the community doesn't just have small businesses, it is small businesses. and that's why american express founded small business saturday. so, this year let's all get up, get out and shop small on november 24th. i got croissant. small business saturday. a small way to make a big difference. welcome to "up." there are two days, fewer than 48 hours, until the first polling places open and politicians are not holding back. >> i will say this. a andrew gillum is not equipped to be your governor. he's just not equipped. >> even though this is a midterm, folks are talking about the president. >> nobody was worse to the press than obama. nobody. >> a president doesn't get to decide on his own who's an

american citizen and who's not. >> talking about two presidents, but what will decide this election is turnout. we're seeing a record number of early voters. celebrities knocking on doors, a massive effort to get out the vote. >> i want to make sure that i vote. >> i felt like it was time for my voice to be heard. >> being able to go vote, we were able to get our voice back. >> it is sunday, november 4th. if you are nervous about the outcome of this election, you are not alone. >> you know, my friends can't wait to vote. we'll see you at the polls next thursday. >> tuesday. >> i know, mom. i'm kidding. >> it was not funny! >> be part of the victory. get out there and vote. >> feels pretty good! >> we're here every saturday and sunday morning. up with me today, chief washington correspondent for bloomberg. emily was the vice president of campaigns for american progress. she's now a senior adviser at swing left. gabe sherman is a special

correspondent for "vanity fair" and an msnbc contributor. and alexis is a political reporter with axios. kevin, i want to start with you, get a sense of where we are at this point. i'm setting up the temporal parameters. let's look at the travel schedule for the president. he's in georgia today. tomorrow it's ohio, indiana, and missouri. a trifecta, three campaign stops in one day. what does that tell you about how he sees this election? >> it's interesting where he's not going. he's not going to arizona, which i think is remarkable given that his closing argument has really been all about immigration. but in terms of ohio, just the importance there. but look, i mean, if you look at georgia in particular, i think that you could have a situation where that could be the dominant headline of the midterm elections, potentially on wednesday morning, especially if she wins the governorship and you've got oprah who's literally going door to door down there. the bottom line is the president is making a case on immigration, and a lot of the democrat strategists are saying that

could have the adverse effect he wants to see happen by mobilizing democrats to get to the polls. you're not seeing democrats engage on that issue. they're sticking to health care. think of how fast the pendulum has swung on health care, for example, that democrats are now seizing on that particular point. >> alexis, i want to get a sense from you. you look at the polls, the number of toss-ups, i think 29 house seats ares to-up races. your sense of how this might play out on tuesday night into wednesday morning? >> i was told by both executive directors of the dccc and nrcc that they fully expect we will not know who controls the house for a week or so. which is horrifying because it just drags out these nerves even longer for many people around the country. but you know, i think that republicans have a much narrower path to keep control of the house, and that's worrying them. they know that democrats set out from the start to target more than 100 gop-held districtins a seats. they have a broader path to take control of the house to get those 23 net gain seats to win

control of that chamber. that's not to say it's going to be easy, but they have many more paths. if we look at pennsylvania, they could pick up four seats. i think that's worrying some republicans. >> i want to get everyone up to speed. we have early voting numbers. that's a huge focus. continues to be a big story. some 33 million americans have cast their ballots already. big rallies, as we've been saying, continue across the country. 4:00 p.m. this afternoon, president trump and president obama speaking simultaneously, counterprogramming this afternoon. today president trump is in macon, georgia, and chattanooga, tennessee. president obama is going to be in gary, indiana, and chicago. we are processing all this data, trying to get a sense of the state of the race two days out. there's this emerging consensus among democratic strategists and republican strategists based on public polling and private polling and early voting.

when it comes to the senate, many of those races still statistical ties. we're going to get new data this morning. 9:00 a.m. eastern time, the latest nbc news/"wall street journal" poll. we'll bring you those numbers as soon as we get them. gabe, we're talking about what's happening on the ground. take us inside the west wing. you're so good at doing that, about how the president is approaching this race, what his thinking is, going to these states, what topics he's talking about. >> yeah, a few things. clearly, the president has decided that he wants to mobilize the coalition, the hard core trump base that turned out in 2016 that a lot of the national pollsters didn't see coming. and he has doubled down and in fact kind of gone wherever he went in 2016 in terms of this divisive, anti-immigrant message, which to me, looking at the landscape in terms of just pure policy and politics, the republicans have a strong case to run on. the economy is at record high. there's relative peace and

