The end is in sight.

The OTR panel this week takes a at the last major races and where they are in the polling data.

And lots of folks are voting in Michigan.

Around the OTR table.

Kyle Melinn, Jordan Hermani, Lauren Gibbons and Colin Jackson sit in with us as we get that inside out.

Off the record production of Off the Record is made possible, in part by Martin Waymire, a full service strategic communications agency, partnering with clients through public relations, digital marketing and public policy engagement.

Learn more at Martinwaymire.com And now this edition of Off the Record with Tim Skubick.

Thank you very much.

The end is in sight.

I can feel it.

Listen, I want you to pretend you're either in the Harris camp or the Trump camp.

And you look at data out of Michigan which says so far in the early voting, 55% of the vote female 44% male.

What are you thinking?

I mean, I think right now the numbers benefit the Harris campaign.

And we were talking in every Trump rally I've been to, every advance rally I've been to, they always rally the crowd up.

They ask them who has voted early.

You know, to borrow a point from Jordyn, this is something I've noticed as well.

There's been an very concerted effort to promote different types of voting options.

But it feels like the supporters there in the audience are not actually embracing those early or absentee voting options.

So for this many people to vote early, it does seem like it benefits Democrats, at least on the face of it.

Yeah, I know the Novi rally that Trump had very recently, he and others preceding hi and trying to fire up the crowd, kept pumping up the who here is ready, who here is excited to vote early.

Make sure you vote early.

And you could of heard a pin drop in that arena.

There was some muffled cheers, but it's not a good sign, Those were Democrats who had infiltrated the rally.

but yo hear of a high female turnout.

That's obviously that' very beneficial with the gender gap, especially with Democrats trying to make abortion such an issue.

And sorry, I think I woul cut you off there for a second.

Yeah, that was the point that I was going to make.

You know, we have been seeing in these numbers, you know, there's been more men supporting Trump, more women supporting Harris.

So if more women are turning out to vote, that would suggest that perhaps those numbers are good for Harri You want to make it unanimous?

No.

I'm going to talk more about the squeezing of the balloon.

Like, is this just people have decided that they're changing their voting habits or is this that there's actually going to be more turnout?

I mean, I don't think that you can really read too many too much into results at this point.

I'm more interested in the universe of people who are voting and are these low propensity voters that both the Republicans and Democrats are going after, Are they actually showing up?

And will we have more people actually voting in 2020?

And I think the answer is going to be yes.

But what about the 55-44 split f Maybe they just want to vote early.

I mean, I don't I'm not reading too much into that because maybe on Election Day it will be 55% men and 45% women.

That's what I mea by the squeezing of the balloon.

I don't I'm not going to get worked up about that.

I'm more intereste in the fact that this election has become like this all consuming thing.

And it's just become amazingly exhausting.

I mean, I know that I'm getting a little older, but this is been more exhausting than any election that I've had to cover.

And it's it's the rallies, it's the emails, it's the text messages.

It just never seems to end.

And for us, it's not going to end either.

I mean, both presidential campaigns on the final day, they're going to be right back here in Michigan.

Harris here on Sunday.

Trump on here on Monday.

We have a ton of get out the vote stuff that's going on in between then.

It is.

It's just never ending for for a swing state like us.

And I think we have seen it just up and down the ticket.

Everyone is just pouring money into Michigan and nationally, state level.

And it's not just the presidential.

It's not just the Senate.

It's all these competitive congressional races.

It's all these competitive state House races which are on track to be the most spending that we've ever seen in state House races.

Those mailers that people are getting to their inbox, like even the Supreme Court, you've seen a decent chunk of change put be invested into trying to turn people out to vote, or if you have taken out an absentee ballot or you're planning to vote early, then there's 15 mailers a da telling you to turn your ballot in or vote early now.

So it's it is aggressiv at this point for every voter.

And I do want to touch upon something Kyle said early.

You know, maybe the Election Day turnout is a little bit different.

So maybe to be it may be too soon to look into these early voting numbers.

But if you look at the speeches, Republican Congressman John James has given us some of these Trump rallies where he's encouraged.

He always uses a Lions metaphor.

You know, you don't let the other team run up the score three quarters of the game in the fourth quarter.

All of a sudden now try to score the points and wonder what happened the next day.

So you got to wonder like, what's going to happen on Election Day?

You know, you hope people can vote and you hope people can turn out to the polls, but things always happen.

Babie get sick, cars get flat tires.

Well, at this point to its forecast that it's probabl going to rain on Election Day, which does not bode well for I mean, you think.

Nobody wants to go out in the rain.

