and finally join us later this afternoon for a discussion on the progress of operation warp speed and how a coronavirus vaccine will be deployed once approved. the heritage foundation hosts this event. watch live coverage beginning at 3 p.m. eastern on c-span2, online at c-span.org, or listen live with the free c-span radio app. >> over the next five days "washington journal"s, will be focusing on key battleground states this election with political reporters and analysts on the ground, what's changed since 2016, of the policy issues motivating voters and take a look of recent political trends that could give us clues and have that stateds might vote in just a few days. today is the state of wisconsin and joining us is craig gilbert, washington bureau chief for the "milwaukee journal" sentinel and joining us now.. let's begin with your paper and

the headlineer this morning on e supreme court's decision. declio change wisconsin's voting rules and keep election day deadline for mail-in ballots. what did the court decide in what is the impact? caller: -- guest: the courts decided that ballots -- not to overturn an appellate decision. they said ballots cannot be accepted after election day. this whole site has a history dating back. of chaos andot court decisions at that point by a federal judge to allow the receipt of absentee mail-in ballots that had been bait -- mailed by election day but did until several days

later. the supreme court let that stand back in april and the issue was revisited this fall in another lawsuit. in the same federal judge ruled shouldember that states accept ballots that arrive after election day if they were mailed by election day. i was overturned by an appellate court -- it was overturned by an appellate court. he went to the supreme court who up out -- it went to the supreme the appellateeld court ruling. so we will not have an extended .ount where we are waiting the ballots will have to be received by city clerks by election day. another article, election day in seven days, here is when we might know a winner and how each candidate could claim victory. when will we know the victory in

wisconsin? the latest on at wednesday morning. it could be 5:00 in the morning, it could be 2:00 in the morning, it could be tuesday night. it depends on how close it is. we are expecting that it will take longer to count absentee ballots in some key cities, particularly the city of milwaukee. wisconsin has an unusual election system. elections are entirely conducted on the local, not county level. one locality does a different from another. the city of milwaukee and 38 cities count absentee ballots at a central location. all the other communities send those ballots back to local polling places and they are counted along with the election day votes.

seven cities like milwaukee which has what's called a central count, you have the potential for the absentee ballot count to be reported in one big number late in the process. that has happened in the past in milwaukee. you could be talking about 150,000 or 200,000 votes, in a place for the city of milwaukee where most of the votes will be absentee ballots. -- we willcome in probably not get that number before midnight. it's a close election, the city of milwaukee is a very democratic city which will contribute heavily to the democratic vote. those votes will matter in a close election. host: this is how we are dividing the lines and we encourage you to join in on the conversation with your comment or question about campaign 2020. if you are supporting me trump-pence ticket, (202) 748-8001. if you're supporting the

biden-harris ticket (202) 748-8000. if you are undecided or have another candidate, (202) 748-8002. wisconsin residents, please dial-in (202) 748-8003. or you could text us with your first name, city and state at that same number, (202) 748-8003 . according to a new poll by the research center, the university of wisconsin-madison. 44 inleads 53 to wisconsin. this poll was taken october 13 through the 21st. it's a bigger lead than he had in september. what's the lay of the land now? caller: the polling in wisconsin is pretty steady. having a is typically smaller lead for joe biden than what he has had in the national polls. in wisconsin polling that has arranged with most of the polls

falling within a four to 10 point range. some people think the numbers closer to the small end, something gets closer to the large end, but it's very consistently showing biden ahead , despite all the twists and turns in the campaign. despite some chattering events and developments we have had. the numbers have never really changed too much. there's not a lot of evidence in the polling that the leader -- the lead is shrinking. it's not clear that it's getting bigger. we have to see more pre-election polls to know that. but the lay of the land is based on the polling, joe biden has lead. but the state is in play. both sides are putting everything into it. the president is here, in

wisconsin, i'm in washington, the vice president is in on wednesday. -- joe bidenon will be there on friday. there's tons of money being spent on both sides on television. this is clearly a short list of states where both sides are going all out to the bitter end. on october 20, trump won by 22,700 48 votes, the third time in the past five presidential elections that this was decided by less than a percentage points. the key to his victory was thoseg noncollege whites, without four-year degrees, by close to 20 points over clinton according to some post election estimates, this is more than half of the states electorate. do they turn out again?

do they vote for the president? president has not had the margin with that group in the polling that he had in the election against hillary clinton. that does not mean he won't win by the same amount, but we have not seen it in the polling. this is an important group of voters. if you look at the top six or seven battleground states, white voters who do not have a college degree, those blue-collar white voters that we read about all the time have a larger share of the vote in wisconsin than any other top battleground, well over 50%. trump did a lot better than mitt romney with this group of voters. that's what moved the numbers from a seven point victory in

2012 to a less than one point trump victory in 2016. and you saw that more dramatically in a lot of small towns, in central, western, and northern wisconsin. places obama won by 20 or 30 points. we saw that in a lot of these places. that's the and what does jill biden need to do differently? who does he need to show up that didn't show up in 2016? >> hillary clinton, her margins

were better than past nominees in some parts of the state. she did even better in madison in the area around madison which is a very blue an important part of wisconsin. she did better and trump did worse in the republican suburbs and the democratic suburbs around milwaukee. but it was everything that happened outside of metropolitan milwaukee metropolitan madison, and that's a pretty huge proportion of the electorate and that's what she could not overcome. she also arguably didn't try really hard. i mean, wisconsin notoriously was a state she didn't visit. as the general election nominee, and you just didn't see the effort put in to wisconsin that democrats have put into the state in those other two nailbiter elections of the last

five you alluded to, which would elections of 2,002,004 when al gore and john kerry put a tremendous amount of time traveling in the state come not to advertising on television and going to small towns, going to western wisconsin, northern wisconsin. heart of this was just the sheer difference in the amount of energy and effort that democrats put into this state four years ago. .. or is it they mail it out in weeks but you got to get it in ? the other question was, they

have old line out there voting different areas and all of a sudden the time runs out, 8:00, people still standing out there, lots of people, do they shut the doors or tell them your votes don'tcount now because they're close ? those are my questions >> so they should not shutthe doors . in the past when this happened when we've had lines , when the polls close in:00 central time, those people have beenallowed to vote . in terms of the firstquestion , i think the caller is referring to -- >> i'm steve clemons,editor at large on of the hill .