The race for president is a virtual tie just days before the final votes.

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are working battleground states.

We sat down with an expert pollster to get insight on the race.

Plus surveying hurricane damage.

WGCU is there as property owners reveal the toll from back to back storms.

That's next on southwest Florida.

InFocus.

You're watching Southwest Florida InFocus coming up with former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris in such a tight race for the white House.

We sat down with an expert on polling.

Find out if the polls in the final days of the election are giving any insight into who will win.

Plus, after back to back hurricanes, property owners are surveying the damage.

Thousands of homes and businesses will need major work, but financial help is available from possible tax breaks to help with mortgage payments.

Skew explains the options and building a bright future as demand soars for people who can work in construction.

Southwest Florida high school students get a hands on look at jobs in the trades.

Hello I'm Sandra Victor.

Over.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Well, just a few days remain for early voting in Florida with Mail-In and early vote turnout is already above 50% in most Southwest Florida counties.

More than 6 million people in Florida have already cast their ballots.

Florida Atlantic University's final pre-election poll shows former President Donald Trump with a significant lead in our state.

Among likely voters, he leads Vice President Kamala Harris by nine percentage points here.

Other polls show the race is much closer, virtually tied in seven battleground states.

We want to know what recent polling can tell us about the upcoming results.

Joining me now is Mark Shulman, who served as time magazine's pollster for almost ten years and worked on the ABC news election decision desk for many years.

Mark, thanks for joining us.

We appreciate it.

My pleasure.

Thank you for the invite.

So, Mark, I remember when we talked last time, you said, don't even pay attention to those polls before Labor Day.

But here we are just days away from decision day.

And the polls show the two candidates neck and neck.

Virtual tie.

So do these polls really tell us anything?

Are they important?

Well, I gave you some cautions last time we spoke, and I have more questions to give you.

I am the poll, the bunker.

Now, when we look at the national polls, we find everything is sort of knotted up and not telling us a lot.

Pollsters are repeating again and again.

Margin of error, margin of error.

Margin of error.

Now, I could define what a margin of error is because polling is based on probability of sampling.

What it means is that if we interview 100 people, 95 times out of 100 will be within, say, plus or minus three, which means if one of our candidates has 48%, means it might be 51%, it might be 47%.

But the problem is that there are many more sources of error and bias in the samples that we don't ordinarily explain.

Give us a few.

Okay.

One is response rate.

Our response rate in these surveys, I regret to say is between 3 and 5%.

Meaning if we interview, if we contact 100 people, we'll have a successful interview with maybe five of those hundred.

So what do we do about that?

Well, we have to wait.

The survey is to try to estimate our population, and it's the weighting that varies and can cause trouble.

A bigger problem is this is a turnout election.

The polls are showing that the race is not a top.

But the question is who is going to vote on Election Day or Election month?

Mr. Trump supporters, whether it's Harris or Trump supporters.

Each of the campaigns has its own challenges and turnout the Trump supporters.

The base is made up of many low propensity voters.

What that means is sometimes they vote.

Sometimes they don't vote.

Getting them out to the polls is the biggest challenge.

Also identifying those voters, those low propensity voters to canvass and to push through the polls is a big challenge, particularly for the Trump campaign.

Now, the Harris campaign faces different issues.

They're likely to have to have a higher turnout, because we've seen something of a realignment in our political parties in the past ten, 12 years.

College educated, which used to be a critical part of the Republican base, has been gradually shifting over to the Democratic Party.

Those people vote.

The lower educated people, who make up a good portion of the Trump base.

Low propensity voters, they may or may not vote.

Harris faces her own challenges, though she has high propensity voters, people who are going to show up at the polls.

But she has some other challenges.

For example, turnout.

So far in the urban areas, which is a critical part of the Harris base, it's been a little soft minority turnout.

It's been a little soft.

There have been questions raised about whether there has been some fall off and the black and Hispanic vote on the Democratic side.

That's another challenge that that Harris faces.

So each side has its turnout challenges.

And this whole race is not it up.

It's just going to turnout.

It's going to be who can get their voters to the polls.

And as you mentioned, polls can get things very wrong.

I'm thinking back to the 2016 presidential.

Let's mention that former President Donald Trump, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, I remember well, we're supposed to win according to the polls.

