>> major funding for "Reporters Roundtable wtih David Cruz" is provided by RWJ Barnabas health.

Let's be healthy together.

♪ >> the polls have closed.

Let the party recriminations begin.

Hey, everybody.

It's "Reporters Roundtable."

Our postelection Roundtable, reporter from "NJ monitor," reporter at Politico NJ, and reporter at NJ advanced media.

We will hear from them in a few minutes, but let's begin with an election day postmortem of sorts from a professional cruncher of numbers.

The director of the Monmouth University polling Institute, Patrick Murray, welcome back.

Good to see you.

>> to be with you.

>> it's not an epithet to call you a professional cruncher of numbers, is it?

>> I hope not.

There are still numbers out there that need somebody to crunch them.

We were not too far off with understanding the dynamic that was going on with this election.

David: Yeah.

I want to talk about that a little bit.

We know enough about polls now to know that they are merely, as you elect to say, and snapshot in time, but everybody assumes you are supposed to predict the races.

The polls generally get it right?

Patrick: They did.

The story was that this was a close race that could go either way.

Aggregators have done a disservice to polling in making it seem that it is much more precise than it is.

It's just a swing of two points from where the polling average was, which is exactly in the range of what anybody should expect in this election.

Here in New Jersey, we had a couple of misses with the Republican polls that were released, but in the competitive states and places where I pulled, we were close to figuring out what the dynamic was, but in the aftermath, we are learning a heck of a lot more about what these swings were.

David: Yeah.

Harris won New Jersey, as you allude to come by just what?

Five percentage points or so?

Patrick: It will be closer to six.

Our mail that is coming in, so we have to be careful, but still, 6.5 or seven points in the end.

David: It ain't 15.

>> exactly.

I know a lot of people are looking at the margins, saying there is a shift from Harris to Trump.

That was part of it, but I think what people are not looking at are the raw vote totals when we get the final numbers.

We are going to find that there was a significant drop in the Democratic vote.

Two things were going on and this was true in all the blue states, by the way.

There were a lot of Democrats who stayed home.

Let's take Hudson County, for example.

There were two things happening in Hudson County.

There was a drop in Democratic vote.

She's going to get nearly 40,000 votes less then Joe Biden got four years ago, whereas Donald Trump will get about 12,000 more than he got four years ago.

That is an area where there were two things going on -- there was a switch in motors who switch from Biden to Trump, and there was a drop off of some Democratic leaders just did not come out.

In other parts of the state, it is more that Democratic leaders did not come out, not the switch to Donald Trump.

The story we are seeing is that it is certain groups, like Latino voters, for example.

There was a swing to Donald Trump, but in other blue areas, there were a lot of Democratic voters who were just disaffected with the economy, unhappy with the high prices, but they would never vote for Donald Trump, so they just never came out.

David: Was it candidate or message on the Democratic side, and are there some numbers somewhere to show that?

Patrick: We will not know totally what it is, but a lot of it had to do with headmans.

If you are unhappy with the economy, it does not matter what the message is going to be.

We compared Democratic turnout in New Jersey versus Democratic turnout in our neighboring state of Pennsylvania where there actually was a campaign and an appeal to Democrats to say even if you are unhappy with the economy, you need to come out and vote.

When you make that appeal, Democrats did show up.

It was not enough for Harris to win, but there was a huge difference.

In New Jersey, there will be a drop of about 15 points in the Democratic turnout.

In a place like Pennsylvania, it will only be about four points, so there was an argument to be made.

This is the problem of our electoral college.

If you are not in a competitive state, you don't get any attention.

What happens if you don't get attention and you are not all that happy and nobody gives you a reason to go out and vote?

You stay home.

Brent: We have heard a lot in the past few days about his New Jersey a swing state now?

Is it red or purple?

What is your take on that?

Patrick: We did not see a lot of voters -- we saw pockets of voters who switch their vote, but we saw a lot of Democratic voters sitting on the backside who did not come out and vote.

That is also the phenomenon we saw in 2021, and drop off in the total number of votes for Phil Murphy in urban areas.

