Mitch McCann: US Correspondent on Donald Trump edging ahead in the polls

Donald Trump has edged ahead of Kamala Harris in the latest polls, with less than two weeks until the US election. 

A Wall Street Journal poll shows the Republican two points ahead of the Democrat – a direct swap from when they last did the poll in August. 

A CNBC poll also shows Trump ahead of Harris by two points. 

US correspondent Mitch McCann told Mike Hosking potential reasons behind this shift are Trump's negative ads and Harris having a couple of shaky media appearances. 

He says Barack Obama's former campaign manager David Axelrod described one of her answers in a CNN town hall as a word salad. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Mitch mccannon doing the business in the States. Mitch, how
are you?

Speaker 2 (00:03):
I'm well, Mike, how are you?

Speaker 1 (00:04):
I'm very well. Indeed, where are you?

Speaker 2 (00:06):
I am in New York, New York, the Empire State
right now.

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Fantastic And is the ReVibe on the street if I
go down, you know, the Upper East side of people
talking about it? Are they fizziting? Are they excited about
all this or not yet?

Speaker 2 (00:18):
I think from a lot of Americans that I speak to,
they are concerned and they are anxious at which way
this is going to go. Some American friends really don't
want to talk about it, but it's kind of the
elephant in the room right now with only twelve days away.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Okay, so we've got a couple of poles out this morning.
We've got the WSJ one and we've got the CNBC one.
There's a theme here in Trump's winning.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Yeah, that's right. These are significant because if these are
the first poles in the last couple of weeks where
Donald Trump has edged ahead by a couple of points.
So if we look at the Wall Street Journal one,
Trump is ahead forty eight to forty six against Kamala Harris.
When the Wall Street Journal last conducted this poll in August,
it was Harris who was ahead by two points. And
the journal kind of has this theory as to why

(00:57):
Donald Trump is taking over. They believe that has negative
ad campaigns, which, by the way, everywhere are working, and
they possibly believe because of all the media appearances she's
doing there having a couple of shaky interview answers. I
know last night she was on CNN as part of
this town hall David Axelrod, who is of course Obama's

(01:18):
former campaign manager. He described one of her answers as
a word salad. And this is one of the themes
that's kind of coming out from all these interviews she's
trying to do at the moment. So at the moment
in some of these polls, Trump is ahead, but as
you know, Mike, national polls don't really matter. It comes
down to the battleground states where they are pretty much tied.
I know that Harris is a hid in around four
battleground states, maybe Trump bo three, but they are all

(01:40):
within the margin of era.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
I think the problem they got much. I don't know
if you saw the scene anything yesterday, but I did.
It's the more you see of her, the more troubled
you become. Some guy stands up in the audience and
he literally asked them the price of groceries too, Hi,
what are you going to do about it? First of all,
she didn't answer it. She moved on to property development.
Then she moved on to storm damage, and it took
minute after minute after minute, and at no point did
she say, I'll tell you one. And that's her problem.

(02:02):
She doesn't say anything.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Yeah, I think she has an issue with trying to
do so many interviews so people know her get to
know her better, which is a problem for her. But then,
as you say, the more she does, the more she
might get tangled in some of these answers and people
get sick to see more of what they don't like.
But Rist assured Mike for those Kamala Harris fans, she's
rolling out the big guns in the next couple of days.

(02:25):
She's holding a rally today with Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen,
who has endorsed her, and then tomorrow it's reported she's
going to rally with Beyonce Noles who might be singing
we don't know, and Willie Nelson and Houston. So the
Alst's lives coming out for kamala ah.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
I love it. Now, what person in their right mind
turns down thirty five percent.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
Yeah, it's a lot of money, but they want forty percent.
This is in relation to boeen who, as we know,
it's been a disastrous well, it's been a disastrous year,
not just a couple of years. In January, of course,
a piece of fu uselage blew out of an Alaskan
Airlines flight Mike, and then a plane had to turn
around and land in Japan after a crack was found
in the cockpit window. Sheer price has taken a hit
at CEO is left and Boeing workers have been on

(03:12):
strike since the thirteenth of September here in the US,
demanding higher wages and better benefits. Now, hours after the
company announced a six point one billion dollar loss, union workers,
more than thirty thousand of them, have rejected this pay
increase of more than thirty five percent. So it's back
to the drawing board for Boeing. As well as that loss,
it looks like they're going to have to fork out

(03:33):
a lot of money for these wages. When they finally
come to an agreement.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
You go, well make good to catch uppreciate it, Mitch,
we can in New York the real telltale sign yesterday
out of that town hall because it was on CNN.
They had one of those massive CNN panels that only
CNN can do with about eight hundred and three people
on board. Is even they and they love Harris more
than any other network. Even they had to admit that
what she was saying made literally no sense half the time.

(03:58):
And then you're going to ask the question, if you
turn up with Bruce Springsteen and Beyonce and Willie Nelson
as much as you love their music and we do,
does that make you vote for it? What does that
make you look? Desperate?

Speaker 2 (04:08):
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