Well, historically, too, I mean, obviously with 2020 being a bit of an outlier because of COVID, traditionally Democrats vote absentee or are more inclined to vote absentee and Republicans are more inclined to vote day of.

And that's not good news for the Trump campaign.

If that rain persists.

Th numbers coming out of Detroit, the prediction that 53% turnout would beat what Biden did in 2020, He got 51%.

And there was a major problem in 2016 with Mrs. Clinton.

She got 49.

The numbers out of Detroit, a good vibe for the D's.

Well, historically, you would say yes.

But I would also sa that the Trump campaign has done a good job in turning over African-American males into their camp.

The numbers just seem to be on the incline on that.

So historically, that would be.

Yes.

But it could also be a harbinger of what we're going to see across the state as well with people voting early.

You know, the whole early voting thing has become a bit of an experiment for us.

This is the first big election where we've had this and we've already saw at least one hiccup in the University of Michigan where we had a Chinese national go in, somehow get a ballot vote, His vote is counted.

And then he came back and they were like, you know what, You shouldn't have voted.

Like, how many people are like that out there?

And I think once all the hubbub, who wins and loses and so forth is all said and done, the Republicans are going to be bringing this up time and time again and saying, you know, we got some holes in our election system here, that because we've made this so accessible, it's become maybe too accessible.

You can see why over the years in this town, Republicans in the legislature have opposed election reforms because now it now the Democrats have been fighting for, especially on absentee ballot.

I can remembe we had every secretary of state going back to Richard Austin, including Republicans, Candice Miller and Terri Lynn Land, who said we need absentee voting, voting, and all the Republicans in the legislature would always laugh when they showed up and said, we're not going to do that.

That' going to kill us.

This absentee vote becomes a critical part of this election.

Yeah, certainly.

And I think, you know, from a clerk perspective, you know, having the absentee ballots, you know, does take off some of the deluge of Election Day.

I recall when early voting was being discussed and on the ballot initially that was where the major concern was, that for local election officials, because it is just really hard to staff for that many days.

It's hard to bring those people in.

That said, on Election Day those votes do get tabulated it very quickly.

You just press a button, it's already done.

You just count them on Election day.

So we have seen that absentee voting is just a hugely popular option ever since that became no reason absentee.

I would expect that that continues.

We'll see that continue.

Earl voting is kind of that wild card that we still have to see.

You know, just how many voter take advantage of that option.

Oh, we had 2.4 million on Thursday going into this Friday taping.

So it'll be interesting.

But it looks like Pennsylvania is going to keep us awake at night.

Oh, yeah.

Something about them needing four days to finish tallying all the votes.

That what the secretary of state said on 60 Minutes too.

To that point.

I mean, I think you brought it up earlier where, you know, we we by and large in 2020 knew even with Pennsylvania being the last state to count all of their votes, we by and large knew that Biden won the election.

So am I at all concerned that it's going to take them that long?

No, I'd much rather be thorough and accurate than fast and wrong, God forbid, especially with past precedent being what it is.

So you know, i stands to reason, though, that it does open up an avenu for certain people to say, well, why is it taking so long whil why and further misinformation or distrust in the election system could be sown.

the slower it goes The antsier people get.

We saw that in Michigan in 2020 in a big way.

It's like, why is this not getting counted faster?

You can say every reason you want.

People want to see results quickly.

Well, the Trump campaign has laid the foundation and it is firm.

It's not ashphalt.

It is cemen that they've got a vehicle to go into Pennsylvania and question the outcome of the election.

Yeah.

And then we also got to look in our own state, the city of Warren, where the clerk in Warren has said we're not going to take advantage of the law that allows us to pre process our absentee ballots.

And, you know, as you've been reading off the stats and what I'm thinking is, all right how long will it take to count?

Well, in Pennsylvania, they said it's going to take four days.

Where as the clerk, The clerk in Warren says, oh, we can pound it out in the night.

You know, everything's fine.

We've got a well-oiled machine here.

Well, which is it?

You know, is Warren got to figured out and the state of Pennsylvania has not.

So I'm going to be keeping an eye on that.

What are the chances of a disturbance either during the election or after the election?

What's that?

Wouldn't the tea leaves point to I mean, I'm always an optimist, so I really want to hope that I appreciate optimism.

Yeah.

I mean, a disturbance after the election, I mean, we will always wonder, you know, on election night, you know, even if the race does get called, you know, unless it's very, very close, I can imagine, you know, we are going to see these rumblings.

We've seen that messaging coming, especially from the Trum campaign about falsely claiming, you know, Democrats want to cheat and everything else.

We've seen that rhetoric.

That's nothing new.