prosperity around the world. yet, they're not talking about the economy. they're talking about this caravan that's weeks away from the southern border. so that to me is showing you how trump thinks he has the republican party in control, but as you said, if there's a backlash, this is really much going to be on him. >> let's talk about policy discipline, emily. gabe bringing up the point that republicans could be talking about the economy, the economy, the economy. they're not doing that. maybe to their chagrin because the president is deciding what they're talking about. let's look at democrats. they welcome the fact that republicans were talking about health care. they said, great, this is our issue, let's keep talking about. help us understand policy discipline. >> democrats are running a positive case for each and every candidate, which is something i think a lot of democrats were looking for. the energy came from the pushback against the election of trump. what ended up happening is the field emerged of incredibly strong candidates who are running that were right for the district and had strong policy platforms themselves. so the people who were getting out and volunteering are really not -- they're really not just a

reaction to trump. they're getting out because they are for the actual candidates. i do actually want to push back for a second on the presumption that the economy is so strong. the job growth numbers are there, but actually slower than obama, right. we know that american companies are starting too pull jobs because of the tariffs and the trade war. we know taxes are going to go up because they got rid of the state and local tax deduction in many of these states where democrats are trying and going to win many of the house seats. so i think the fact that democrats are running good candidates, running good campaigns, but more so the fact that democrats are actually running stronger volunteer operations through the campaigns, through organizations like ours at swing left. we've seen record-breaking volunteers. yesterday it was through the roof. we heard stories all over the place of the fact campaign u offices were actually running out of things for volunteers to do. their entire volunteer universe was getting hit in one day. when they got out and started

having those conversations on the trail, i think something we expected in this election was the bottom was going to fall out of the republican enthusiasm. something i think we didn't necessarily expect was that there were going to be so many independents who were pervaded, both by the positives on the democratic candidate side, but also by the fact the republicans have sfafallen in line with tru. >> kevin, jump in here. i see an active eyebrow raise. >> they also have oprah and taylor swift knocking on doors. in terms of the economy, i think it's going to be really interesting to see how trade and the trade debate plays out in the long run. if you talk to senator elizabeth warren, they're not pushing back on tariffs, for example, particularly with the renegotiated nafta deal. there actually is this strange populist streak in american politics where there's some strange bedfellows, so to speak, in terms of the trade debate. what i find interesting, and you picked up on this with the tax issue in particular, is that the president has not been taking

the tax reform issue to the campaign trail, which has been interesting. i think democrats, much more than making the case against the 250,000 jobs that were added to the u.s. economy in the month of october, i think they're talking about entitlements. i think they totally have seized upon the issue of taking away entitlements. >> you are the man who kick started a lot of this conversation. you sat down with the stars of many democratic campaign ads. what happened friday when president obama went to miami and then atlanta? as i saw it, he crystallized what the democrats' message is. just in terms of messaging, how important was his appearance there? he's going to be speaking again today at 4:00. >> right. well, many democrats and democratic strategists firmly believe no one is more popular than barack obama, except maybe michelle obama, with millennials and people of color. those are two groups democrats

are banking on. >> and those are people who did not turn out in 2016. look at places like wayne county in michigan. hillary clinton turned out something along the lines of 70,000 fewer votes, just in that county alone, which would have been enough to delivering her michigan. >> and we're seeing obama on the trail and donald trump oon the trail. we see a clear difference in the messages from republicans and democrats. republicans are campaigning on fear and anger. they're telling people to vote against this chaotic mob of democrats who are just so out of control, they could never control congress, otherwise life would be terrible. democrats are giving a more optimistic vision for the future, saying vote for us, not just against donald trump. and that is something that obama -- what's interesting in his message, he's continuing that, but he's not holding back when it comes to criticizing president trump and pointing out sort of the facts of how ridiculous this whole thing has become. >> it's still obama's party because hillary clinton isn't

really out there. >> "the new york times" had a devastating piece the other day, reporting on how almost no democratic candidates want bill clinton as a surrogate out there. >> that's not surprising. it's 2018. >> i think, again, it shows you the clinton machine, one of the consequences of 2016 is that it's really not their party anymore. >> it's pretty diffused. >> a lot of fundraising happening behind closed doors. i want to mention a special programming note. my colleague joy reid is going to be hosting special coverage of the election from florida today starting at 10:00 a.m. eastern time. democrats pour in everything they can to usher in the state's first african-american governor. that's coming up at 10:00 eastern time. coming up on this show, fewer than 48 hours until polls open in the east. we'll check in with our road warriors in two battleground states. our first stop, missouri. why democrats may not be so

