alyssa prize-winning journalist discusses president trump national and foreign policy decisions and then at 9:00 p.m. eastern heritage foundation senior fellow mike gonzales argues that identity politics is dividing america. that is followed by msnbc political analyst who offers her thoughts on identity politics and how to greet a more inclusive democratic party and that starts at 8:00 p.m. eastern. enjoy book tv every weekend on c-span2. >> joining us from cleveland, ohio and the associate director of the community research institute at baldwin wallace university lauren copeland thank you very much for your time this morning. let me begin with early voting, ms. copeland. what should and what shouldn't we read into the numbers?n w >> guest: i don't think we should read too much into the numbers. we know that democrats are

voting early at much higher rates than republicans and so we can expect to see that the early vote will look a lot more democratic than republican and that the in person vote on election day will look a lot more republican than democratic which balance things out in ohio speed. >> host: what are the productions for voter turnout overall? >> guest: ohio traditionally has a higher rate of voter turnout then other states in the country because it is a swing state and because our elections are so competitive. in the past it is been upwards of 60% and i think we can see even higher percentageses of vor turnout rates this election season. >> host: walk us through the history of how ohio has voted in previous presidential elections? >> guest: sure. there is a saying that so goes

ohio, so goes the nation and it is a saying that has the virtue of being true and no republican has ever won the white house without winning the presidency and since 1964 ohio has voted for the winning candidate in every single presidential election. >> host: is it considered purple? >> guest: it is a purple state but it is trending more towards red so unlike other postindustrial states like michigan with, wisconsin and pennsylvania in 2016 with trump one by less than one percentage point but in ohio trump one by about eight percentage points and then in the 2018 midterm elections republicans left the state with the exception of

senator sherrod brown that won reelection so it suggests that ohio is moving farther to the right than it has been in the past h. >> host: let's talk about the polling that you all are doing and you are doing, what are your polling showing you about the great lakes area, ohio, michigan, pennsylvania as opposed or what those voters are telling you versus four years ago? >> guest: so joe biden is performing much better in these four states then hillary clinton was four years ago and there is a couple of reasons for that. number one joe biden net favorability ratings are positive in michigan, wisconsin and pennsylvania and they are neutral in ohio. we also see that ohioans as well as the bowl in michigan,

wisconsin anda, pennsylvania thk that joe biden could do a better job than donald trump can handling the coronavirus outbreak or the pandemic as well as unifying the country in ohio has been one of the states that has been hardest hit by the coronavirus and its effect on jobs and the and appointment rate here in april was actually just as high as it was in 1976 when they started tracking this in ohio. there is some things working for trump in the state and that includes our demographic and we have much lower growth rates than the rest of the country and we also have a less diverse population and we have more white voters with less education than the rest of the country and the rest of these demographic trends favor donald trump but we

see biden making inroads among key groups that donald trump one in 2016, including white working-class voters and those without a college degree. >> host: what is unique about the great lakes state polling that you do and looking at all those states and why do you do that in ohio specifically? >> back in 2019 we were interested in the question of whether ohio was still a bell leather state so we knew that ohio is a swing state but in the past it is also been of hell whether state meaning that what happens in ohio is reflective of what happens in the country as a whole ande we are also interestd in whether joe biden or the democratic nominee would retake michigan, ohio and wisconsin since trump one those three 80000 votes.s than we decided to look at these four

states as a whole because we believe that if joe biden could flip michigan, wisconsin and pennsylvania then he could easily win the presidency all things equal rated interesting thing about ohio this time around is that joe biden doesn't need to win ohio to win the presidency. if he wins ohio then it is lights out for trump and hard to envision the trump has a pass to the white house unless he wins ohio. >> host: why is that? >> guest: donald trump hasn't expanded the electoral map since 2016 so if you look at the electoral map from 2016 and you flip wisconsin, pennsylvania and michigan then biden gets to more than 270 electoral college votes and so joe biden has an easier

climb to the white house than trump does this time around and it's also the case that if biden wins florida then the chances of him winning the presidency go up to about 99% so trump needs to hold on to florida in order to have a chance of winning this election. >> were getting your viewers and revolved for this but if you're supporting. the president or vie president dial in at (202)748-8001, former vice president senator harris (202)748-8000 and undecided or anotheres candidate, (202)748-8s keep calling in this morning. 202748 ###-8003 let's go to carol in atlanta, georgia supporting the vice president and former vice president. >> caller: good morning. thank you. >> host: good morning. go ahead.