And whatever comes of that, you know, remains to be seen.

What gives me a little bit of optimism is I have seen you know, some of these pushes, especially within conservative circles, to try to train people about the process.

So you don't se repeats of what happened in 2020 where people are causing disturbances while trying to watch absentee balloting end up being removed from the center or something like that.

So I think that hopefully, at least with people understanding the process a little bit more, even if they don't like it that we'll see a few less disturbances and that will help hopefully cut down on some of these this immediate chaos.

There is a publication calle SITE which monitors the chatter and the woman that runs that speaking for herself, not for the organization, said the chatter is louder and it's more organized.

And she would not be surprised if there were problems to try to intimidate immigrants who were trying to vote during the election and stuff afterwards.

What are you all hearing?

Well, I haven't heard that.

I mean, that's interesting.

But to to Collins point, though, I am concerned about people thinking they're election experts because they stay in a Holiday Inn Express.

You know, everybody think they know everything these days because they got a Twitter account and they can pop off on social media.

But you really know how an election works?

You actually know how hard it is to cheat?

You know how hard it is to go and she cheating and it doesn't matter, does it?

It doesn't matter because everyone's an expert.

And so they can get these numbers and they can say anything they want and get excited.

And we saw that in 2020 and we're four years removed.

And I'm glad.

Collins an optimist.

I'm not an optimist.

I think we've just got more people who think they know what they're talking about.

We've even got a state rep who's saying, hey, there' more people who have voted than, you know, people who are on the rolls.

It's unbelievable.

Yeah, okay.

We'll do something about it.

If you're a state rep and you're so passionate about it.

But I mean, so this is just an example.

I mean, this is somebody who's an official who is saying that I think it's just going to get worse.

I mean, the idea that everybody nowadays has the ability to say that their elections experts, because they did a little bit of training, whether that's going to be a good or a bad thing.

At the end of the day, I have no idea.

We've seen, like you just pointed out, people getting on their pulpits and saying that they know X and Y and Z about the election system despite the fact that they jus started looking into elections probably within like the last four years.

At the same time, I am hoping though, that efforts to try and educate broader swaths of thi I mean, not just Michiganders, but Americans.

You know, when we were talking about the TCF, the ballot dump that occurred late night while we being in the election sphere that was not surprising to us.

Of course, absentee ballots are going to continu to come in throughout the night.

That was not any cause for alarm for us, nor was the photos that you would see of wagons, which turned out to be a TV crew hauling in their cameras.

So, you know we now know we're more educated, I would argue, as a country about or I would hope more educate as a country about sort of the general election processes that things won't be as picked apart as they were in 2020 or that the ability to cast out is a little harder.

I'm also not going to get ahead of my skis, though.

I think one interesting point to note as well, our election system i not the same as it was in 2020.

There were additional pieces of legislation passed that were intended to respond to some of these concerns.

Now, whether this will be a stopgap, that remains to be seen.

But Democrats in particular were really trying to make it so there wasn't this this tempest or this option for people, especially with the reforms to the board of canvassers and election certification and even adding in some additional election securities around drop boxes or those kinds of things.

So it hasn't remained stagnant, which is also interesting.

That said, we're still, you know, the litigation from the results of the 2020 election and the response to it is still ongoing as voters are casting their ballots for an election four years later.

So it's not over.

But what happened in the U.P.

while up there we had a clerk in Red Rock River Township.

I keep messing around with the Rock River Township, but so he and his deputy clerk had announced that they or had indicated to the secretary of State that they had plans to hand count their ballots prior to a county canvass.

The Secretary of State vis a vis Elections Director Jonathan Broder said, You can't do that.

That's against state election law.

We have processes laid out and because of that, they were removed from their rolls and they were replaced by other area clerks.

And I believe a county treasurer excuse me, a township treasurer.

So to that point, I've already seen people question, you know, oh, well is this election interference?

And any, any move left, right, center regardless is going to be hyper scrutinized these coming days because everybody constantly feels like the other side, quote unquote, is out to get them.

But in this case this was just general election law needing to be followed.

And nobody besides the clerk and the deputy clerk had come to this conclusion that a hand count was needed.

So in the end, they were ultimately removed.

There's an old saying Don't confuse me with the facts.

My mind is made up.

Just on that point, though, it feels like and to what Lauren said earlier about Michigan's election laws changing, you know, it seems like the election misinformation at this point has been brought up in an election, integrity or not, election integrity circles by the circles trying to fight this election, disinformation where it feels like there's been asymmetrical warfare going on almost, where the conspiracy theories have been allowed to run rampant.

And then people that were just running elections, election administrators and everything, they're kind of caught flat footed.