What Democrats need to do is go back to the base and give them a reason to come out and vote.

It will be a swing state if Democrats continue to stay home in numbers that are much higher for Republicans, but we are not seeing any seismic shift other than, say, in pockets of places like Hudson County, Middlesex County, where there were some shifts.

In other places like Somerset County, Hunterdon County, which are these suburban educated areas, we are not seeing that shift.

We are seeing just a turnout differential.

David: Let me get Daniel in here.

You had a question that was Jersey-specific, twoo.

Daniel: What do you think this means for the 2025 governor's race?

Patrick: As I said, it is all about turnout.

A lot of it has to do with who the nominees are.

We saw in 2017 there was definitely a reaction to Donald Trump having been elected president.

I think there will be a difference between what people think of Donald Trump now and what they think of him a year from now.

We saw in our polling that more people thought Donald Trump had done a good job as president now than they did when he was actually president.

He's getting higher job approval ratings retrospectively than he did at that time, and I think that will change, particularly in New Jersey once he gets back into office, so that will help the Democrats probably in getting their turnout backup, and also, the economy will be better as well.

I don't know who will get credit for that at that time, but we know that consumer confidence, it takes a while for it to catch up with inflationary periods, and it is scheduled to catch up in a few months' time.

David: I want to play this bit of analysis about posters.

I don't know if you saw it.

It's from John Stuart of "the daily Tuesday night -- it's from jon stewart.

>> I don't ever want to hear "we correctly predicted --" you don't know [beep] about [beep] and I don't care for you.

>> the problem is what they think we do is what the aggregators are telling us to do.

There's forecasters who take our polling numbers with the ever we say that is involved in it, and there were some big Mrs.. That audio number that came out really threw everybody off, but if you look at the vast body of polling, it was telling you, this was a race I was within a couple of points either way.

Forecasters were saying Donald Trump or Kamala Harris has a 51% chance, and as soon as forecasters say someone has a 51% chance, everybody thinks they have a 100% chance of winning.

I'm as pissed off at the aggregators as jon stewart is.

I'm trying to tell a story about why things happen.

The way the media reports on poles, every report includes who is ahead or behind in the horse race, but all those questions we ask -- I actually did analysis on the media coverage of my pulling in the 2022 election, and all the questions we ask about what people are concerned about, the things that can motivate voters, but can move things, only 13% -- excuse me, it was 18%, to be accurate -- 18% of the news media coverage of all our poles back in 2022 included any of that context information.

David: Yeah, yeah.

Patrick: Who's fault is that?

We give you the information about why.

You just want to report who is ahead and who is behind and we get blamed for the quality of that polling.

David: "I don't want to hear you complaining any more about posters."

-- pollsters."

Patrick Murray, thank you for coming on.

We have all had a few days to digest the results.

What have some of your off the job conversations been like with family or friends or the guy in the bodega down the block?

Brent: I was not shocked by the result.

I expected 2016 to happen, and I expected this to happen.

I have had a lot of people surprised.

In my personal life, like, "how did this happen again?"

None of us really could be shocked.

We now have had nine years of Donald Trump, and he has dominated the world for nine years now.

It does not really shocked me that he is going to dominate the next four.

David: Do you see people walking around days, still?

Dan: I do live in Princeton, for what it's worth.

It is important to keep in mind that despite the fact that Trump was able to win by a pretty large margin, the Poles were pretty spot on.

If you look at swing states, Trump only won those by one or two points.

There were all these tight races that could go either way.

Obviously, Trump had the upper hand in that, but I don't think that the results should be entirely surprising.

David: How terrible was election night for Dems?

Did something stand out for you working that night?

Sophie: The big winner that night was for sure Andy Kim winning his Senate seat.

Democrats still held onto the seats that they had in Congress, so it was not a total loss.

I think it was a surprise how close the margins were in some of the districts, but overall, I think that Democrats did OK here.

When New Jersey -- there is also a win in terms of New Jersey sending a record number of women to Congress.

We will be sending numeral for women to Congress, so that is a win in and of itself.

>> Are we witnessing a cultural change in the country or was Harris just a terrible candidate?

