The Final Countdown: Election Eve Reflections

In this episode of "From the Frontline," Cole Muzio offers a detailed analysis and personal reflections on the eve of a historic election, marked by unique challenges and unprecedented scenarios. With a focus on the implications for Christian voters and the broader community, Muzio provides insights into the dynamics at play as former President Donald Trump seeks re-election against Kamala Harris, highlighting the critical issues driving voter decisions.

Key Takeaways:

1. Historic Election Dynamics: Muzio discusses the unusual circumstances of this election, including the first potential non-consecutive second term in modern history.
2. Christian Voter Disengagement: There's a significant discussion on the reasons many Christians feel disconnected from the political process this cycle, emphasizing the importance of focusing on policy over personality.
3. Polling Analysis: A breakdown of how polling works, its reliability, and how demographic targeting influences predictions.
4. Strategic Voting Considerations: Insights into the strategic decisions by voters based on key issues such as educational rights, religious freedoms, and economic policies.
5. Prayer and Perspective: A call for prayerful consideration of the candidates and the issues, as well as a reminder of the sovereign role of God in governance.

Key Quotes:

• On the Election's Historical Context: "Donald Trump is optimistic heading into election day tomorrow that he will be the first former president to be president-elect since Grover Cleveland."
• On Christian Engagement: "Poll after poll, survey after survey shows that Christians in particular are more disengaged this election cycle than we've been in a long time."
• On the Importance of Voting Informed: "I think a helpful perspective is to think through the issues that you're voting on, whether it be the ability for families to thrive, afford groceries, pay their mortgage."

Learn more about Frontline Policy Action.

Transcript

The Final Countdown: Election Eve Reflections

Cole Muzio (00:01.714)
Hey everybody, it's Cole Muzio again with another episode of the From the Front Line podcast. And folks, it is almost over. This election cycle that has been pretty intense, certainly historic in a number of ways where you've had started with the two oldest candidates ever to run. Then you have a candidate drop out the middle of it and

past the baton in a weird sort of way. Certainly a lot of interesting factors about all of the candidates involved and certainly it's historic to have a former president who has been out of office for four years trying to become the first person since Grover Cleveland to reclaim the presidency. And Donald Trump is certainly optimistic heading into election day tomorrow that he will be the first former president to be president elect since that time.

So we're going to break down, we're going to give some final election thoughts and maybe some predictions heading into tomorrow so that you can digest this and maybe assess this and pray over this as well as we head into a critical election day. Certainly there's a lot of key issues that are involved. We sent out an email earlier today. We encourage you to check it out on our website going through five issues that people are voting on as they vote on this election cycle. Poll after poll, survey after survey shows that Christians in particular

are more disengaged this election cycle than we've been in a long time. And that's disappointing. But the polls indicate that a big chunk of that is that Christians do not identify with the major candidates. They're not big fans of either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris. And they feel like politics does not resonate with them in a way that they would hope that it would. And that's certainly understandable. But I think a helpful perspective is to think through the issues that you're voting on, whether it be the ability for families to thrive, afford groceries, pay their mortgage.

raise their families they see fit, whether it's education, whether it's opportunity and indoctrination in education, boys playing girl sports, boys going into girls bathrooms and locker rooms, whether it's a life issue, there is severe differences between each of these candidates that deserve folks taking into consideration as they go vote. There is some urgency to this election. And our organization for those reasons has endorsed Donald Trump.