>> caller: i'm supporting joe biden because donald jumped actually, to me, is not the epitome of a president. some of the things he's done, one of the things that gets me, a lot of this calls of support donald trump says donald trump, you know, he is for the united states and hard on china and he and alhi 90 some% of the news media say negative things about donald trump so how could you support him and the other thing about it is donald trump is the news everyday and i could turn on my news and there is donald trump or donald trump and his and i'm going to say this because, donald trump is the biggest national security threat to the united states that we've ever had. how can you president have a meeting with putin and there are no notes. he's destroyed the n notes. he met with putin and there were no u.s. interpreter in a russian interpreter. donald trump has money in the

bag with china and money in the bank with russia but chinese have an office in a building in manhattan and all these things donald trump charges used as covenant $8 million to go to mar-a-lago and is a hard-working president but has, he's been out of the country or on these golf trips for 280 days. the office said that donald trump charged $140 million to the general public just for him to go back tomorrow lago andge charged three dollars for water when he was prime ministers so i don't think the hotel entities charge anywhere from 400-$600 per person to go to one of his hotels. if that is not a emoluments than what is it. >> host: we got to leave it there so lauren copeland are you pulling on the issue of character for these two reluctant voters out thereel who prefer president

trump's policies temperament ant is where we see some undecided voters but to carol's point trump net favorability rating in ohio is underwater. it is negative seven-point among independents that number is negative 23 points. it would suggest that people are concerned about his temperament as well as the desire to return to normalcy and i think some of that is afflicted in carol's comment as well and there is a sense that people believe that biden will bring normalcy back to the presidency and that is why we see a lot of the political action committees like the lincoln project and 43446 supporting joe biden this time around.

>> host: what are the independent voters in ohio likely to do from your polling and do they turn out to vote? >> guest: i think we will see turnout ratesng independents this year than we did in 2016. 2016 was a unique election in the sense that both candidates had very high on favorability ratings so when people went to vote they weren't so much voting for donald trump as they were voting against hillary clinton and vice versa. we saw people not so much voting for clinton because they liked her but because they didn't like donald trump and an contrast joe biden has done a great job as presenting himself as the scrappy kid from scranton and someone who will stand up for white working-class voters and i

think for independents this means that they will be more willing to go out and vote this time around because we don't have a polarizing candidate on the democratic ticket like we did in 2016 and now those who support trump may disagree with me and call joe biden a socialist who will raise taxes and as someone who is too far to the left but i think he's quite centrist democrat and i think that appeals to independents here in ohio. >> host: john in a spring hill, florida supporting the preside president. >> caller: how are you? >> host: good morning. >> caller: good morning to you also. >> host: go ahead, john. >> caller: i have a few questions. how do you think ohio will vote forr biden when you watch biden choose his vp who is kamala harris who on national television in a presidential debate called him a sexist

antiracist and yet she accepted his nomination as vp for the vice presidency of our country and if you watch and if you really watch c-span, cnn and msnbc and fox and i watched them all. i watch them all. i want to be an informed voter bid i voted for obama twice and i was offended when i heard oprah winfrey on national television make the statement, i guess white america has spoken. well, shucks. white america spoke when we voted obama in. we make up the majority of the population so we where is the systemic racism? this is a fallacies in our country. it's actually, it actually upsets me that you would consider most off the population in our country a racist country. every other country in the world wants to come to our country. i think we need to look deeper into her colleges and allow open debates in ourjust college peopn

television and give us their view. >> host: okay, john, lauren copeland speak to john's comment about the vice president vp pick with senator harris. >> guest: i was a little bitcond clarify his statement about her acceptance of. >> host: during the primary he is saying during the primary debate that senator harris called the former vice president a racist and a sexist and how she could then go with him and i'm just wondering about her pick in ohio or i'm sorry, her being the vp candidate in ohio and howd that is playing out. >> guest: you know, i think harris will mobilize democrats

who are farther to the left to go out and vote. she may turn off independents and people who are further to the right butut i think she wasa good pick overall given that people have criticized joe biden for being 78 years old and being just another white guy and i think to the ticket but also what i hear the caller saying is that he is tired of people treating any demographic group asas a monolithic group so whati hear him saying is that there might be a tendency for people to classify white voters or white working-class voters as racist and when that is not the case. it is just like when we look at

women in the battleground states or even in the u.s. as a whole republican women are very different from democratic women and so it is hard to treat women as a demographic group as a whole and so i hear the frustration and in the caller's voice about dependency to classified white voters as racist when it is usually party id the drives vote choice and not people attitudes on race. >> host: let's talk about some of the groups in ohio. not all will vote the same way but what about suburban women in atohio? >> guest: we can't break the data down to suburban women but we have broken it down to the suburbs. the reason wee can't break it down to suburban women is that we start getting into numbers that are so small that the