Dan: I think it is tricky to say .

I think Patrick alluded to it a little bit, that we did see large swings in motor patterns in places that had a large Hispanic population.

In New Jersey, I think of a place like a county where Trump was able to win that county and back in 2020, Joe Biden held it by double digits.

The city of Passaic which is traditionally a Democratic stronghold, where Trump was able to win that, and that is really shocking.

We have seen that in other pockets where Trump definitely outperformed across all parts of the state, but especially among some Democrats.

David: I saw it towards the end of the cycle.

I started to see comparisons literally side-by-side made of speeches that Harris made and that Clinton made -- that is Hillary Clinton, made -- and it felt like the same candidate.

Did she morph into Hillary Clinton and did that affect her at the end?

>> I don't know.

I have heard a bunch of immigrants say they are fearful sexism still plays a role in this.

If you look at the vote totals of women compared to men, that Harris did much better among women than among men.

That is something that I have heard a few Democrats talk about, especially women Democratic officials, so I don't know how much that played into it.

Or if this was really that people just saw her as a continuation of Biden and that we have to kick everyone out of the administration, that anyone tied to the Biden administration would not have won.

These are things to ponder over the next few weeks and months.

David: Every woman I talked to, most of the men I talked to, talked about this undercurrent of misogyny that still exists in this country and was manifest right here at the polls.

Do you buy that?

Sophie: I mean, I do.

Something I have heard a lot of people talk about is this idea of the borough -- the bro vote, young, white, male, Gen Z voters getting their news from social media and podcast like Joe Rogan and end results, and they are hearing messages that appear to them, and the people going on that media are Republicans.

They are not receiving any messaging from the Democratic Party, and I think that some of those media forms do reinforce misogyny, and, you know, some of that messaging showed in the polls, so, yeah.

>> meanwhile, white women, particularly, turned out really strong for perhaps the most outwardly misogynist candidate in the history of residential races, no?

Sophie: Yeah.

I keep thinking about the episode in "Veep" where Serena Myers says, "people can't know I'm a woman.

People hate women."

I don't have the answer to solve misogyny.

I think the Harris campaign did a pretty good job not bringing as much attention to being the first woman candidate as Hillary Clinton did.

I think that somewhat worked in her favor, but at the same time, misogyny runs deep, racism runs deep, and we saw that reflected here.

David: Meanwhile, Dan said something.

You had a good piece as well this week on the Latino vote.

Sophie: Yeah, Dan touched on it.

Patrick touched on it.

There were a few districts that are heavily Latino and Hispanic districts that did vote for Clinton, voted for Biden, and then voted for Trump, and I think that was a surprise for a lot of people to see.

I don't think that was necessarily fully expected, although it has been an emerging trend since 2016.

Speaking to Latino politicians and experts, people who are in Hudson County, one of the issues they see is this lackluster messaging from Democrats.

Democrats seem to look at Latinos as a monolith and just drive the message of immigration, when Latinos are not big monolith.

A Dominican voter is going to be different from a Cuban voter is going to be different from a exit can voter and a Chilean voter -- from a Mexican voter and a Chilean voter.

They want to see different messages.

It's not just immigration that resonates with them.

David: These folks represent two dozen countries that have different cultures and different histories, etc., so you make a very good point.

Brent, it also was black men.

As we said, what women, other ethnic minority groups going to Trump.

Did the prevailing economic issue transcend all of those labels?

Brent: You talk to any official or expert in the wake of this, they say, as James Carville said, "it's the economy stupid."

even though the economy has shown signs of getting better, I think people when they see the price of milk and eggs at the store, they still don't feel that.

They don't buy that argument, and they went to the ballot box being like, all right, Trump says he will do the economy better.

Before the pandemic, he had good economic numbers.

Let's give him another shot.

Or they just stayed home.

That seems to be the prevailing trend.

David: Dressing out, Trump loses by only 5%, 6%.

What did we learn from any of these races?

Was Sue Altman really a good candidate?

Dan: I think what both candidates tried to do in that race was both said they were the moderate candidate, so to speak.

That is a district, though, that has always wanted to be somewhat swingy.