Cole Muzio (02:19.396)
And so have that in your background as I break this down, we are certainly encouraging people to vote for Donald Trump, have done so. I believe we're the only faith-based organization in Georgia that has given an official endorsement to the Trump campaign and to Donald Trump himself. I certainly don't think he's perfect. I think he is in many ways beyond kind of the flawed, you know, when you say every candidate is going to be flawed, every candidate since the dawn of time has been flawed. all sinners. I think there's some additional problems with Donald Trump.

person and the candidate, but at the same time, you have seen God use him before. You can be hopeful that God will do so again. And certainly you compare him to the alternative. You as a Christian witness can be speaking to this election in a very broad way. You can talk about, you do not have to be a cheerleader for Donald Trump, but when you go vote, there's a choice that you have. And we certainly encourage people to make that selection, but to continue to pray for him.

not only for his health and safety and that God watches over him, but that God draws him to himself, that he makes wise choices and that he's successful as president if he were to do so. And my challenge to those listening to this podcast and to Christians all across the state, nation, and world would be to also pray for Kamala Harris if God chooses to put her into the White House. As disastrous as I think that would be.

If God does choose to put Kamala Harris into the White House, it is according to his plan and his purpose for the good of his people, for the good of us as individuals, and for the good of our nation, according to his plan. So that does not mean that it will be easy. It does not mean that a whole bunch of good things will start to fall into place. It could mean that he uses her to bring about ruin and draw people to himself in that way. So I don't speak for God, but make sure to pray for your leaders, regardless of who it is. I'm going to break down kind of where this election stands and then give you some closing thoughts.

I'm going to talk about polling for a second because that leads into, as you think through predictions for this election, as you think through where are we at, what's going to happen tomorrow. And look, let me just pause right there and say, when you think about the question, what's going to happen tomorrow, again, addressing this podcast primarily to Christians, my encouragement to you is to glorify God with your confidence over the next, I guess, 30...

Cole Muzio (04:35.762)
plus hours between, you know, over this election day, as well as as you're waiting for the count to be made and made public. And that could go into Wednesday very realistically as we try to wait for who the likely president of the United States is going to be. Glorify God with your peace and your internal calm, as well as how you manifest that externally. Let people know how important these issues are and how much you care, but do not let people see you be anxious.

So let me talk a little bit again about polling. There's a lot of confusion about how polling works and I'm going to give a very elementary overview just so people can kind of understand when you hear all these different numbers and you hear things floating out there. First of all, polls are not just random. you you don't, when you hear about a pollster, they're not calling and just getting a hold of the first, you know, whatever their polling sample is going to be, whether it's 300, 450, 600.

800 people, they're not calling 800 random people to get that survey information. And when people said to well, I don't answer the phone, who answers the phone? They account for people not answering the phone. They know that it's difficult to get a hold of people. A lot of people are starting to aggregate, polling information via different resources than just the traditional dial method. But I'm not going to go into that too much, but they, they account for the people that are not going to answer the phone, but they're also looking at demographics. So when you're looking at a sample size,

You have to set what's your sample size going to be and then how does it need to construct from a demographic standpoint? So if you were to say look our sample size is going to be 400 people and 350 people that answer the phone are men Or 350 people they answer the phone or women you're not getting an accurate sample You're going to get 400 people to answer the phone But it's not going to be reflective of any sort of real universe that in which we live And it's not going to give you any sort of election data or results. You're not asking people for their favorite color

You're asking people for electoral preferences and those electoral preferences do tend to flow along some demographic trends. They're not perfect, but know, pollsters will look at how look at trying to sample men and women because men and women do vote differently. They'll look at married versus unmarried because married and unmarried people vote differently. They'll look at racial demographics because white voters tend to vote a particular way at a certain click and black voters will vote a particular way.

Cole Muzio (06:57.794)
at a certain percentage rate as well. They'll look at Hispanic vote turnout. They'll look at all those racial demographics. They're going to test you based on whether you're a Republican or Democrat because there's going to be certain expectations that if you identify as a Republican, you're going to vote at a certain percentage for Republican candidates. And they're going to look to match that up and make sure that they've got an accurate sample size. So they're going to look at all these demographics. And so when you're putting together that sample, you've got to make sure that your ultimate sample is reflective of that demographic information.