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welcome back to "up." i'm david gura. only two days to go until the midterms. our road warriors are crisscrossing the country to follow these elections. both parties heavily invested in

missouri. in 2016, donald trump won that state by double digits. republicans hope josh holly could win the senate seat democrat claire mccaskill is trying to hold on to. the latest polling data indicate this race is a toss-up. morgan radford is in st. louis. i want to ask you about health care, the degree to which that issue is res natding wionating in the show-me state. >> reporter: if you ask claire mccaskill, that's the number one issue her voters care about. it's one of the tightest senate races in the country. nearly every poll shows them locked in a dead heat. and frankly, mccaskill is in the political fight of her life. she has to prove to voters here that she can reach across the aisle and can make nice with the president who most of her constituents like. but interestingly, david, her team tells us that the vote here in missouri is not necessarily going to come down to a referendum on president trump. at least not as much as people

outside of the state are led to believe. she says the number one issue for her voters is health care and keeping local jobs. if you cross the aisle and talk to holly's team, they paint a different picture. they say the number one issue people here on the ground in missouri care about is the same thing that's top of the president's agenda, and that's immigration. we went to a holly campaign event last night. one woman there said, look, i like claire mccaskill. in fact, i voted for her before, but i'm casting my vote for holly because i personally know someone whose brother was killed by a mexican gang member. she says those are the kind of people i want in this country. so holly has managed to successfully, for his base, really localize a lot of these national issues, national concerns. but david, what this is really going to come down to here on tuesday is what happens with those moderate voters, who's going to be able to peel them off and in which direction? two things are interesting here in missouri. one, theres is no early voting. two, you can't vote a straight

ticket. a lot of the voters really bounce around on the ballot. we're going to be guessing until the very end, david. >> we have gabe sherman here with a question, morgan. >> a quick question on immigration. claire mccaskill is one of the few national democrats to not denounce president trump's hard line rhetoric on the caravan. to what degree on the ground does her team see immigration as a difficult issue where democrats both have to say that they're going to be tough on the border but have compassion? there doesn't seem to be a middle ground. so what are you hearing from her camp on that? >> reporter: that is a fantastic question. immigration is actually one of those issues that she's been tackling with here and battling on the ground. if you've noticed in the past few days, claire mccaskill has been reaching farther right. she showed up on fox news and publicly praised certain elements of the president's agenda, including immigration. i think she knows that is something that especially more of the right-leaning voters here

in the state, especially in those more rural areas, are going to want to hear about. some might argue that she hasn't been as clear about her position. so they're waiting to see if she comes out and has any stronger language before tuesday. >> that's morgan radford with us in st. louis, missouri. emily, i want to ask you quickly, this is a race where we've seen a lot of money poured in by super pacs. i think st. louis dispatch reporting $43 million so far from the two parties' campaigns. to what degree is that representative of what we're seeing? >> yeah, the senate races, when it comes down to the end, that's when you see that real money get poured in. >> after the election, we'll get a full account. >> exactly. we'll see that really big money start to come in. that actually hasn't been an exception in missouri for any of claire mccaskill's races. we start to see it being effective for those late-breaking voters. that outside money is where those real hard, negative ads come in. the outside money, i think the candidate are reflecting on the issues that are hitting the core

for republican voters. we know for democrats and independents, the top two issues in every race are health care and the economy. when you start to get to the hard core republican base that republicans are really trying to get out, it's immigration, which is really a code for other. but that's where that big money really comes in. if they can just scare enough voters into voting republican. >> all right. i want to turn our attention to georgia. another big race we're following is the race for governor in that state. stacey abrams has been joined on the campaign trail by oprah and president obama. were she to win, abrams would be this country's first black female governor. her opponent, republican brian kemp, georgia's secretary of state. and the race there is still neck and neck. i want to start with some tape here, if i could, of the president of the united states, beth, talking about stacey abrams. he's been casting a lot of doubt on her qualifications.