So, yes, we've seen, you know, these for the past four years, the conspiracy theories, election deniers, etc..

They've had more time to organize and make themselves feel like experts.

But at the same time, we've see election officials and clerics and the people that ru these things also have more time to try to fight misinformation and be more geared up and be more prepared for some of this backlash.

You know, when you were talking about people's minds made up, it made me think of this polling that we just did with Mitchell.

72% of the people we polled said that their mind had been made up long ago, that this decision was very easy for them and only 20% said they actually had to give it some thought and looked at both sides before casting their ballot.

People's minds were made up a long, long time ago on this Bernie Porn In his surve found that we have no undecided voters left in Michigan, Mitchell said 1%.

All right.

Well, we've been arguing over 1%.

Okay.

So his point is this.

He thinks that the Kennedy factor and Mr. Kennedy got 5% of the poll could determine the winner in Michigan.

Interesting angle on the story.

Any takers on that one?

Yes, I think they could.

People who are going to vote for John F or Robert F Kennedy anyway.

Well, or are confused like his name is on the ballot.

And even though he said I'm not a candidate, how many people heard that on the evening news?

And why do you think that he tried to push so hard to fight to get his name removed once he dropped out of the race and threw his support behind Trump?

I think they're well aware of the fact that the longer his name or at this point his name is not getting off the ballot, there is no way there's even the 2%.

Yeah, right.

Two point something million people have already voted.

He's not getting off the ballot.

And yeah, that should be a cause of concern for the Trump campaign in a state where, like you said, 5% of the voters earlier, even if it's not five, if it's 3% in a close race, that that is the deciding factor could balance out.

Jill Stein, though, you mean to be fair, about one or two.

So the D's are not home free either.

They could cross each other out.

I mean, we do got a libertarian who hasn't run in as strong of a campaign as in the past either.

So I don't know if that third party will make a difference.

I think it will.

I think about undecide voters, though, at this point.

What's left to decide?

The candidates have been in Michigan.

You know they're basically living here.

They were very familiar with most of their policies.

They've debated.

They they are sending mailers left and right.

There's very little left to decide at this point and who decides to come out and vote.

They support in some of those folks simply will say, forget it, I'm not going to vote.

Yeah, yeah.

Certainly.

US Senate race.

Yes, the US Senate race.

I mean, right now you're seein both sides project confidence.

You know, you're hearing from the Rogers campaign that their internal polling has them up.

You're getting from the second campaign that they also feel confident in this race.

I've seen the ads recently you know, where Slotkin's making her, quot unquote, are not quote unquote.

But to paraphrase her fina argument in this race, you know, it seems like both campaigns really are trying to push their own.

Well, I mean, to rephrase it I think it's a very cliche to say, you know, both campaigns are pushin their own vision for the future.

Right.

I've been seeing a lot of Roger ads where he's pushing culture war issues.

You know, I think transgender athletes in sports, you know, even though that's a relatively small part of the percentage.

Meanwhile, Slotkin, she's kind of relying on the same message she's used throughout her whole career, trying to message to the middle, talking about not playing up her national security record or playing trying to help her mom with health care in the final days of her mom's life, etc., She came back to that spot at the end is in that interesting?

It's been interesting watching sort of the evolution of their advertising, especially because, you know, back a couple of months ago even a couple of weeks ago even, you'd see Rogers constantly trying to hit Slotkin on EVs, on China, on the fact that, oh, she's a farmer, but, you know, is she really?

And then now recentl coming back home to this culture war issue of transgender athletes, it to me that seems like a candidate who's nervous.

I don't look we passed precedent in Michigan suggests that those culture war niche issues are not well accepted by the broader electorate.

I mean, we saw in '22 gubernatorial candidat Tudor Dixon try and run on that, protecting girls sports and she lost by double digits percentage points.

The people that are going to vote on that are already in the fold.

And that's the thing.

So who is this message speaking to?

Because it's turning off your more centrist voters who might say why does this affect me at all?

I don't care about this.

It's just the US Senate boys and girls.

Right?

And I was just going to say that's my last point, too.

I mean, the polling that the Rogers campaign has touted, where they're out ahead, this is also the only poll I believe I've seen in recent week at least, that has put him ahead and usually Slotkin is coming out on top.

So even more than that was our poll.

You know what struck two points.

You were struck there.

Yeah, margin of error still within the margin of error.

But you know what I found mor interesting than Roger's up two is that he's tracking with Trump for the first time.

This is a poll that showed him tracking with Donald Trump because in prior polls he was running 3 to 5 percentage points back.

