Welcome to the latest in our series of Policy Conversations between Counsel Public Affairs Senior VP John Delacourt and Counsel PA Account Director Will Shelling about the 2024 US presidential election. John is a veteran Liberal strategist, longtime Policy contributor and novelist, and Will is a Vegas-raised, Vancouver-based NDPer. This is their seventh exchange in the series.

By John Delacourt and Will Shelling

October 31, 2024

Will Shelling: It’s the final week of the campaign and at this point, it’s pretty much just air wars, ad spend, and GOTV. Over 60 million Americans have already voted (including some of my folks), and we’re seeing extremely high voter turnout already in key states like Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. While over 100 million people voted early in 2020, likely because of the COVID-19 pandemic and social distancing guidelines, this year’s early voting numbers may follow that trendline.

As we’ve seen, advanced voting is being used more often, especially for folks like nurses, union workers, and those in the service industry who work odd hours (we’ve all been there). John, what do you make of early voting this time around? Is there something you’re looking for specifically?

John Delacourt: Will, I always get nervous about early voting – more commonly called advance polls north of the 40. When I saw the way the Toronto-St. Paul’s byelection numbers came in for the Liberals, I had the worst kind of déjà vu, having lived through a similar experience in 2011 while campaigning in BC for Ignatieff. Advance polls are insidious because they’re so decisive in closely fought races, and an effective advance GOTV plan operates, by necessity, under the radar, beyond the total, cumulative figures. The Conservatives had a great advanced poll strategy in both instances cited above, and Trump’s team could also.

However, a recent clip by Jen O’Malley Dillon, who is the chair of the Harris Walz campaign, suggests that they are reasonably confident about who they’ve targeted and activated by early voting: primarily those who were uncommitted in the weeks before these crucial last days of the campaign. They have “multiple pathways to get to 270 votes in seven states” because of their strategy. The campaign feels that if the work continues on early voter activation, diligently, in the days ahead, that it will make a difference in the battleground states.

The Trump campaign has been less than forthcoming about their strategy with voter identification. Crucially, that doesn’t mean less confident; it just means that they continue to speak in broad strokes about the momentum they have.

No less a seasoned campaigner than James Carville now claims he’s confident Harris will win. His assumption is informed by the advanced strategy, and what we can only surmise as its success in execution. Perhaps I’m still getting over what happened in 2016, but I think that with any campaign, it’s what you can’t be sure of, happening on the ground, that you need to be vigilant about. More game left on the field.

That said, one data point O’Malley Dillon shared was that in one crucial battleground state, Nevada, in Clark County specifically, the Democrats have seen a higher turnout of younger voters than they have “at any other point in this cycle.” Will, do you think this is part of a larger trend, and that the young vote will be a significant factor on E-day?

Shelling: Fun fact: that’s where I lived for 12 years. We finally get a chance for me to talk about Vegas in our Conversations!! It’s so strange because I consistently forget that Nevada is considered a swing state now, since when I grew up there (during the Bush years), it was so consistently a Republican state. Credit to the efforts of the Democrats in 2008.

Now that you mention it, Clark County is a great case study for two reasons: the high amount of people under the age of 40, and the high number of voters of colour. Young voters are coming out in droves for Harris, especially in Blue and “Purple” states like Nevada. It’s not lost on me that the whole point of the Harris campaign has been to activate younger voters across the country, especially as we’re the ones who will have to directly deal with the climate emergency, social injustice, and growing income inequality. For Harris, her entire appeal to young voters has been “we’re not them” until this point, but I think drawing out influencers like Maggie Rogers, Ariana Grande, and others, youth are beginning to identify themselves with the Democratic party, which is how they can win. For another day, we could totally discuss how the myth regarding celebrities staying out of politics is pretty much dead, as we see more and more folks going for the Democrats or the Republicans.

Additionally, I want to tease out another thread in the data. Based on ACS data, a high proportion of voters of colour in Nevada are concentrated in Clark County, and while the main demographic group identifies as Hispanic (30%) there are high proportions of Black and Asian voters as well. While polls are incredibly close and even demographic polling is close too, I think there’s a real opportunity for the Democrats to pick up Nevada once more, especially with the recent racist statements during the Trump rally at Madison Square Garden. While Harris’s support with Hispanic voters is lower than Biden’s (50% compared to 54%), it’s still higher than Trump’s levels which are stuck at under 40%. Additionally, Hispanic influencers have come out in droves for Harris, especially those with millions who follow them. While endorsements may not carry weight for advanced polls, it could be enough to drive folks out for the day of, as a last-ditch effort. Nevada will be a state to watch, but I’m more curious about Georgia as a battleground.

Another topic I’d love to discuss with you is the role of spectacle, especially within politics. I remember my first big election night when I watched Obama give his victory speech in Grant Park and I still remember the immense sea of people who surrounded the campaign. It seems even now, close to 20 years later, Americans like myself are still latched to the idea of spectacle. It’s the sense of unity you feel, like being part of something greater, that makes you even more involved in the political process and eager to stand in a crowd of strangers and have, frankly, an obstructed view of whoever is speaking.