let's listen to what the president had to say. >> she is not qualified to be the governor of georgia. she's not qualified. and georgia's a great state. it's a great, great state. take a look at her past. take a look at her history. take a look at what she wants to do and what she has in mind for the state. that state will be in big, big trouble very quickly, and the people of georgia don't want that. >> beth, help us analyze that. went to spellman college, university of texas, yale law school for her law degree. what's he talking about? what's the president talking about, and what are voters saying about the rhetoric the president is using about seau so -- stacey abrams' qualifications? >> reporter: yeah, and we're bound to hear more of that today. the president will be here today in macon, georgia. maybe he'll elaborate a little bit on what he means. yale law school, the same law school where his hand picked

supreme court nominee brett kavanaugh went. so pretty bizarre language there. i imagine we'll hear more about it when he speaks to supporters at that big rally. this race has really turned into a proxy battle between new south and old south. of course, this is very red georgia. typically it's been very conservative. keep in mind president trump only won this state by five percentage points in 2016. that's a lot closer of a margin than we saw in ohio, which is of course typically considered much more of a swing state. so things appear to be changing here in georgia. somebody like a stacey abrams, a progressive democrat, could actually pull it off. as you said, this is a very, very tight race. pretty much within the margin of error. president trump really has sort of put a lot of stock into brian kemp. this is not one of those, you know, races where you've got a competitive senate situation in georgia. most of the states he's going to, it's about balance of power. this is simply about this georgia governor's race. brian kemp very much in the

trumpian mold on issues like immigration. he's the secretary of state and has been criticized for using the power of his office to purge minorities off the ballot. so it's the south, david. issues of race, immigration never far from the surface. unfortunately, a robocall was put into the state on friday, very racist, anti-semitic, apparently by a white nationalist group against stacey abrams. both candidates condemning that call. frankly, it's in the fabric of a southern campaign. even though this may be a turning point for the south and they're ready to elect a progressive black woman governor, there's many ghosts that are always here too, david. >> beth, alexis has a question for you. >> unlike the other places where president trump is visiting before the midterms, macon, georgia, voted for hillary clinton by 21 points over trump in 2016. i'm curious what you're hearing on the ground in terms of how popular or unpopular president trump is in macon and whether or

not you think macon will be crucial to stacey abrams' victory. >> reporter: look, like every other red state, there's lots of blue dots. typically it's more urban areas that tend to be supportive of democrats. macon is one of the bigger cities in georgia, so not surprising it has a democratic tilt. it's still sort of out of the atlanta metropolitan area. the vast majority of the diverse, progressive part of the state is atlanta and its suburbs. but you're right, it is an unusual place for him to choose to come, since it was a place that supported hillary clinton. again, this is all about getting that statewide media attention. it's going to be a very well-attended rally. he's still very popular with a lot of voters here. he's hoping to transfer a lot of that popularity on to brian kemp, who's running very much in trump's model. >> kevin, you've picked up a donut. you're getting serious. >> beth, in arizona, for

example -- senator mccaskill going on fox, saying she has centrist views on immigration. then you go into the south and into the heart of georgia, and you have stacey abrams running as a progressive. what is her pitch to independent voters, or is her campaign strategy get out the base of the democratic coalition? >> well, that is certainly her strategy. she's believed from the beginning she can win this race if she encourages folks to come to the polls who have never voted before but are inspired by her, inspired by her as potentially the first black woman governor of georgia. she's been a member of the state legislature for many years and has won lots of bipartisan praise for being pretty independent and working well with republicans. i saw her the other night at the obama rally. she's talking about the military. she's talking about first responders. she's talking about church and faith. her parents are pastors. so she really can be a very sort

of centrist person as well as a progressive in terms of her issue orientation. she has a long track record in politics here in georgia. people know her. even though she's hitting those progressive issues hard, she does have a record of working across the aisle. >> beth, thank you very much for the time this morning. appreciate it. i just want to spends the next couple minutes talking about early voting maybe in the context of georgia. talk about voting there generally. 2 million plus people have cast votes in georgia already. i was struck, gabe, by what the naacp said yesterday. after this decision on voting rights in georgia, brian kemp is supposed to have his hands full. he has a lot to do, a lot to accomplish, a lot of boxes to check here in his day job as secretary of state of georgia, to make sure that folks can vote fairly on tuesday. your reaction to that side of the election in georgia.