which then requires you to say, what does the electorate look like? What percentage of the electorate is going to be married? What percentage of the electorate is gonna be men and women? What percentage of the electorate is gonna break down along these sort of racial lines? And you've got to put together your sample. And this is kind of where the art and science of polling comes down is how do you compile your sample and what sort of weights are you giving to each of these demographics? And so when you look at polling,

part of the flaw that gets set up in how the poll is constructed comes down to that fundamentals. What does this pollster think that the election is going to look like? And that's where people make a ton of money on polling is they've got to bring that level of expertise. If it was just, we're going to call 500 people, we're going to get 500 responses, and we're going to break it down in percentages, well, that's not going to tell you anything. And it doesn't require any expertise. Anybody can do that. Where the expertise comes in is these guys have to model

what they think the election is going to look like, how that may change cycle over cycle, where deviations are from the population and how that's gonna be reflected. And then, so there's that fundamental error that can take place in terms of how they size up the electorate, and then comes into the sample. And samples are not gonna be perfect in any sort of sample that you get. There's gonna be a margin for error. So if I go survey 500 people on what their favorite color is,

I'm probably going to get a pretty close proximity as to what the people in my area, what their favorite color might be. Now in Georgia, it may skew to red or black based on the University of Georgia and Georgia Bulldogs fandom. And so I've got to take that into account and not apply it to a broader universe. But of people that meet this certain criteria in this geographic area, if I were to survey 500 people on their favorite color, I might get a reasonable sort of expectation on what that color might be.

Cole Muzio (09:19.28)
But again, in election, your demographics are going to shape that. even in the color example, I'm not going to get an exact representation of what I'm trying to get. There's going to be some margin for error. Because 500 people, if I'm trying to get an assessment on how this 100,000 people universe feel, 500 people, I'm going to have a certain degree of margin for error. Hopefully, it's relatively small, a few percentage points in one way or the other. But the sample and the results that I get from that sample,

is going to have some level of deviation and not complete accuracy. So there's both of those elements that a pollster can get wrong. And so when you see consistently different results based on different pollsters or based on polls that come out, that's where that comes from. So not only is the sample different, you're getting different inputs, but that basic level of foundation that you start with can be very different based on the pollster. Now, I will say as someone that has filed elections for a really long time,

There are more wild deviations in these polls than I have ever seen in any election. And part of that transfers into each, you you typically expect certain things from different polling outfits. So, you know, Trafalgar was the one that was cited in 2016 as the most accurate pollster because they were really the only one that was predicting that Donald Trump was going to win. And then somehow he won.

And so Trafalgar got all this sort of national buzz and reputation and they carry that into 2020 and they were very, very wrong in 2020. They carry that over into 2022 and they were wrong again in 2022 because in 2016, they kind of had their universe set a particular way that ended up matching the electorate. But Trafalgar has been one that you would typically say, look, if anyone's going to predict a strong showing for Donald Trump, it's going to be Trafalgar.

And then you look at some of the media outfits, know, morning consult is one that consistently comes out and over skews left. And you can kind of discount some of those morning consult polls because they're sample and their basis of how they view the election tends to skew left. This election cycle, you have not seen that as much. You will see different polling outfits have very different results and it's not course within the same polling outfit. And then you will see sort of weird trend lines on states.

Cole Muzio (11:44.124)
So sometimes you might see Trump doing very well in the Rust Belt, but he may be struggling in Georgia and North Carolina and you kind of scratch your head going, okay, Georgia and North Carolina is going to be in better position. And most polls are indicating he's in better position than Georgia and North Carolina than he is in the Midwest States. And so you're wondering where does that come from? And these polling errors and these polling trends do not necessarily seem to correspond with events. Kamala Harris got a slight polling bump after the debate.

that lasted for about a week or two. And then there was really no one thing that you could attribute to after that, but she began to decline in the polling again. And again, you can say, look, that's because the more people got to see of her standalone, have to give answers about things, the more they were reminded that they just don't like her. And so there's that rationale and explanation. But polling trends have been kind of all over the place. And again, this is somewhat that is a little bit of an outlier to traditional election cycles where things tend to flow.

within the same polling outfit because they're looking at the election the same way. The samples may deviate slightly, but the foundation is the same. And so you can expect similar results from the same polling operations. But this election cycle, you've seen a lot of difference and you're not seeing it track with real time events. So I say all that to say, polls are not exact. And in close elections, polls are not great indicators of where things stand. You're looking at trend lines. You also can look at aggregates.

