million people cast ballots. when we say election day, it s like rhetoric. this is election month. early voting is showing records smashed in certain states. fluid dynamics. new polls show the house leaning slightly towards republicans, depending on what happens. democrats believe they are still in a strong position to hold the senate majority. and as we ve told you, we cannot accurately cover 400 plus races at once. we will bring you the highlights, the context, the facts and the music. but i will show you some of the deba
jubilant. you re not jubilant, jake. i like that. nor jocular nor jaded. you see jocular when jimmy kimmel was cracking you up. that was great. he s funny. anyway, great to see you guys. have a great show. i ll get my luminous self over here. all right, keep it up, laura. good evening, everybody. i m allison cam rata in new york. and i m laura coates in washington, d.c. and this is cnn tonight on a night when the president of the united states lays out his closing arguments with the mid-terms just merely days away. he s warning that election deniers could lead the country down to what he calls a path to chaos, and he insists that democracy is indeed on the ballot. we re back to having an election where things that he s warning about may actually turn out to be true. so i wonder what happens if it does, alison? nothing good, laura. nothing good as we ve seen already in the past. plus in these final days of the campaign herschel walker is going after barack ob
we won in the governor s race in wisconsin within a point of the senate race here, we won in pennsylvania, arizona, michigan, these key battleground states, i think underscores it s not just who votes. it s also who they vote for. there is a persuasion effect, especially from issues like abortion that moved voters on the bubble from the republican column into the democratic column last cycle and could again in 2024. so nationally the turnout data could show certain things, but you re right, state by state in some of these key states, it was a very big democratic turnout that made the difference in a lot of key races. you just mentioned a few moments ago it s going to be razor-thin and anybody who thinks otherwise should have their head examined. speaking of that, what do you make of this movement by the organization no labels? they seem to be moving in the direction of fielding a third-party candidate. apparently tomorrow up in new hampshire, west virginia senator joe manchin is goin
over performed. i think that s given the biden team a lot of renewed confidence and i think it should make the republicans really do some introspective thinking here about their leadership and their message, bret. bret: ben, new york times writes the turnout by republicans was great. it s just that many of them didn t vote for republicans. state after state, turnout data shows that registered republicans turned out at higher rate in some places but they voted for democrats in some places. i think a lot more of that has to do with the way that independents shifted than republican voters if you actually dig into the numbers. one thing that we should understand is republicans have a golden opportunity coming up in 2024. democrats are going to be defending 23 senate seats. many of them in red or purple states. and they don t want to miss that opportunity. because that would really cement a really significant and legislative change in washington that would be enduring. if they want to
pushing south carolina to be their first primary, which would then force new hampshire to lose its first in the nation status. you are not happy about this. why? well, this is just this is just personal political pay back politics by joe biden. joe biden is saying well we re going to send it to south carolina. for no other reason than his party bosses and his buddies in south carolina want it. it is really unethical if you look at it. and didn t joe biden say that he s going to be a candidate in 24. so now you have a candidate dictating what state is going to go first. again, for no other reason than he did well in that state. so, if you look at let s say turnout data, who votes. new hampshire is always one of the top states in the country in terms of voter turnout and engagement. south carolina is below average. nevada is below average in that category but i think they re still counting votes from an election about a month ago. so you have to biblee able to d right.