margin of error is so high to render the data meaningless but we see joe biden leading in the suburbs of ohio and we also see people in the suburbs equally likely as people in urban areas to disapprove of how trump is handling the coronavirus and we also see people in the suburbs believing that joe biden is a better candidatebs to unify the country so i think that biden is definitely cutting into trump's lead among the suburbs and it could be the suburbs that if biden wins ohio which i'm not sure he will that the suburbs will help him get there. >> host: what about religious voters? are there evangelical voters, christian voters and how they tend to vote in ohio? >> guest: one of the reasons ohio is more conservative than

say michigan, wisconsin and pennsylvania is that the religiosity race are a bit higher here and they tend to vote for republican candidates often because they are pro-life and they are worried about democrats expanding abortion rights, for example. what i think is interesting for the religious vote this time around is now thatou amy coney barrett has been confirmed to the sabine card they know that there is a six-three conservative majority on the court that may make decisions about abortion that would further restrict rights and that could free up their vote for biden if that was their main concern about his candidacy. >> host: james in cleveland, ohio. supporting the president. hello, james. >> caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. >> host: go ahead.

>> caller: lauren, i live right up the road from baldwin wallace and i take great issue with some of theou comments you are making on your today. in fact, i finally had the nerve to put my trump sign on my front yard and my neighbors are also trump fans and they are too scared to because of radical democrats and they are worried about getting a brick thrown through their window or a paintball shot at their home so and i totally disagree that where you are saying joe biden is leading in the suburbs and i think that's a fake and you are just trying to see what you want to see with your research. i totally disagree with your comments and i would like to hear your response. >> guest: well, here's my response. whatever political positions i might have on my colleagues might have at the community research institute at baldwin

wallace university more than anything else in the world we want our polling to be accurate and we take great measures to make sure that it is. my commentssu of biden leading n the suburbs are based strictly on the data and not on my opinion and some of the things that we do in our poles to make sure that we are not underestimating trump support in ohio is that we wait by education so that people with college degrees or without college degrees are represented in the sample and we also have caps in place in the urban and rbsuburban votes so the rural ve is not underrepresented in our poles. everything i'm saying is based strictly on the numbers and not based onn what i would like to see or what my political predispositions might be. of course, you are free to disagree with me but all i'm

doing is reporting what the data says. >> host: can people find the data that you have accumulated on the website bw edu? >> guest: if you do a google search for i baldwin wallace grt lakes poll we have all four sets of poles that we've done up there and we have an extensive methodology statement which spells out in detail exactly how we do our polling and one of the things we do this is that i want to be able to sleep at night. so we are completely transparent about how we conduct our surve surveys. >> host: all right. kim in ohio, supporting the biden harris ticket. hello, kim. >> caller: good morning. thank you for taking my calls. as you said i'm supporting biden and harris and also a suburban woman and just on the whole donald trump's leadership as

regards to the coronavirus has been completely lacking and having left the management of it to the up the states and regarding human lives he said it ist what it is. he turned a global health issue into a political issue where his supporters didn't wear masks and if we follow the science instead of opinion or his wanting to downplay it andow not cause panc per his words then we would not be where we are now in terms of the virus. i also feel his divisiveness is absolutely important. he runs at right now saying that we will not be safe in joe biden's america the footages of events that are happening now so i'm not sure that the message he wants to put out there and he is responsible for, he is not responsible for the actions of people who destroy property but he could have held back his law

and order stance and been a leader in that regard as well and he had peaceful protesters gassed so he could pose in lafayette park in front of a church with a bible upside down and that's in disregard to the first amendment rights. >> host: kim, how did you and your fellowow suburban females vote in 2016? >> caller: i voted for obama in 2016. and i have to say even though i'm typically a democrat i'm not solidified in that. if there were a republican candidate whose values were truer to the republican forum than i may have voted for that person because even though i'd i'm typically a democrat i'm not set on joe biden as a president. there are concerns there with flip-flopping on the issues and

just with trump, you know, having over 500 children separated from the parents and with the immigration issues and the name-calling for women and saying they are nasty and monsters and divisiveness and his retreating saying he did not raise what he doesn't know what q and on is and telling white supremacists to stand back and stand by and having them take that as a joe violence as sort of a cue to say standby we want to see what happens with governor witmer. >> host: kim, we heard your point so lauren copeland what you make of the female suburban women in ohio. >> guest: on the ground that is what i'm hearing as well and i am in a more conservative suburb which voted for trump in 2016 and by voted for trump was 60%