So a lot of times you will hear things like real clear politics is a site that gets thrown around. Five 38 is a site that gets thrown around. Nate Silver is one that gets thrown around. Those are aggregators. They're taking polls that they may view as inputs and say, okay, these are credible polls. We're gonna average them up and see where they stand. This is the time window of polling that we're gonna look at because we're gonna throw things out that are five days old because that's no longer relevant.

Certainly that's a broader span the farther out from the election that you get, but the closer you get, you're throwing things out that are outside the certain time periods. You gotta look at all these things as you're aggregating, and aggregates you're gonna get a more accurate result because you're sizing up a bunch of different polls and you can eliminate some margin for error. But with those aggregators, you still are not necessarily getting a clear picture. So when you look at polling, and you look at that as an indicator for where this election is,

Cole Muzio (14:05.498)
I'm going to start by saying if you take polling at face value and you look at trend lines and you look at where this election is going and you look at and you say, look, if your presupposition is the polling is going to be accurate, I highly, highly believe these pollsters. think Kamala Harris has a very, very slight edge. Again, if that's your presupposition, Kamala Harris has a very, very slight edge going into election day.

Now, here's the thing. I don't think that's a great precept position to build your case on. So Kamala has no doubt, both in polling and in voter turnout, closed the gap on where she was at the beginning of last week. She had a, I don't really know why, but she had a relatively good week. She began to get her voters to show up at the polls and early voting and her polling numbers are beginning to look better. At the beginning of last week, it may have looked like

Donald Trump was starting to run away with this thing and all the indicators pointed to that. Whether it is media manipulation or some other factor, and I think it may be a combination of both, polls are starting to show this race tighten. And you're seeing more credible pollsters that are saying that they think Kamala has a slight edge in the states that she needs to carry. Now here's the thing.

Again, why I think that's a bad presupposition is that Donald Trump has traditionally underperformed polling, both in 2016, where nationally most polls were relatively spot on, but they did not track very accurately how Trump would perform, especially in Midwest states. He overperformed expectations in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Not as much as people think that he did. Part of the challenge in 2016.

is you did not have tremendous polling in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. And you started to see Trump momentum and a swing towards Trump in late polling, but there was not enough polling and enough attention paid to it. And that's the genius of Donald Trump and Kellyanne Conway in 2016, where they really put a lot of emphasis there in those last weeks when people did not think he was going to have a shot to win those states. He ended his campaign in 2016 in the same place he's going to end it tonight in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Cole Muzio (16:25.55)
And he was able to put together an electoral win based on winning those states that pollsters didn't think he was going to be able to win. Donald Trump overperformed polling expectations in 2020 as well. 2020 pointed to a landslide. Joe Biden victory leading into this election season or leading into election night. And Donald Trump was able to close the gap based on how polls were showing him in every swing state, multiple points down in...