>> one thing i was just thinking about listening to the exchange there was that, you know, trump is in many ways running as the most avidly pro, sort of the old south type of candidate. if you look at the elections we've had in the off years, we had doug jones, a democrat win in alabama. we had ralph northam win. yet now we have stacey abrams about to win, possibly, in georgia. what's striking is we're in the most old south style rhetoric when it comes to national politics. in the south itself, we're seeing democrats pick up seats that it's been decades since they've held. >> stacey abrams is running as a progressive in a conservative state. if she's to win on tuesday night, and there's no question she will be the new star of the democratic party. >> but interestingly, who else is running as a progressive in

the south is andrew gillum running for governor in florida. maybe that's part of the construct. maybe it's a governor message. maybe that is part of the new versus old. i think it's interesting you talk about trump running as an old-style southern candidate. i wonder if that really just means he's running as a big racist, which is kind of what i think. i do wonder how much that penetrates both with the message and with the alignment of the white nationalists. they can try to push themselves away, but it's essentially their message. the fact that brian kemp is secretary of state, purging people off the voter rolls for his own election, i just wonder -- i don't know. like, i wonder how much that's penetrating on the ground. that does feel real deep in that southern state. >> and the role he would play if we don't get a simple majority, certainly he'll play a role in that as well. make sure to stay with us on msnbc tonight. our election team hosts a special hour of analysis ahead of tuesday's vote.

that's tonight at 9:00 here on msnbc. coming up, remember when democrats were complaining president obama was not taking on president trump? you don't hear that anymore. the former president back at it today, holding a rally at the exact same time as the current president. why president obama is finally letting loose. plus, should we trust the polls? why some worry they may be more off this time than back in 2016. ♪ ♪

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welcome back to "up." i'm david gura. democrats continue to talk about the prospect of a blue wave this week. "snl" decided to spoof the hope and anxiety democrats have ahead of tuesday's vote. >> this tuesday, november 6th, democrats are bringing much-needed change to america. twl there's a blue wave on the horizon, and i have never felt more confident. >> white women promise to do the right thing this time. they're not going to let us down, right? >> we got this.

[ screaming ] >> okay, all right. let's get serious about that. the house minority leader nancy pelosi was on "a.m. joy" yesterday. >> she's feeling great. >> very confident about this. your sense talking to sources about how right that confidence is going into this election. >> democrats are smarter, at least the ones i talk to, and seem overly confident. everyone i talk to, they're not like, oh, yeah, we have this in the bag. sure, they have reason to feel confident. the path i talked about earlier is one thing. the energy we're seeing in early voting and throughout the entire time donald trump has been president is something they're banking on. >> so it's optimism versus confident. >> but they all remember 2016 when no one had been more certain about hpresident hillar clinton, and look what happened.

but i've heard nancy pelosi has said that for every midterm cycle for the last eight, ten years. >> it tried and true. it's bound to balance out. gabe, your reaction to that? let's talk broadly about polling. we're here looking at all this stuff. early voting numbers, enthusiasm, this and that. what's changed between 2016 and today when it comes to how we forecast out what's going to happen on election day? >> well, i think anyone around this table -- i'll speak for myself. throwing out predictions is probably the dumbest thing you can do in national politics. i think everyone needs to have a little humility. you can look at broad trends in the macro picture. to say with any certainty this is going to be a democrat year, this is going to be a republican year, it's so volatile. you know what we saw in pittsburgh, the mail bombs. the electorate is so volatile that on election day, anything is possible. all you can do is look at the trend lines. >> emily, i'll go to you lastly here. optimistic? >> i think that's right, optimistic.

>> not confident but optimistic. >> i deeply feel that 2016 overconfidence. i deeply feel that. optimistic, but i worry that anything short of, like, the biggest blue wave that's ever happened will be perceived as being, oh, well, you can't -- trump can't do anything too disgusting to turn off his base. it becomes a reinforcement of trump. republicans have already conceded the fact they are the party of trump, those who are willing to not be 100% on board with him have basically retired. now the ads they're running at the end are two align themselves closer with the worst part of his rhetoric and the worst part of his presidency. i worry that anything short of, like, a democratic tsunami is going to be -- the large narrative will be trump will never alienate. >> and same with the record number of women running for office. i hear this all the time. people who are upset with this year of the woman moniker because if all these women don't win, all the sudden it's a failed effort.

