'Both Sides View The Stakes As Existential': RCP's Tom Bevan Expects Massive Turnout In The Election

4 months ago

Tom Bevan, Co-Founder and President of Real Clear Politics, joined "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss

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Transcript

00:00We have a lot to look forward to in the next few months including potential

00:04debates, the RNC, the DNC, seeing Trump's legal challenges unfold even more. What

00:11are you looking for specifically between now and Election Day? Well I'm gonna look

00:16and see if there's if there's any real movement in the data. Again, there's a

00:20general landscape of this election. The backdrop is pretty set and we know what

00:25the what the terrain is. Now that could be upset at any moment by an event,

00:29terrorist attack, something that goes on, a natural disaster. I mean who knows.

00:33There are events will and often do intervene in elections. I mean you look

00:38back to the, you know, leading up to the 2008 election. That was all about the

00:42Iraq War until the Great Recession happened and then it became all about

00:46the economy. COVID was, you know, a crisis that was top of mind in the last

00:50election that no one really saw coming until, you know, March of 2020. So

00:55certainly there are things that can happen and I do expect that there will

00:58be a couple of surprises and twists and turns along the way. The irony is that,

01:02you know, the primaries have been pretty sleepy. I mean we knew early on for most

01:06of the data that this was going to be Biden versus Trump. So I suspect this

01:10general election has some some twists and turns in it still and that might

01:15come at the conventions. It might come after the conventions. It could be, you

01:18know, one of these one of these, you know, events that intervene. But I think and

01:22it's hard to know what it's going to be but I certainly expect that we will see

01:26a couple of those in the next six months. Do you think the general

01:30sleepiness to your point of this primary season will affect turnout and

01:34the fact that this is a rerun of something we all witnessed four years

01:38ago? Yeah, I mean, I've often said, right, this is a movie, you know, we're

01:43getting the sequel of a movie. We didn't really like the first time around.

01:46Voters have made that clear their expressions. They prefer different

01:50candidates. So, you know, two things about that ironically, um, or maybe not

01:55ironically, but that would sort of indicate that there's an opportunity

01:59for a third party candidate to emerge, right? This big opening for a third

02:03party candidate to emerge. RFK Junior is trying to be that candidate. It's not

02:08clear that he's going to get very far. He's at about 9% in our real clear

02:12politics average of a bunch of national polls. Um, so we'll see whether he is

02:17able to continue to sort of emerge and be a player in this election. Um, but I

02:23think the other thing is, um, and this is ironic because despite the fact

02:27that people are saying, look, I don't I don't this. I'm not excited about this

02:31election or I don't like these choices. I think this is gonna be a huge turn

02:34out election. I think both sides view the stakes as existential. Democrats

02:39are telling their voters, listen, if you don't turn out and vote, our

02:42democracy is over. And Republicans are telling their voters, listen, if you

02:45don't turn out and vote, you know, we're gonna lose America to the, you

02:50know, the progressive left and this, you know, whatever names you want to

02:53call them. And so both sides have ginned up their bases, I think, to the

02:57point where they've made this election into sort of an existential threat. And

03:01so I think despite the fact that people are saying, man, I don't really, you

03:05know, a lot of people are gonna hold their noses. A lot of people are gonna

03:08turn out and vote in this election.

'Both Sides View The Stakes As Existential': RCP's Tom Bevan Expects Massive Turnout In The Election

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