The Midwest states, in fact, a lot of those Midwest states who was pointing to a six to eight point kind of Joe Biden win. Trump was able to close the margin to one or to less than one point in a couple cases. so that Trump overperforms polling. Now, 2022, if you look at that as the example, Republicans underperformed by and large where they were polled at. And so that's one of the things that you've got to take into your analysis and your calculus is, did pollsters learn?

what the electorate looks like more in 2022 and 2020. And they've been shifting their model to maybe now it's even more favorable to Donald Trump. And that's what Kamala Harris supporters would want you to think. So if you think that Donald Trump has even a slight underperformance in polling that will show up on election day, that he's going to overperform those expectations, you have to feel very good if you're a Donald Trump supporter. And I think that's, that's a very natural assumption to make. you, again, if you think,

that he will even slightly over perform expectations. Then you have to feel very good if you're a Donald Trump supporter, his route to the White House runs through winning North Carolina, Georgia, and Arizona. He is polling ahead consistently in all of those states. And you will find polls and you found there have been several credible polls in the last couple of days that show that he is in very tight races in those three states, particularly North Carolina and Georgia. Arizona is consistently showing up for Trump.

even in foals that may be a little bit less rosy. But winning those three states puts Donald Trump in striking distance of the White House. He then just needs to win one of the Midwest states, Pennsylvania especially. Nevada also looks like it is trending towards Trump, although that is going to be a very tight race as well. So at that point, this election would look very good for Trump if he can pull off one of those Midwest states. Now,

Cole Muzio (18:47.858)
All those states are polling very close. Most aggregates, so I mentioned aggregators earlier, RCP, Nate Silver, in fact, one of the CNN aggregators, their aggregating method puts all those at less than 1 % in the Kamala territory. Typically, what this own CNN aggregator said is that election, pre-election polling over the course of history will be off by 3.4 % on average.

in swing states. And so if you think of that number as swinging in either direction, and you look at those three states, the likelihood that Donald Trump can pull off one of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan is pretty good. And so at that point, he's, you know, on his way to the White House and for a reelect. Kamala's path is far harder. She has to win all three of those states. If she can't pull off any of North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona,

or Nevada. Nevada is out there as your seventh swing state. And so she needs to, and if you're ruling out Georgia and Arizona and North Carolina, her path gets very, very, very difficult. She needs to go perfect in those Midwest states. And it does not look like that is mathematically likely. So you have seen a lot of these aggregators and not all these models tighten.

think Nate Silver, who had put Trump in a much, much higher position last week. He's now got this kind of as a toss up sort of race. But again, they're basing that largely off of polling concerns and what they're seeing in these polls, which again, show a little bit of a tightening of the race. Polymarket, which is the betting outlet by which people can bet on who's going to be the president of the United States, showed over the weekend that that had tightened up substantially.

Trump had been kind of pushing in the high 60 percentile in terms of likelihood to win at some point last week. Then it had tightened up to I think about like the closest I saw it was 54, 46, 52, 48 somewhere in that ballpark. Now Trump is back up in the high 50s. So that has fluctuated, but most models are now kind of putting it either as

Cole Muzio (21:10.214)
based on polling, which you say, even if it's just a little bit of flawed, would favor Trump, those models are putting this either neck and neck or in Donald Trump's corner. So Kamala needs to be pretty perfect in the Midwest if she's going to be hopeful of a win. And I just don't know that that's going to play out for her. So this is going to be a very tight race or could be a blowout. If Donald Trump overperforms polling substantially, he could win all of those states in the Midwest.

There's more states that are in play for him that would traditionally be counted as Democrat states. They have put some resources into places like Virginia and New Hampshire and New Mexico. And if you start to see the race in North Carolina and Georgia not be close at all, if you're talking the five or six point win in Georgia and North Carolina, and you're seeing trend lines that show Donald Trump is well overperforming how he polled.