>> one last thing. the view inside trump world is if somehow the democrats don't take the house and lose the senate, it would literally break the back of the democratic party. this was their year to reclaim power, and they couldn't do it. it's like you can't organize a one-car funeral. i don't know what they can do. so the view inside trump world is if they somehow pull off a miracle and hold both houses, this will just wipe out the democrats for 2020. >> i'm envisioning the metaph metaphorical life raft out at sea. all right. president obama and president trump face off at the exact same time. what president trump is so fixated on, next. you've tried moisturizer after moisturizer but one blows them all out of the water. hydro boost from neutrogena®. with hyaluronic acid to plump skin cells so it bounces back. neutrogena®

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welcome back. i'm david gura. it has been president versus president on the campaign trail as president trump tries to rally his base, president obama has not been holding back at events across the country. today they are up against each other at 4:00 eastern time. each is going to have a rally. the sitting president will be in macon, georgia. president obama will be in chicago. this should give you a sense of the dynamic between these two leaders. >> i heard president obama speak today. i had to listen. i was in the plane. i had nothing else to do. >> why is it that the folks that won the last election are so mad

all the time? >> he had a very small crowd. they don't talk about that. >> right now republicans are all, look, the economy is so good. where do you think that started? >> it's going better than ever before. president obama, we were heading south. >> don't be bamboozled. don't be hoodwinked. he'll be like, look, look, look over there. then they're giving tax cuts to billionaires. >> if the other administration would have continued, our country would have crashed. >> they're just fear mongering to distract from the record. they're telling you the existential threat to america is a bunch of poor refugees a thousand miles away. >> we don't want to go back to the obama days. >> when people can just lie with abandon, democracy can't work. >> gabe, everything comes back to crowd size, it seems, with this president. i want to put up a tweet from

yesterday. my colleague filmed a line of people waiting to get into the event there in montana yesterday. the president retweeted it. landing in montana now. at least everybody admits my lines and crowds are far bigger than barack obama's. let's talk about these two leaders in parallel. how does the president see president obama? what's this telling us about that dynamic? >> i don't think you can extricate president trump from president obama because, as we all remember, it was that white house correspondents' dinner roast when trump was in the audience and obama was on stage going after him that a lot of people talk about sort of planted the kernel, the seed for which donald trump said i'm going to run for president. and he did. trump ran for president on the backs of the birther conspiracy, an outright racist lie about president obama. these two have had history together. in many ways, this is a proxy war that started, you know, long before obama left office. >> we were talking about the

role of obama being out there to galvanize voters, to crystallize the democratic platform. how much is it just to nettle this president? you hear him say, i was forced under duress to watch this speech on air force one. clearly getting under his skin. >> there's certainly a two for one deal that obama has struck. it's that one is trying to energize democratic base voters who love him and continue to love him and to stick that thorn in trump's side a little further. we all know and see, and president obama is keenly aware, that trump is visibly upset and bothered by someone who's not only taking attention away from him but he thinks sort of thwarting this gop momentum that he credits himself for building. and that is something that is clear when he's talking about his crowd size. that's an insecurity. when he's talking about watching obama because he had nothing else to do, that's an insecurity. it's clear that obama is recognizing that, and also, he's maybe allowed to tell it like it is in ways that candidates across the country feel like they maybe can't. >> the tie is off, and he's able

to say what he wants to say. >> but i also think there's something going on procedurally here, which is the former president now is inheriting -- really could pass on all of the campaign infrastructure that he has had and that hillary clinton was not able to successfully capitalize on. from a broader national map perspective, he's the last big winner of the democratic party. i think there's going to be in 2020 cycle a big thing. to your point in particular in the last segment with regards to how many seats the democrats win in the house, i think it also -- we're going to know in the next week or so whether or not this is a good night for nancy pelosi and whether or not she's going to inherit the democratic coalition in the house of representatives and what is the agenda, to your point, of a democrat majority in the house of representatives. what are they going to choose to do? are they going to choose to use the gavel to talk about tax releases and impeachment, or are they going to put forth policy prescriptions to really galvanize the middle class?

>> sure. we're going to come back in a second. gabe, thanks for joining us here in new york. the rest of the panel will stick around. we're going to bring in a bona fide texan to talk. early voters have come out in mind boggling numbers, but are there enough new numbers to put congressman beto o'rourke over the top? you might take something for your heart... or joints. but do you take something for your brain. with an ingredient originally discovered in jellyfish, prevagen has been shown in clinical trials to improve short-term memory. prevagen. healthier brain. better life.