of the vote and i think what we are seeing is the nationalization of local politics where issues like the coronavirus and the coarsening of political discourse are effecting politics on the ground and just yesterday i received a text message from the strongsville gop that said if you want to keep the schools open in strongsville you should support trump and i thought that was quite interesting. also to kim's point it is surprising this year that ohio is even on the table given that trump won by eight points in 2016 and that the replicants did so well in the state in 2018 and so what i hear from kim is that there is been a failure of leadership at the national level and that is what is making ohio

a competitive state once again in 2020. people are specifically concerned about the coronavirus, not only because it could affect their health but because it affects their daily lives where people with children in the schools have to deal with whether the kids will be in school or doing remote schooling and they have to address their work schedules and daycare schedules and so the issues that trump is addressing or not addressing are definitely affecting suburban women here in ohio. >> host: tom in dayton, ohio support in the president. >> caller: yes i am. he's the least racist person i've ever known. even ask herschel walker. this ain't a racist contribute we voted for a mixed man, obama, half white, half black two times in a row and we are not a racist country. and i don't know about you but i get tired of hearing about

racism, racism racism. i will not vote for joe biden but i voted for president obama the first time and i didn't vote him in the second time because of his great deal and the pacific trade partnership and that is what joe biden did with nafta and and i will not vote for somebody like that. >> host: tom, let's pick up on trade deals. the president renegotiating nafta and democrats and democrats to again after that negotiation and it passed the president signed into law but doesn't help them in ohio? >> guest: i think it can go both ways and i think what trump does really well is that he speaks to people that feel they've been left behind in the postindustrial economy and that that was f something that hillay clinton failed to do in 2016 and biden is m trying to make inroas

among people whonr are concerned about that issue but i am not sure how that lays out in the election on tuesdayay. >> host: cincinnati, ohio. mark supporting biting, good morning.. >> caller: thank you for taking the call. want to compliment you guys on your impartiality as you always do as comments. lauren, i wanted to ask and i'm a retired educator and i just wanted to have you dig down deeper on the uneducated stat and what does that really, really mean. i think you're starting to address that but what are the invocations of f the uneducated think you've taken the call. >> guest: sure. so what we see across the country, not only in ohio but cross-country is thatry trump space tends to be white

working-class voters or tends to include white working-class voters without a college degree and i think that goes back to my previous comments that trump does a really good job of reaching out to that group and his messaging is really on point that this group has been left behind by the postindustrial economy and what we are seeing in our polls is that biden is making inroads among this group and perhaps that is because as was mentioned in the previous segment that trump has not been able to restore the jobs like get boards down that he promised he would do. so, trying to pull up the numbers right here but in our survey among those lists of a four year degree trumps only up three points but in 2016 he

carries this group by 25 points and among those without a college degree a group trump carried by 30 points and 2016 according to the exit polls trumps only up 12 points. we also see biden performing better among people ages 65 and older. we are seeing that trump still is winning among people without, white people without college degrees but that his lead has shrunk at least based on the polling data in 2020. >> host: chris in canton, ohio supporting the biden harris ticket. hello. >> caller: hello. i appreciate you taking my calls. there is a lot that has been said today this morning and kim hits a lot of it in the caller before for mr. biden but i think the president sets the tone for the country. when he speaks people look and

hear and they pick up on a lot of that rhetoric that he spells out and then says i did not mean that or i was joking or, you know, it started with his inauguration with the american speech when he, i thought we were living in a third world country when i heard that speech. now i feel like were in and american carnage now. he talks about the size crowd and keeps talking about issues that he don't agree with in the alternative facts came into view. he reversed obama policies and a majority of the democrats and republicans i know in our neighborhood we wear a mask to protect others or our grandchildren. it is not a big deal and it's not like getting a hazmat suit on. you take it off as soon as you

get out of the grocery store. we fly our flags. we file our taxes and volunteered to help children and i have a daughter in the military and all these things, democrats and republicans do we terrible people. as far as masks doctors wear a mask to protect the patient in any of these people they don't think masks do anything you would not want to go into an operating room where a doctor is not wearing a mask ready to take out your gallbladder. as far as the virus -- >> host: chris i think we will leave it there. lauren what are you hearing from that voter? >> guest: so what i am hearing from, i'm sorry what was your name again? asbe when i think it was kim. >> guest: what i think i'm hearing from kim is that people are tired of the extent to which trump has exacerbated

