Episodes
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The Republican Party had the strongest showing among Latinos in decades, particularly Latino men. CNN’s national exit poll found Trump won 54 percent of Latino men compared to Harris’ 44 percent – that's an 18-point increase from 2020. Audie talks with Democratic strategist and founder of Solidarity Strategies, Chuck Rocha, about this shift. Why did so many Latino men go for Trump this time around? And what will the Democratic party do about it?
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With just hours before election day, we’re returning to a handful of people who represent a crucial voter segment: unhappy Pennsylvania Republicans. John King interviews three people who voted for Nikki Haley in the state’s primary back in the spring — long after she’d dropped out. How they and others like them fill out their ballots this week may decide the next president of the United States.
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Missing episodes?
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Every four years, millions of people tune into news networks for real-time election results, but there is much more happening behind the scenes before the final call is aired. Audie talks with CNN Vice President and Political Director, David Chalian. He leads the team responsible for making high-stakes calls under intense pressure — all while ensuring accuracy, especially in today’s politically charged era. They talk about what goes into making the calls, and when we can expect a presidential election result.
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Wisconsin and Michigan, the big bricks of the former Blue Wall, are considered must-wins for Kamala Harris. They’re also both toss-ups at this point. This week, John King talks to voters in Milwaukee and Detroit who have a lot in common: They’re both Black men, about the same age, born and raised in their respective Rust Belt cities, and steeped in a culture that always voted for Democrats. One is voting for Harris. The other is going for Trump. Their choices — and how they got there — tell us a lot about the very tight election math in the upper Midwest.
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Elections officials across the country are preparing for a potentially bumpy election night. Audie travels to Arizona to talk with one of those officials: Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates. He is a lifelong Republican who faced death threats and harassment from election deniers after he certified the results of the 2020 election. They discuss why election centers now look like forts – surrounded by barbed wire and shatterproof glass – all in the name of protecting election integrity.
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Is it really possible to fight conspiracy theories? Robbie Parker says yes. After his daughter Emilie was killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting in 2012, Parker became the target of conspiracy theories -- amplified and monetized by Alex Jones. Audie talks with Parker about how he helped sue Alex Jones’ Infowars and won, and what he thinks of gun politics in an election where candidates brag about being gun owners.
Robbie Parker’s new book is called, “A Father's Fight: Taking on Alex Jones and Reclaiming the Truth About Sandy Hook.”
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Vice President Kamala Harris’ goal in Georgia is to turn out the coalition that barely tipped the newly purple state to Joe Biden in 2020. That means firing up the base, convincing the unconvinced, and driving turnout as high as possible. Donald Trump, meanwhile, is hoping Georgians think the shift left was a mistake. There's no question that women of color are a huge part of the Georgia equation. John sits down with two who show it would be a mistake to think they’re voting as a bloc.
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Owning a home is the cornerstone of the American dream, but an affordability crisis is making it a distant fantasy for many. The presidential candidates are taking notice. Sonja Trauss is a key activist in the YIMBY movement (“Yes in My Backyard”), and says the solution is pretty simple: Build more homes. Getting that done isn’t so easy. Audie sits down with Trauss in Southern California — ground zero for the housing shortage — to talk about the origins of the problem and potential solutions.
Watch a version of our conversation here.
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This week, Audie steps into the cage, literally, to learn why mixed martial arts is America's latest political battleground. As young men and women drift further apart politically, mixed martial arts has proven fertile ground for a changed GOP looking for fresh supporters. Retired Ultimate Fighting Championship star Jorge Masvidal is a vocal supporter of Donald Trump, as are many other fighters and UFC CEO Dana White. Audie talks with him and journalist Luke Thomas to learn about the growing connection between fight fans and the former president.
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Nevada — especially Clark County, home to Vegas and almost 75 percent of the state’s population — is a political bellwether in a very specific way. The pandemic gutted the tourism-based economy, and the recovery has been slow. John King speaks with two voters in Las Vegas with centrist political views who show us why Nevada is very much up for grabs in this election.
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“I vividly remember Donald Trump winning the election and waking up shocked the next day because I was told by everyone...this was impossible.” For Lakshya Jain, 2016 was a major wake-up call, and he decided to use his skills to address the gaps in understanding left by traditional political media. Together with a group of fellow Gen Z engineers and political enthusiasts, he founded Split-Ticket.org, a nonpartisan website that uses creative framing and interactive games to tell a new kind of political story.
You Be The Campaign Manager game
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The historically Black sororities and fraternities known as the Divine 9 have a long legacy of political activism, though it’s traditionally been nonpartisan. Now that Vice President Kamala Harris — a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the country’s oldest Black sorority — is at the top of the Democratic ticket, the organizations are mobilizing in a whole new way. And nowhere is that more evident or more consequential than in Georgia. Audie Cornish travels to Atlanta to sit down with two other AKA members: Democratic Congresswoman Nikema Williams and Maisha Land, creator of the viral Stroll to the Polls campaign.
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In a presidential race destined to come down to a handful of swing states, Arizona is a political puzzle: a Sun Belt state that’s historically gone red, but went for Biden in 2020. Do the changing demographics prime it for Harris, or will it turn back to Trump? John King talks with two swing voters who exemplify how Arizona defies stereotypes — and represent exactly who the parties are trying to win over.
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Colleges and universities are still dealing with the political fallout of last spring’s campus protests and encampments. It’s a political fight that’s led to the ouster of high-profile university presidents and generated national debate and even Congressional hearings. Audie talks with Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University, about how campus protests over Gaza offer a lens on wider arguments about academic freedom. And we hear the perspective of Sam Hilton, a Wesleyan student and executive editor of the student newspaper.
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Audie talks with actor and producer LeVar Burton about the political events that shaped his life and informed the way he guided younger generations, especially as they grappled with the political and cultural events of their own time.
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Kamala Harris has “Freedom.” Donald Trump has “God Bless the USA” (and a lot of cease-and-desist letters). What makes for a good campaign song? And why do we respond so viscerally to the ones that work? Audie talks with DJ Cassidy, who DJ'd the DNC Roll Call. And Dana Gorzelany-Mostak, who studies the use of music in political campaigns.
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We've watched Democratic leaders hand the reins to the next generation at their surprisingly lit convention in Chicago this week. Audie sits down in with CNN’s Van Jones and Evan McMorris-Santoro of the nonprofit news site NOTUS (News of the United States) to talk about who’s taking the stage and changing the party.
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Audie talks with journalist Kara Swisher about the rise of Silicon Valley’s big donors and how Trump won some of them over. Plus, how Kamala Harris’ California roots have worked to her advantage with tech donors.
Kara is the author of “Burn Book: A Tech Love Story.”
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CNN’s Elle Reeve did her best-known reporting during the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, when she followed neo-Nazis over a weekend of violent protests. Seven years later, her new book looks at how that movement — born in online communities of mostly white men — gave rise to extremist thinking that is now threaded through today’s political discourse.
Audie talks with Reeve about reporting on Nazis, the mainstreaming of their ideology, and why she started “Black Pill: How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life, Poison Society, and Capture American Politics” with a story about a dead cat.
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How will Donald Trump and Republicans talk about Kamala Harris without walking into a buzzsaw of accusations and potential backlash over attacks on her race and gender? This week Audie talks with two people with some answers: Kevin Madden is a CNN Political Commentator and was a senior advisor to Mitt Romney on his presidential campaigns, and Doug Heye was the head of communications for the RNC and for the House Majority Leader.
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