Now, Mitchell did the first sample on a monday, did 500 results, and he he looked at that and he's like, Roger's is tracking with Trump finally.

And he was so concerned about it.

He did it again.

He did another 500 and it showed that.

So I think that's the more interesting thing that maybe Trump and Roger's fortunes are more aligned than we thought.

Well, I had an original thought I think the other night.

If if, if, if Mr. Roger had not hooked his wagon to Mr. Trump, would this race be closer?

I don't think you would have made it to the primary.

Yeah I think that's the bigger thing.

He had to get over that hurdle.

There is a huge secto of the Republican Party where, if you remember to Trump even a couple of years ago was bashing Rogers for for being a RINO, for not sticking up for him.

And now he needs his support because Trump is effectively a kingmaker in the Republican Party.

I mean, hypothetically, mayb maybe it would have been closer.

But he needed to do that.

He needed to do that to get the base Republican support.

And fundamentally, I do think this race ultimately comes dow to how the top candidates play.

It's a statewide race.

You know, while we have seen some polling that suggests Slotkin has pulled a little higher than the presidency, I ultimately think, you know, who who wins Michigan will very likely determine the Senate race as well.

But we've got pretty tribalized too, I mean, tribalized as a country.

And so it's hard to separate yourself as a Republican from Donald Trump.

And likewise.

Yeah, but you see littl he took the Trump endorsement.

What if he started to walk that back as we thought?

Is that's an option to get int the into the general election?

You know, Rogers ha when he was in the legislature, this guy was not a you know, a bomb thrower.

He knew how to work with other sides and kind of congenial.

You wouldn't call him a super moderate, but he certainly wasn't a far right moderate.

Maybe the original thought I just shouldn't have had it.

But I guess, like at this point, I'm just separating yourself from Trump at this point with with Trump having this much popularity within what's left of the Republican Party, I think it's hard to do that sprint to the center that you've seen traditionally in past elections.

All right.

House elections down the road.

How does he see House?

I think, you know, I started believing at the very beginning when Biden was the presumptive nominee, that the Republicans would take majority.

Then Harris came in, injected some new enthusiasm.

I walked that back.

But now I'm more in line to think that Republicans will probably take majority.

The juice wasn't there on.

I think Kamala Harris's momentum didn't crest over 50% for a long period of time.

And you got to remember tha the seats that the Democrats won in 2022 was because abortion was on the ballot.

And Gretchen Whitmer blew out Tudor Dixon by ten points.

And both of those factors aren't in this one.

But if you talk to Rick Snyder, he is just madder than a wet hen.

No, he doesn't get mad.

I scratch that.

He doesn't.

I'm sorry, Governor.

He was concerned tha the Democrats are still playing the abortion issue in local House races.

And his argument is this issue has been settled.

But, Governor, with all due respect, the Democrats say, no, it's not been settled.

Right.

And that has been a huge theme, constantly hammering Republican candidates on abortion and all of these competitive races they wouldn't be doing if it wasn't working.

Yes, certainly it's it's still such an issue of concern at the national level.

So even though the argument has been from the conservative side that it's been decided in Michigan, that the people voted, the people voted, the people have decided.

But Democrats make a compelling case that, you know, if the pendulum were to swing the other way, that Republicans who have long said that they were anti-abortion would probably look to restrict some of those rights.

And I think you're still hearing that from a lot of Democrats in terms of, you know, who it's all such a toss up.

Right.

But it comes back.

I keep looking back to those numbers.

In 2022, when Whitmer was ahead by tha much, it was still that close.

And if Trump does well in a lot of these areas, like downriver, MacComb, tha that could be the death knell.

Which way does the house go?

I am goin to be so honest at this point.

It is a toss up for me.

I want to say that especially with the fundraisin that Democrats have been doing, God knows that I have seen ad after, after and after ad for every candidate, including those who aren't eve I'm not even in their district.

So they definitely got the momentum there.

My big question is, as they continue to push the abortion as an issue issue, whether or not that's just kind of getting lost in all of the noise, you know, you're constantly hearing it.

Democrats are doing a heck of a job in making sure that that's their standard message.

But are people actually receiving it when Republicans are pushing so hard on the fact it's been decided?

I would say that Republicans are spending a lot of time in the districts where these people are.

Meanwhile, Democrat have a lot of seats to defend.

Not a lot they're trying to flip.

I think Republicans have the advantage.

Should we erase this tape?

Only if we're wrong.

All of that like that.

You ought to go into TV news.

Thank you all very much.

Good, good program.

If you haven't voted, why don't you get it in the game?

Everybody else is already done it.

Next week, a recap of wha y'all did should be interesting.

See ya then.

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