What were what were the lessons learned there?

Well, we always learned lessons.

Polling is a science of sorts, but it isn't exact science.

And with each passing election, we learned some lessons.

Among the lessons we learned in 2016 was number one.

Hillary won the popular vote by 3 million.

So the polling wasn't quite as far off.

But the lesson we learned is it's the battleground states.

It's the electoral College that determines the winner.

And that should be our focus.

Forget the national polls.

You know, it's nice when we see, a barrage of national polls on, on television or in the newspapers or on the line.

But the fact is, the national polls mean almost nothing.

The race is going to boil down to maybe 6 or 7 battleground states, particularly Pennsylvania, particularly Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, South Carolina.

Those are the states that are going to get us, get one of the candidates to 270 electoral votes.

So the focus should be not on the national polls, which is what the national media tends to cover, but it's on those state polls.

And that's going to determine who sits in the white House in 2025.

How close do you think this will be?

Are you surprised?

You know how tight this presidential race is?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

We've seen that there are shifting realignments in the polling.

And this is one thing the polling has been very good at demonstrating that illuminating that each side has its base.

Looking back, for example, at, the race where it stood, say, in the spring with Trump and Biden, voters, many voters were in a category we called double haters.

They were sick of this rerun of 2020.

They really didn't have confidence in either candidate.

Well, with the shift from with Biden stepping aside and Harris taking the reins, we've seen tremendous movement.

For one thing, the Democratic base, which really had fallen off under Biden enthusiasm levels, which is a number that we pollsters watch very carefully.

The enthusiasm level among Democrats was very low.

Job rating, Biden's job rating very low.

So, it was very clear that Democrats had a problem, but it wasn't until that debate that ill fated.

Yes, the Trump Biden debate, where, you know, Biden, let's say, underperformed to say the least.

When Democrats, particularly Democratic leadership, realize that, we have some issues here and if we want to get competitive, you know, for Joe has to step aside.

It took about a month, but, Biden finally realized with some pressure from Democratic officials who were looking at our polls and said, you know, Joe, sorry to say it, but, but we need well, it's time to go.

Mark, we always appreciate your conversations and chat with you after the election.

Thank you so much for your time.

My pleasure.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hurricanes Helene and Milton damaged homes and upended lives in southwest Florida.

But financial help is available from insurance claims to credit card payments.

Coming up, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau explains what companies could do to help you recover.

Within the past two weeks, about 12,000 property owners in Lee County flooded the property.

Appraiser's website reporting hurricane damage to their homes or businesses.

The county is reevaluating those properties damaged by Helene and Milton.

As Jennifer Crawford reports, that means some owners can expect to pay less in property taxes.

To.

Devastated, I walked in.

She walked the rocks hanging off the ceiling and like, what happened?

I mean, my poor neighbor lost his roof.

It was devastating.

It was really bad.

Several weeks post Milton Matt Lash, a business owner on offer you dementia struggles to process what has happened again to his custom jewelry boutique on the island.

When I came back from Ireland, it was about, two feet of water, which was okay.

It didn't reach the electric yet.

I could work with it, I could clean.

We did some cleaning.

And then when I started seeing Milton.

This coming close.

Milton's coming close.

That's.

I was like, no, we got to get out of here.

I didn't think it was going to be this devastating, but yeah, it was actually worse than even worse in here.

For this lifelong master jeweler, rebuilding for the third time is almost more than he can bear.

We had a tornado to deal with, and that I ripped, my electric through.

Actually, my meter just ripped it right out.

While there's no metric to estimate the storm's emotional impact.

I've never been, depressed as much as I've been of late.

But I'll get by.

Quantifying the storm's impact on his property is underway in the wake of a storm like this.

We've got to go out and see what's the physical condition, what actually happened?

So the property owners, aren't paying taxes on you know, buildings they can't use.

Lee County property appraiser Matt Caldwell walks through, inspects, and documents his findings.

My back is my factory, where all my tools were destroyed.

You can see the water level I'm on, my antique desk.

Yep.

Caldwell says every year, he and his team assess more than half a million parcels of real estate in Lee County.

We, use our own aerial overflights that we purchase every year.

We fly those every January, February, after disasters, we've we've got one that's already been flown for Milton.

We flew one right after Ian.