You may see states like Virginia and New Hampshire and New Mexico actually be in play. Conversely, there's very little buzz about Kamala Harris being able to pick up states that she would not expect to pick up that are outside the swing state seven that we talked about earlier. Except for one poll that came out over the weekend, a seltzer poll out of Iowa. And this is the most credible pollster in Iowa. She consistently polls the caucus and she's known

you know, her polling over time, not that she's ever wrong, she's not infallible. But her polling over time has consistently been more right than wrong. Her poll came out and showed Kamala Harris up by three in Iowa, and that was a little bit of a shock poll. So again, part of it gets into your sample and your foundation. Her poll showed women moving rapidly into the Kamala camp, that the election was going to be flooded with women, especially on Election Day.

and show tremendous amount of late deciding traction towards Kamala in our polling. Whether that gets picked up or not, this Kamala plus three in Iowa is a substantial outlier. Most would poll Iowa in the safely Trump camp, but if you see Iowa be close on election day, if Iowa's numbers are coming in pretty quickly and that is a contingent election, that would vote very poorly for Donald Trump. And in that case, you would be very likely if Iowa's a

Cole Muzio (23:36.922)
close election or one that swings to Kamala, it's very likely that polling has underperformed for Kamala or undershown Kamala's support in states like Georgia, North Carolina, because she is, while you can say those will lean Trump, they're only showing up for him by, you know, two or three points. So what at the end of the day, now that I've kind of rambled on through all these different possibilities and kind of where I see, you know, what we're seeing.

What is my prediction and my prediction would be a narrow Trump victory. I think he is headed towards winning North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona. I think at the end of the day that he picks up Nevada as well. And I think he's going to get probably Pennsylvania and maybe even Wisconsin as well, which would give him more than enough electoral college votes to win this thing. I think Kamala picks up at least one of the seven swing states.

out in the Midwest. And I think she's got a she's got a real shot to do so. I think she's going to make this thing close. I think counting could drag on for a while. Just like in 2020. This thing is not going to be decided by a national popular vote is going to be decided by a handful of states that are going to be very, very close. My guess is that you will know how North Carolina and Georgia are going to fall on election night or early in Wednesday morning.

There may be some counting that needs to go on. It may take a while for those states to be called because they're going to be relatively close. But my guess is that they will not be so close that it avoids a Donald Trump call, again, late into the hours on Tuesday or early into the hours on Wednesday. Pennsylvania, I expect to be closer. I think that is going to go to Trump, but that may drag on into Wednesday, depending on how long the counting takes.

At that point, Arizona may also take a while to count that as a Western state. So it's also going to be three hours delayed in terms of when the counting comes in, but it may take a while to process. And so, you if you're kind of baking that into the Donald Trump calculus and you think he's going to perform very well there, that determines if that's something that he's counting on the win. It may be a while before you call the presidency on that front.

Cole Muzio (25:45.648)
Nevada doesn't play as much into the electoral college calculus as you might think unless states certain fault a certain way. They're kind of beyond the, you know, scenarios that we're laying out here. Nevada, I think is going to take a while to come in. And then again, Michigan and Wisconsin, those could be nail biters. In fact, you know, again, aggregate polling shows those as within 1%. Again, the closest the closer that you are in terms of where the numbers is the longer it's going to take to make a call in those states.

A lot of concern about voter fraud as you look at the landscape and you look at what happened in 2020, a lot of people blame voter fraud as the reason that Joe Biden was able to beat Donald Trump. Whether you ascribe to that theory or not, when you just look at the situations on the ground, Georgia is the only state that is a swing state that is under Republican control. And, you know, I can almost hear people that may be listening to this that may not like

Our Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, they may think, well, you know, being under Republican control doesn't do much for us. At this end, you also have out, you know, states or counties like Fulton County and DeKalb that are always going to be, you know, raise some questions in terms of how they operate. But keep in mind, Arizona, which was under Republican control in 2020 is no longer Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, or under Democrat control. And so if election fraud is a major concern for your, for you,

We are not outside of the state of Georgia in a better position than we were in 2020 from a control and leverage standpoint. Georgia, we obviously passed SB 202, which was rated by Heritage Foundation as the nation's strongest election integrity law in the country. So we've made some progress. Are we perfect? No. But we've made some progress in Georgia and should be in a better position. These other states are not. Now, one of the things that I do think is of benefit and of value.

is in 2020 this election was conducted primarily by paper mail-in ballots. That is the easiest form by which someone can cheat. And so this election is being far more conducted in person. And I think that it's harder to manipulate that when you're not looking at the volumes of mail-in votes that were historic in 2020. as we look at this and you look at the fraud scenario, I would certainly be on your guard. would certainly be.

