Transcripts For MSNBC The 11th Hour With Stephanie Ruhle 202

That is tonights the last word. The 11th hour with Stephanie Ruhle starts now. Tonight, new polling shows an extremely close president ial race as both candidates hit the campaign trail. What the numbers are telling us about voters less than seven weeks out. Plus the republican nominee for governor in North Carolina vows to continue their campaign after new bombshell reporting. Then georgias top Election Official is calling out the State Election Board over changes that could cause chaos as The 11th Hour gets underway on this wednesday night. Good evening once again. I am Stephanie Ruhle, live from Los Angeles and we are 47 days away from election day. This evening we are going to talk about polls, so lets remember, polls are not predictive and they are not perfect. They are far from perfect, but they are a snapshot of where things stand in the current moment and they can show us where the trends are moving. Today we got a wave of new polls, nationally and in key Battleground States where the whole thing is decided and they show that while harris and democrats are in the strongest Position Theyve been in all year, this race is still incredibly close. In fact nearly all the results are within the margin of error. It does appear the last Weeks Debate helped the Vice President , but not enough to break away from trump. New polls that focus on the state of pennsylvania, where it really, really matters, show that the race is still extremely close. Tonight the Vice President was in detroit, michigan for a live streamed Town Hall Event with oprah. The event felt a lot like an episode of a talkshow. The two talked with voters about the border, Reproductive Rights and Harriss Plan for the economy and that is where she snuck in a reference to last Weeks Debate. Part of my plan is to give startup Small Businesses a 50,000 Tax Deduction to start up a Small Business. I know it is 5000. Nobody can start with 5000, so that is part of my plan. That is a tiny business. It is a concept of a business, right . You know where i am going. A concept of a business. Meanwhile Donald Trump was in washington tonight, speaking at a Fighting Antisemitism Event at a summit of the Israeli American Council and at both Events Trump said if he loses in november, jewish voters will have a lot to do with it. And an absolutely shocking story tonight. I got on a plane and my phone blew up and i still cant believe it. A Man Trump once called better than Martin Luther King. Cnn is reporting current North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark robinson, now running to be governor in that state, once referred to himself as a black nazi and expressed support for bringing black bringing back slavery. Robinson denied the report and vowed to stay in the race. My colleague Laura Jarrett has all of the details. Reporter tonight, republican candidate Mark Robinson vowing to stay in the race for governor in North Carolina, vehemently denying the report showing dozens of disturbing comments online. They want to focus on salacious tabloid lies. We are not going to let them do that. We are staying in this race. Reporter the Lieutenant Governor facing a swirl of speculation about the fate of his campaign after Cnn Today published what it called a series of inflammatory comments on a Pornography Website Message board more than a decade ago, before robinson began his political career. Nbc news has not verify the authenticity of the post. Cnn says it includes robinson referring to himself as a black nazi and expressing support for slavery. Writing, slavery is not bad. Some people need to be slaves. I wish they would bring it back. I would certainly buy a few. Cnn also reporting robinson, who publicly supports a six Week Ban on abortion with exceptions, wrote that he did not care if a celebrity got an abortion. Writing, quote, i dont care, i just want to see the sex tape. Cnn says the comments were all made under the same Username And Robinson used it elsewhere on the internet including Product Reviews on amazon, but Tonight Robinson blasting it as tabloid trash. Let me reassure you the things you will see in that story, those are not the words of Mark Robinson. You know my words. You know my character and you know i have been completely transparent in this race. Reporter no stranger to polarizing comments, robinson has come under scrutiny in the past for calling the holocaust hogwash, which he later said was a poorly worded remark that was not antisemitic. Come november i plan on being the first black governor of North Carolina. Reporter he is a social conservative who has been endorsed by former president trump. This is Martin Luther King on steroids, okay . Reporter North Carolina, a battleground state, but a tough one for democrats who have not won it since 2008. The deadline for robinson to drop out of the race is midnight tonight. Im going to take a guess, he is probably staying. All right, lets bring in our leadoff panel. It is time to get smarter. Larry is here because we are talking polling. Director at the center for politics. Evan mcmorris dont joins us and mckay coppins, Staff Writer at the atlantic. Larry, when we saw these polls, you are the first person we wanted to talk to, so break it down for us. Big picture what is your take away . I think larry is frozen, so we are going to wait a second. Evan, what was your take . I dont want to step in for larry when it comes to polls, but when he is unfrozen it will be amazing. I will say this. You mentioned at the top of the show that polls are a snapshot and you should not take a prediction from them, but from a narrative perspective, all of these polls are coming out. You would rather be harris than trump, looking at these polls and that is good for her, obviously. We dont know what it means in the long run, but talking this debate being a huge Game Changer for the election, i think it pushed harasses momentum further and away from trump. It speaks to all of the good news she has had since she found herself with the nomination after president biden dropped out. A series of successes for her and these polls help solidify the fact that she is doing so well in this weird environment that she found herself in. Here is what stuck out to me. One poll found that voters do think harris performed better in the debate, but in the postdebate polling it has not really moved the needle. What does that say about voters . Could there really be a lot of undecided voters left, if a whole bunch watched that debate and still did not really move . Come on, there was a clear, decisive winner. I think there is a difference for a lot of voters between acknowledging that one candidate performed better than another and thinking they would rather that person be president. I do think, though, to evans point, when you look at these polls you have to look at where they are going directionally and harris is creeping up. She is not creeping up in the polls far enough that she is getting outside the margin of error. She is not running away with it. I think we might be past the era of president ial politics where either candidate can never have a 60 landslide or win 48 states. I think we are an incredibly polarized country. No candidate is ever going to win by more than a few points. I will say that what i found most interesting was not actually the polls that are showing her creeping up in these various states, but actually polls that ask voters who they think will win. Washington post had a good piece on this, breaking down this question of which candidate do you think is going to win . Harris, in almost every poll, wins by a much larger margin. 