I believe came -- Kane only won by six or seven points, which is a good margin, but heading into the midterms, I still think that race will be a toss of race.

-- tossup race.

Brent: Everyone thought that was going to be a closer race then it ended up being.

It still was not runaway, but it was indicative of the kind of day Democrats and Republicans had on Tuesday.

I do think this election was the runoff.

A lot of Democrats say this will not be a forever reality in New Jersey.

We saw John Kerry won New Jersey by seven or eight points in 2004, and after that, Democrats went right back to winning big with Barack Obama and Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton.

Who knows what the future holds?

But that district will still be one to watch in two years.

David: Let's talk about potential governors.

They always say a Republican president is good for a Democratic candidate for governor in New Jersey the following year and vice versa.

Is that something we expect to hold true going forward, or is the state becoming just a little more Republican?

Sophie: I'm not sure.

I think we will see in a year where we stand on that.

The election has very clearly already started for the 2025 race, but I think that for what Democrats have to learn, I think district nine is a really good picture of that because it was a race much closer than expected.

I think Democrats have to do much more messaging, reach out to way more people, get that turn out up for the 2025 race.

I think it will be interesting to see also what Trump's endorsement does.

Will this help someone like Bill Stadia, versus are we going to see a Democrat elected for a third term for the first time in a generation?

I think it will be interesting to see how that plays out.

David: Matt Friedman in his column this week talk about what the implications may be going forward, particularly as it pertains to Trump and who he might like in this race.

Tell me what you think Democrats should look forward to and what you think Republicans should look forward to in 2025's gubernatorial race.

>> I get the feeling you'll see Trump spoken about less by Democrats than in the past and more by Republicans.

I don't know if this gives a big boost and means he could very well win the primary and what that means for the general election.

New Jersey goes back and forth between Democrats and Republicans all the time.

It will not be a shock if a Republican wins next year.

David: We have not mentioned Mikey Cheryl or Josh Gottheimer, both of whom won their house seats and are expected to any minute make an announcement that they are individually running for governor.

Are they helped or hurt by Trump's victory?

Dan: I think it creates a unique dynamic for the two of them, especially since as of this evening, they have not called the House of Representatives, although it looks like it is leaning toward Republicans.

What does it mean when you have two Democratic members of the house running for governor?

Does that give them more of a platform to speak out on Donald Trump, which could help boost them?

Does it create pressure to maybe not run because New Jersey takes a really long time to fill house seats?

We do not know the final total in the margin for the house, but that one vote could make a really big difference.

Those are just a couple things I'm watching for.

David: Mikie Sherrill could be, for cash just by name recognition alone, the front runner in that race.

There's another opportunity for New Jersey voters to show some evolution.

Sophie: Yeah.

We have already had a woman governor, so it would not be the first time.

David: Democrat.

That's what I meant.

Sophie: Yeah.

I mean, yeah, it would be a good step in terms of representation, but at the same time, I don't think that electing a woman means that misogyny is out of the voting booths or anything like that.

All the attack ads she is going to get, that we will see, and it goes back to this young, male vote.

They will be a lot of attacks on her, and Democrats will have to do a lot to counteract that.

David: Real quick from each of you, challenges to the press.

Going to be even more challenging than 2016, no?

Sophie: I think that is a fair bet.

David: Brent?

Brent: Eight years have been an incredible shift in how much more difficult and vitriolic it has been to do our jobs.

We will not see that go away.

David: In terms of the Shrinking news business, it's going to be even more of a challenge, no?

Dan: I think it is interesting.

While there may be more hostility towards the press, I can see more interest in news.

Maybe more so on the national level than the state and local level which we are all focused on.

That is something to watch out for.

David: Something to look forward to, and that is "roundtable" for this week.

Good to see you all.

Thanks.

Also thanks to Patrick.

You can follow their show on X @ roundtableNJ.

You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel to see what else our talented team is up to.

Thanks for watching.

We will see you next week.

>> major funding for "Reporters Roundtable with David Cruz" is provided by RWJ Barnabas Health.

Let's be healthy together.

♪