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welcome back to "up." they say, of course, everything is everything is bigger in texas and that rings true for the midterm election. the senate battle between ted cruz and beto o'rourke is one of the hottest races in the country. recent poll numbers show cruz with a slight lead. senator cruz spoke about the impact president trump is having on his race. >> we got numbers on our side. there are a lot more conservatives than there are liberals. with the o'rourke campaign, they have had intensity. the liberals who are in texas are really, really mad. they hate president trump. that anger is dangerous. that anger is mobilizing.

it means that they will show up no matter what. they will crawl over broken glass to show up. >> joining our panel now is john weaver, former strategist for the mccain and kasich campaigns. he i want i want to start with moment. o'rourke saying we may never get this chance again. what is he trying to capitalize when it comes to this moment in time in texas? >> well, you can always tell a campaign is going with how people close. so beto is closing with an as pas -- aspirational speech and ted is closing with outlandish claims. i think that the race is very close. i'm not predicting that beto will win, but i think that it will be a close race. >> and what is the geography of this closing part of the cka

campaica campaign tell you? cruz is scheduled to be in north texas sunday, harris county on monday. o'rourke has three stops. both plan to spend election night in their hometowns. help us understand the geography. >> beto needs a big turnover in the urban centers. so he needs a big vote in houston, san antonio, austin, dallas, ft. worth. ted needs an overwhelming vote out of rural texas, out of harris and dallas. >> and there are really interesting smart house candidates running all over texas. beto gets a lot of attention as he should. he have jones, fletcher allred. they are all fascinating candidates. what impact will that have?

>> i think tooek will sexas wil or four democrats get elected. and those suburban voters are turning out voting straight democratic in many ways. and trump is driving that quite frankly with his rhetoric the last week. and i kind of think that he has decided to heck with the house and in an odd way that is helping some of the senate democrats close because these suburban voters who will vote out some of the republicans in those suburban markets are going to end up voting for democrats for the senate as well. >> congressman o'rourke becomes senate elect o'rourke, this would be the face of the tea party falling dramatically. it would be the dominant story if senator cruz is to lose. my question for you is two foldfold fold. number one, what economic message is congressman o'rourke really running on particularly on trade. and secondly, have you noticed that the president's rhetoric on the caravan, yes, it is

mobilizing senator cruz's base, but also mobilizing the base of the democratic party in texas and also bringing in new voters into this coalition. >> let me take the last part first. it is clear that he is trying to increase his base. it is energizing the hard core base, but they were already energized. he is expanding the playing field for voter reach out by the democrats by doing this. as far as what the economic message is, i think what you are seeing is that progressive candidates who lean into who they are, you see that in florida, in georgia, in texas, they are doing better than candidates who are trying to play it down the middle. >> so we talk a lot about democratic base voters helping someone like beto in a place like texas. i saw a poll earlier in which beto is leading ted cruz by 12 percentage points among independent voters. what does that say to you about independent voters in texas and you how important is that in this race?

>> texas is going through a transformational demographic change. and we've been waiting for it to turn purple for a decade and a half. but this may be the moment that it actually begins to turn purple whether beto wins or not. you are seeing a flux of first time voters into the early voting system. we don't know if this is a replacement for same day voting, but if it is an indication that the turn sxwrout will out is wh huge, it is laying the ground work for the future for democrats. >> did . >> does it surprise you that independents are trending democrats? >> college educated white women are moving away from the republican party. so that doesn't surprise me. >> john, thank you very much. and thanks to my panel as well. coming up, we have your final nbc news poll before americans

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good morning. thanks for joining us. election day just two days away and we have brand new polling

data here. democrats are holding a 7 point advantage, that a slight drop from last month. 43% of those polled want republicans in charge. among registered voters, 49% want democrats to control congress and president trump's job approval numbers remain essentially unchanged. 52% disapprove of his performance in office. i want to kick things off with mark murray, also here steve israel, christina greer, and joshua johnson. mark, walk us through this. i mentioned the seven points. give us your broad headline. >> yeah, we just got off the phone with you are our pollstery said this is a kaleidoscope where it could be a really good night for democrats. they do better among likely voters. normally it is the other way