And those give us, really detailed imagery about what's going on in the ground immediately in the 2 or 3 days after the storms, once property owners begin to file damage reports, Caldwell says they immediately prioritize field efforts on those parcels.

But we've got right now about 12,000 property owners that have contacted us, filed a damage report.

And, we'll take those reports, get them mapped out, see where they are, and go, evaluate their neighboring properties.

If folks haven't reported to us, we need to make sure we understand what's happening in the entire community.

Flooring major plumbing is going to have to be all redone.

Electrical is going to have to be all redone.

Damages are classified in one of four categories.

It's either, you know, essentially fine minor damage, major damage or uninhabitable.

And then we'll deduct a percentage based upon that whole category.

Caldwell reaffirms what Dimatteo already knows.

I would classify this as major.

I mean, he's he's going to be able to rebuild if that's what he decides to do after.

But, but he certainly can't operate right now.

There's no way with this kind of damage.

Caldwell estimates the value of the structure will drop in half from about 328,000 to 158,000, resulting in a much lower tax bill.

Any, I guess less bills.

So the best thing right now, because there is nothing coming in as far as money and monetary, I have no job.

Technically, I lost my job.

This is my job.

I don't know what else to do.

So yes, that is help and I'm grateful for that.

A silver lining for this master jewelry maker who says he has no choice but to move forward, rebuild and reopen.

For GQ news, I'm Jennifer Crawford.

Demetria believes it will take a year to reopen about the same amount of time from Hurricane Ian.

If you're displaced from your home for at least 30 days due to a hurricane, you may be eligible for a property tax refund for the amount of time you were out in Charlotte County.

Folks are also struggling with steep financial burdens after the two hurricanes.

Monica Shetler owns Island Caught Seafood on Englewood Beach.

Hurricane Helene flooded her business with more than four feet of water.

She raced to buy replacement equipment.

We were all ready to open up again.

And then we were hit by milk and everything was submerged under water or floated away.

Milton flooded the business again, this time with six feet of water.

Shetler has finally reopened after being shut down for about a month.

She says she recently applied for federal assistance.

In the meantime, she bought the equipment she needed on her own, using credit cards.

Many Southwest Floridians have extra financial burdens now working to rebuild after Hurricanes Helene and Milton.

There are some ways to try to reduce that economic stress.

We're joined by the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau now, Rohit Chopra.

Thank you for joining us.

Director Chopra, we appreciate it.

Thanks so much for having me, Sandra.

So let's start with this.

Consumers can actually seek relief from the corporations that they do business with.

Where should they start?

What should they do?

Well, our agency, the consumer Financial Protection Bureau, oversees a lot of these lenders, loan servicers, credit reporting companies, and more.

And in the wake of a major disaster like a hurricane, we see that many people are reaching out to get help from us, as well as from their lender.

We recommend that if people are having trouble with their lender or financial company to file a complaint with us at Consumer Finance, dot gov.

We see that so many people are getting responses and getting fixes once they come to us.

So you would say do not be shy.

Now is the time to reach out and say I'm struggling financially.

Can you help with, you know, meeting my mortgage payments right now?

That's right.

Whether it's a mortgage or a credit card or an auto loan.

In many cases, there will be programs that give people who have been affected by a disaster or some extra help.

Often it's just more time to pay.

But sometimes you can even modify the terms of your loan.

It's really important, particularly for homeowners, to contact their mortgage servicer.

That's the company that sends you bills and collects payments from you.

You want to contact them and ask them specifically.

What type of relief do you have available for those who are in a disaster area where there was an emergency declared?

Again, you may be able to get a modification of your payments so that you don't fall behind and end up in foreclosure.

As you know, Southwest Florida is no stranger to hurricanes.

There are ways you believe that we can prepare financially for events like this in the future.

Any advice?

Well, we are tracking very closely what is happening in Florida and around the country when it comes to homeowners insurance.

So many Floridians are finding themselves with big rate increase is or outright cancellation, and that's making it trickier to deal with their mortgage.

We're looking at all sorts of ways in which we can help consumers navigate before, during, and after.

We encourage people to come to our website, consumer finance.gov.

There is so much people can do to prepare in advance and after a disaster.

Some of it means making sure you have all of the right insurance paperwork to file.