polarization in american politics and what we see in ohio as well as the country and the poll isep this concept of negate partisanship where even in their interpersonal interactions people tend to automatically assume that democrats are bad people ifey they are republicans and vice versa if they are democrats. what i hear kim saying is that there is a desire to unify rather than divide the country and that joe biden is the better candidate to do that and is also the better candidate based on what she is saying to lead the country in terms of the coronavirus pandemic by setting an example for americans by wearing a mask and in contrast what we've seen from the trump administration is a complete

disregard for science and even a few days ago mark meadows said that basically the trump administration had given up on trying to control the coronavirus pandemic and would try to address it through therapies and vaccines and so what i hear kim saying is this desire to return to normalcy, unify the country and reduce the polarization in american politics. >> host: dave and ohio, undecided. good morning. how are you undecided? >> caller: i'm not sure if either candidate can make it to the voting day and i just want to wait and see what happens and i'm leaning one way but we will see but i appreciate your time and it's good to work from home so i can watch c-span all day. >> host: dave, do want to tell us which way you are leaning and

why? >> caller: i might be leaning towards president trump because of the economic reasons coming out of the pandemic here but i don't like the handling of the pandemic and i think that might have cost and potential election, free election but my comment to ms. copeland is on scientific observations and i'm seen half-and-half of the size signs biden and trump. it's hard to tell which way the county is leaning. i know ohioans hold close to their vest at the last second who they will vote for but i'm scientifically are want to see if she saw that [inaudible] if she had taken a look at that to see what they came up with on that. a third point is what do they

know about the green party candidate? >> guest: lauren copeland, go ahead. >> guest: i don't know if the carwash but i have been to sweeties candy off of 480 by cleveland and i have soda bottles with trump and biden on them and assign asking consumers to vote for either trump or biden by purchasing one or the other and trump was definitely leading when i was there about one month ago. however, yard signs aren't great indicators of how the vote will shake out and they are better indicators of enthusiasm for a candidate so if you see people trump signs or biden signs it is more likely that they feel very strongly about their vote and it is not really a great indicator of who will win the election and in terms of the

economy we do see the majority of ohioans saying that they approve of the way that trump is handling the economy and i completely agree with the caller that trump's achilles' heel is likely his handling of the coronavirus outbreak and given that his economy approval ratings arere fairly high despie the fact that the ohio economy is not doing great in terms of unappointed rates. >> host: here is the westlake laser with the sign let's clean up dirty politics if you are supporting bidenic and or if you are a democrat on the left you blame one and if you are supporting president trump or you are conservative use lane two. coverage of that. in canton, ohio your supporting a biden harris ticket. good morning.

jerry, good morning. turned on the television. >> caller: hold on one minute. hold on. >> guest: the carwash thing is interesting. >> host: will have to follow up with them. jerry, are you ready? jerry, you've got to start talking. >> caller: hurry up.ig >> host: jerry, are you ready? i'm going to put jerry on hold but we will try to -- jerry are you ready? joealler: i'm voting for biden and donald trump in 2016 and since 2016 and four years for ohio he is and did nothing for ohio. he says when he got elected as president he says i love you,

ohio. i lovei you and i will come bak and do a lot for ohio but he hasn't did nothing in the four years for ohio. he did worse for ohio. still steelst mills are shutting down, stores are shutting down and alle the steel mills in oho is frankly, gone. and the other thing is that i wanted to say is any candidate running for president of the united states as donald trump did who has had five, six finger up sees in the past should not be president and should not be president of the united or runhe for president of the united states. >> host: okay jerry, lauren copeland. >> guest: inop 2016 tom said something that was quite interesting and he said what do you have to lose, vote for me,

the democrats haven't done much for you and i think he was speaking, not only to the african american community but also to peoplee who work in the steel mills or in the auto mobile industry and so i think that this caller opinion is effective of the fact that although trump made a lot of promises for people working in these industries that these ollicy promises haven't translated into policy outcomes and so i think in 2016 people said sure, what do we have to lose and we will vote for you and then in 2020 though, largely voting based on trump's performance in the past four years. theree is a gap between what he promised and what he has been able to deliver but to be fair

that is true for every single president. we saw obama make a lot of campaign promises that he wasn't able to deliver on as well. i wouldn't say that specific to trump. ... s o understand the frustration among people who thought that trump could bring about change in ohio. host: lauren copeland, that is a perfect segue into our phone >> next, in this next last half an hour, we're going to talk about promises made by. look at his first term, promises kept andt promises that have nt been realized. we thank you for the conversation with you this morning and our focus on this battleground stateor of ohio. >> guest: thank you for having me. >> host: all this week on "washington journal" we'll be focusing on key campaign 2020 battleground states with political reporters and analysts on the ground. we'll