Cole Muzio (28:04.946)
that the election results that we get reported are what people intended to vote for. But I think in Georgia, we're in the best place for that when you look at comparisons to where we are in other states. So keep that in mind as you're looking at election results. Remember time zones, so Georgia polls, North Carolina polls, Pennsylvania polls will close faster than polling locations in Arizona and Nevada. We should get those numbers faster. How much?

Will that affect how we ultimately look at the results? It's going to be very interesting. Again, my prediction would be that Georgia, North Carolina, we know the result relatively quickly. Let me tell you this though, if we don't, if things do not look good for Donald Trump in Georgia and North Carolina, that's where we start to get worried about a common low victory. These seven states are not equal. Again, your calculation is North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona fall in the Trump camp.

the question mark states are the Midwest states. And if that's your calculation, you feel very good if you're in the Trump camp, because you just got to pick up one of these Midwest states. If you are not feeling as good, or if you don't do well in those southern states, so Trump is underperforming in North Carolina and Georgia and Arizona, and he's not up to expectation and Georgia takes a long time to count, North Carolina takes a long time to count, this thing looks razor close, then the likelihood of him winning, you know,

these Midwestern states go down based on, it will look like, okay, polling was maybe a little bit more accurate than Trump might have hoped, as well as, you his path gets a little bit more difficult, a lot more difficult if he loses some of these states that he's expected to win. And again, if he's blowing those states out, you get quick calls, you could see states like Virginia, New Mexico, and New Hampshire all of a sudden pop on the map. That is something that again, his team is expending resources to do.

Now, where are we in these other important races around the country as well as congressional? US House is going to be a nail biter. You 435 seats there. I'm not going to be able to make a prediction on all 435. My overall sense is that Republicans are likely to keep control of the House. If Donald Trump wins the presidency, I would feel pretty good about their chances of keeping the House. US Senate is going to fall into Republican hands. are to be picks up pickups.

Cole Muzio (30:30.138)
In West Virginia and Montana, I think the question is how much. So can Republicans pick up seats in Ohio? I think Bernie Moreno will beat Sherry Brown in Ohio. And then can they pick up a surprise seat in Pennsylvania, in Wisconsin, in Michigan? Again, some of that is going to be driven by the top of the ticket. You may see a little bit of variation. So you're seeing in some states some overperforming. In fact, I was just looking at some polling information before we did this podcast that showed Eric Hupdy, the Senate candidate, overperforming Trump by about a point or two in Wisconsin.

There's going to be a couple incidences of that, but they're not going to run too far ahead or behind of where Trump is. So I would look for him to need to win or be very, very competitive in all those states for either Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania, Mike Rogers in Michigan, or Eric Hovde in Wisconsin, how much of a chance. Sam Brown is one to watch in Nevada. Can he win? Donald Trump's polling, particularly last week, looked pretty promising in Nevada. There's some promising signs on the ground.

One seat that Republicans are not anticipating picking up is Kerry Lake over in Arizona. She's consistently under-performed Trump in polling by almost even 10 points in some cases where Trump shows a multiple point victory in Arizona, but still Kerry Lake is falling behind by four or five or more against Ruben Gallego in Arizona. That's not an anticipated pickup this cycle. Unfortunately, candidate quality matters and Kerry Lake has not been a quality candidate.

And it'll be interesting to see how the North Carolina governor's race affects the presidential race where you are having a similar effect, where Mark Robinson in North Carolina is running even farther behind them, multiple double digits points behind in that governor's race in North Carolina. This was a guy that Trump endorsed. So there's a lot of scenarios. There's a lot of anticipation. If you are somebody that takes polling very, very seriously, you're going to think that this race is close.