Claims that you have some cash on hand in case there's a power outage or real challenges getting about your day.

So we know that so many, for so many people, a disaster is really something that is in the back of their mind, but not in front of them.

But taking a little bit of preparation now can save you a whole lot of heartache in the future.

So local and state authorities have certainly been putting the word out about, you know, potential scams involving folks, you know, dealing with a disaster, whether that has to be, you know, whether that's rebuilding or something else.

What kinds of things do you want consumers to be aware of in protecting themselves from scams?

Well, be really wary of those who are coming door to door and offering their services to make fixes.

We often find that a lot of people are scammed out of big money in the aftermath of a disaster.

We want to make sure we're also protecting the public from price gouging.

We have seen in the wake of disasters that companies can often jack up the prices for unnecessary goods.

There are laws on the books that agencies across the federal government are looking at to make sure that people are not victimized by that.

And in general, when it comes to filing your insurance claims, when you have trouble, don't look for third party help unless it's truly a trusted source.

You should file a case or complaint with your state insurance commissioner or other government agency.

If you're trying to resolve a backlog when it comes to getting money from your insurance company.

Director Chopra, we appreciate your time.

Thank you for your help.

Thank you so much.

Just ahead on southwest Florida and focus from the classroom to the construction site.

See how students are learning about careers in the trades.

billion.

You know, you should.

High school students traded the classroom for a construction zone to learn about future job opportunities.

The Build My Future event showcased the need for traditional trade jobs like welding and plumbing.

The construction industry will need to add more than half a million additional jobs nationally, on top of the normal pace of hiring to meet demand.

As GCU photojournalist Amanda in Whitmore explains, a shortage of workers means lucrative prospects ahead.

Sparks were flying as the sounds of hammers, drills and excavators filled JetBlue Park at the Build My Future event.

Hundreds of students from local high schools and technical schools got to try out real jobs in the building industry, from welding to carpentry to masonry.

Phillip Ford is the executive vice president of the Lead Building Industry Association, which hosted the event.

Ford says students can build a profitable and enjoyable future in construction.

There's all kinds of opportunities for kids, and we just want to introduce them to that and make sure they understand that they can have a successful career and a great life in the construction industry.

I've been a part of it for 30 years, and I love it.

It's just like the perfect.

The event aims to address a shortage of workers.

The average age in construction industry is about 55 years old.

So if you do the math, we're going to be in really bad shape and short time for now.

So we're just trying to do our part to introduce the kids who, hey, maybe you shouldn't go to college, but you can have a successful career being a plumber, electrician, whatever that.

You should sign up for a ramp build.

We are with my Connor Clay.

It's one of those students considering a career in the trades.

He had a hard time with traditional high school because of disruptions from Covid and Hurricane Ian.

When he started at a technical academy in Lehigh Acres, he found his way and brought up his GPA.

It worked a lot better than a traditional high school for me.

The hours were shorter, the curriculum it was more.

I got to choose what I learned on that day.

In particular.

The courses are it just it clicks a lot better with me.

Clay says he has really enjoyed his electrical classes.

Yeah, it appeals to me because it's a complex set, a simple thing, and it's just such an interesting concept to me because if you really think about it, we wouldn't have anything without it.

Well, this usually takes about 24 hours to set.

So basically you have the beginning of your sprinkler system.

For a while I did not know what I wanted to do.

I realistically I thought I would just be doing fast food for the rest of my life, but after this I feel like I have a lot more direction.

I kind of have a sort of a five year plan going on to, and it lets me move forward with a lot more confidence than I would be able to otherwise.

Yeah.

Oh, you did that.

You're the first one for WGCU news.

This is Amanda in Scor Whitmore.

Many local high schools offer trade programs that train students.

Some get jobs right after graduation.

Local universities like Fgcu and offer construction related degrees like civil engineering and architectural design.

Students looking for traditional trades like carpentry, electrical and plumbing can find classes and institutions like Fort Myers Technical College.

Well, coming up next, it is not just the presidential race.

Florida voters will choose a US senator, representatives and decide on major topics like recreational marijuana and abortion rights.

Southwest Florida and Focus will have in-depth election coverage and analysis of the big issues and the races.

Join us then.

In the meantime, be sure to vote and have a great week.