On Tuesday evening, Harris and Walz headlined a “closing argument” rally at the Ellipse, with the White House as a backdrop – where Trump incited the Capitol Hill mob on January 6th, 2021 – and 76,000 people attended. Last weekend, Trump’s team delivered a rally at Madison Square Garden, which clocked closer to 20,000. These two rallies differed immensely in their tones, with one striving for national unity and the other riddled with racist, fearmongering, vulgar, incendiary content, but they both shared the same goal of seeking to unite their bases before a long GOTV effort. We’ve both been to our fair share of rallies, I imagine. What other roles do you think these ones play, especially as Americans race to the ballot box next week?”

Delacourt: Will, to your point about spectacle, one of the better podcasts, “The Rest Is Politics,” with Rory Stewart and Tony Blair’s former comms director, Alistair Campbell, focused in on this very point, particularly on Madison Square Garden. Campbell contends that what that embarrassing spectacle represented was “the culmination of all these male-dominated…, exclusively male, usually … chat groups in the early days of the Internet … um, 4Chan, Reddit … where they were telling each other … and then the whole incel community … essentially seeing their power is being taken away and they’ve got to get it back and they see in Trump somebody who will get it back for them.” I think there’s something to that. What spectacle provides is a moment of self-congratulation in group identification – something Trump’s base needs at the most visceral and raw level. I think it’s antithetical to reflection and decision making, and I’ve always viewed such gatherings as having limited value for voter conversion. It’s all about activation through inspiration. And I think both campaigns are now beyond the stage or phase of this race where this even matters. The vote’s baked in among the costume party, there in the cheap seats.

That may be a little cranky but I think you know what I mean, being a fellow veteran / survivor of the rally experience. You hope the oratory is inspiring, but it’s almost secondary to the fact that you’re a warm body, reliably enthused throughout.

However, Campbell also spoke about how effective Michelle Obama’s oratory was, and that it might have a significant impact on the uncommitted female voters. In other words, her eloquent defence of reproductive freedoms – and the threat a Trump administration poses to them – galvanizes with a single issue. Will, do you think this will in fact be the case? Stewart contends the polls have drastically underestimated the female vote in every age demographic and that Harris will win decisively because of this.

Shelling: Stewart and Campbell are bang on about this. I think the spectacle of MSG was really to drive out and whip up the far-right contingents of their party, that are more focused on the culture wars than anything else. They feel incredibly slighted that other groups have begun to have the same privileges as them, and I’ve always remarked that for certain groups, any moves away from their perspective as the dominant group will feel like oppression for them, and we saw that frenzy loud, live, and in colour on Sunday. If anything, it might push some people to knock on more doors, but it’s not changing minds.

Michelle Obama’s speech, and the ensuring ad spend regarding women’s “right to choose” in the voting booth, is a hell of a one-two punch. I think her speech regarding the defence of bodily autonomy is powerful because so many people have difficult stories about abortions or have heard them from their loved ones. According to the Guttmacher Institute, one in four women of reproductive age will have an abortion by age 45 if the existing rate remains constant (this data does not cover those folks who can get pregnant more broadly). While I can speak about reproductive health more broadly, the focus of US politics for the right to choose is often centred around abortion specifically. This means that everyone, men included, is connected to someone who has experienced the trauma, pain, and silence that is so often associated with this medical procedure.

Michelle Obama’s speech, while about a women’s issue, was directed toward men to force them to understand the consequences of their dissatisfaction with politics. There’s a co-opting of that rage to advance an agenda that will cause incredible harm to people who need access to an abortion. The Republican obsession with the right to choose is not that it’s one about safety or championing the family, it’s about control. As the former first lady said in her speech, our daughters, wives, girlfriends, and others will become collateral damage to the rage induced, displayed, and encouraged by the very same men who attended the MSG rally.

I’ve written at length in the past about the gender gap in voting, and I’ve seen the impacts of this gender gap on the doors. In the BC Election, I was knocking doors and would routinely be told that every single person in the house would be voting Conservative or would not be voting in the election, despite having data that shows women in the house would be voting progressive. It’s such a common thing that it’s become a joke online, but there’s truth to this. I think the polls have drastically underestimated how women will vote in this election (across racial and class lines), and the latest ad campaign is forcing the conversation out into the open. I still think the race is too close to call (perhaps I’m scarred from BC’s weeklong post-election fiasco), but activating women to vote will be what pushes this election over the edge.

John Delacourt is a Senior VP at Counsel Public Affairs. He has served in a number of portfolios in three federal Liberal governments, as well as in communications and stakeholder relations in Opposition. He is the author of five novels and a regular contributor to Policy magazine.

Will Shelling is an account director at Counsel PA and New Democrat who specializes in justice, equity, diversity and inclusion, Indigenous affairs, climate change, and Canadian culture. He is a director for White Ribbon Canada, a national non-profit dedicated to ending gender-based violence. He was raised in Las Vegas, and now lives in Vancouver, BC.