10, 11, 12 points. Most people seem to think that harris is going to win and if you look back at president ial elections over the past 60 years, that is a more predictive question than asking people who they want to win, who they want to vote for. There are a bunch of theories about this, but one of the theories is basically when voters are asking that question they are not just taking into account their own preferences. They are taking into account the preferences of people they know in their circles. Their neighbors, their family. They become sort of mini anthropologists and that has proven predictive. If you want to look at good news for harris, the fact that significant majorities outside the margin of error think she will win, that does bode well for her campaign. Now that is interesting and larry, unfortunately for you, you were frozen. You are our polling expert, but i had to ask these guys and they gave great responses, so the bar just got higher. What were your takeaways . Well i could not hear what they said for the most part. Brilliant stuff. Im sorry i was frozen, but i was shocked by the report you gave about Mark Robinson. I just couldnt move and i hope thats okay. Look, as far as polling is concerned, i think people need to remember at all times that all Polling Today can do with all of its flaws and inaccuracies is to tell you that Candidate A is ahead or Candidate B is ahead or that it is so close you really cant tell which candidate is ahead or the polls arent predicting. I go with the third option, certainly in this case. Now having said that, which candidate has moved up and which candidate moved down . Obviously Kamala Harris moved up and Donald Trump moved down. The problem is the national vote doesnt matter at all and we have 43 states sitting there watching the seven states that will impose a new president on the rest of us for the next four years and those states happen to be, with only a couple of exceptions, so close that they are literally tied or certainly within the margin of error and by the way, good research suggests that the margin of error is actually about double what the pollsters list, because there are so many sources of error that cannot be quantified. So we will be much better off when we all realize that polls are not votes and we should not pay much attention to them and those in politics who care about the results should be working and volunteering and giving money. How about that . I will take that. That is a good education for all of us out there. Democrats are in the best Spot Theyve been in all year and at the same time this thing is razor thin. Which of those points matters more . That is the 64 Million question of this election. This whole thing comes down to what is actually going to happen at The End of this race . We have a candidate in Donald Trump that we have seen unite the Republican Party in a way he had not done before. You see this idea of harris, relatively unknown, comes in late in the game, but pumps all this enthusiasm on the democratic side and those two things are competing with Each Other right now. It may come down to the nitty gritty stuff like Ground Game operations. We did some stories about that the other day talking about ground operations. This is a fight to The End and whoever has the most best stuff i guess, that is how it is going to work out i think. The most best stuff, that is right there. A political columnist writes that there are three states that matter, just three states. Georgia, North Carolina and pennsylvania. A, do you agree and b, do you think this race could be one without pennsylvania . Number one, i do not agree and number two, i believe that it can be one under certain circumstances without pennsylvania. We just said 43 States Arent in this thing. There are only seven and i respect jonathan martin. He is an old friend. It is great what he wrote and i see his point, but dont you think it would make more sense if we didnt narrow down the near seven states we have that are truly competitive to three . Because i can see other pathways really for either candidate to win 270 electoral votes and i think the candidates can see that, too, and their strategists can see that. Pennsylvania is important and North Carolinas important in georgia is important, but so are wisconsin and michigan and nevada and arizona. So we look at different combinations of these states and lets keep doing that. Lets keep the door open to new events and new calculations. At the risk of larry going frozen again, lets talk about Mark Robinson. North Carolina Lieutenant governor in this new cnn report. He is denying that he called Himself A Black Nazi on a Pornography Website and he is vowing to stay in this race. Heres my question. There is all this pressure, should he step down, should he step aside . Lets be real. With Donald Trump as the leader of the Republican Party, the person who sets the bar, do you see any scenario where a republican will step down for any reason . This is the key point, right . When you have the leader of your party who has said outrageous, offensive, racist, xenophobic, antisemitic things allies constantly, who has been caught in affairs and all kinds of unseemly, unsavory personal behavior and who has basically weathered it, at least in terms of, you know, his standing in the Republican Party. You dont set any kind of Incentive Structure that would cause somebody like Mark Robinson to say i dont think i can survive this, i will drop out. Now look at is possible that the party in the state could do what the democratic party essentially did to Joe Biden, which is, you know, pressure mounts, donors pullout. The problem is that that is so soon, like you noted, that there is probably not enough time. Come on. Come on. Who are the republicans in the party that they will put the pressure on . Give me a break. Marjorie Taylor Greene . Matt gaetz . Who is going to pressure him . The interesting thing is that in the North Carolina Republican Party, the establishment hates this guy. The rest of the republicans in the state dont like him. The problem is that he is not beholden to them at all. He is following the Trump Path where he doesnt need the republican establishment in North Carolina to continue to run his campaign. You know he fancies himself as antiestablishment, outsider, populist. That is how he positioned himself. There is really not a lot of leverage that the State Party has to get him off the ticket, but to your point they are probably also not going to try very hard. You have the Donald Trump precedent. I will say im not really sure that Mark Robinson should bank on being able to do the Teflon Don thing that trump has pulled off. Weve seen this over and over again. A lot of republican politicians seem to think they can do what trump has done. That they can weather the storms and stick around, that the laws of political gravity dont apply to them and then they find out they do. Im not sure he should be making that calculation himself. Ron desantis, you know what he learned . Only trump can trump. Quickly before we go if robinson stays on the ballot how do you see the Governors Race and could it have an impact on the president ial race in North Carolina . Absolutely. I just got back from North Carolina, mid day. The people i talked to yesterday, before this new story broke, were unanimous in saying that robinson was going to lose and most of them said he will lose badly. This is before this story. Unless you believe that there is something i