And that I think is a very natural way to go about and look at this. If you think that Donald Trump is likely to slightly overperform polling when he more than slightly, substantively overperformed polling in 2020 and 2016, if that's the case again, he's your next president. If polling is accurate, then you may have Kamala or you're gonna have a very, very tight race.

Cole Muzio (32:53.714)
polling is missing some sort of blue wave energy behind Kamala, independence going to Kamala that is unexpected, then she can put together a nice little run and have a strong win. every scenario is on the table. I think one thing that you've got to look beyond polling though is the campaign movements. Donald Trump is holding multiple rallies a day. At 78 years old, is undeniably outworking Kamala Harris. His

battleground map is expanding. He has spent resources again in places like Virginia, New Hampshire and New Mexico. Whereas Kamala is really, really just focused on the Midwest at this point. It is coming down to Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan for her. That seems to be where she's putting all of her marbles, all of her resources, all of her time. And when your map is shrinking, and she's spending some time in Pennsylvania specifically focused on Puerto Ricans, given the Puerto Rican

a comment at the Madison Square Garden, where the comedian called Puerto Rico an island of garbage. was an unforced error by the Trump campaign. Certainly the Biden garbage comment, certainly it was a helpful contribution to the Trump campaign. But this has given Kamala an opening, I think, in terms of polling that they're seeing with Puerto Ricans. And so she's spending time in Pennsylvania, specifically going after that community. When you're micro-targeting to that degree,

Sometimes that can be a positive thing, but usually it indicates that your universe and your likelihood of winning is shrinking and you need to find a narrow wedge issue in a particular state to secure a victory. Either her campaign is running a very, very smart game that they know how they're going to perform in a certain number of states and they think the battleground just comes down to Pennsylvania. How does Pennsylvania go? And they've narrowed it down to this subset of voters and they're going to spend all their time, all their resources, every bit that Kamala has.

between now and the close of the polls on Pennsylvania because they think it comes down to that. So either they're being very savvy or they are putting all their eggs in one basket because they know that their map is very narrow. So we're gonna see how this plays out. Again, my encouragement to Christians, pray. Pray for a God-honored result. Make sure to go vote if you have not done so already.

Cole Muzio (35:12.85)
Here in Georgia in addition to the White House race. have 236 legislative seats on the ballot 14 congressional seats All of our legislatures on the ballot both federal and state And so make sure to go vote because it's not just about the top of the ticket. It's all the way on down We've got school board races and key key states You can go to our website and our key district You can go to our website and find our full list of endorsed candidates That is not everybody that we would encourage you to vote for so if you look and say my state senator My state rep is not on here

Did they do something wrong? Not necessarily. We try to make sure that we pointed people to priority races for us, races where we had somebody that had sponsored a bill, someone that's in a competitive race, or someone that we wanted to recognize in a particular way. So it's not a comprehensive list of everybody that we would encourage you to support, but you can check out that list for endorsements at frontlinepolicy.com. And so make sure to engage on that front. But pray.

Pray for a God-hunting result and then pray for whoever wins. My encouragement to you is to realize that anybody that holds a position of authority in this country has been installed there by God. Whether it is to bring about judgment or whether it is to do good, God is working according to His plan and a key hallmark of the Christian is the joy, hope, and confidence they have in King Jesus. And my encouragement to you as we look at this election is to not

mirror the rest of the world with their hope and anxiousness and anxiety falling into the realm of politics. No matter who wins tomorrow, King Jesus is on the throne. He has a plan for you. He has a plan for your family. He has a plan for this country. And that's where things sit. And we can be confident in that. God bless you all. We will do an election wrap-up show at the end of this thing.

and hopefully we'll have some good news to share. If not, we will commiserate together, but we will move forward in confidence and with urgency and be proactive about the plan that God has in store and we will be faithful regardless. God bless you all. God bless your family. God bless this country.