Tamara Keith, National Public Radio:

To reach people who they need to motivate to get out to vote.

At this point, it's not about persuasion. At this point in the campaign, it is literally about getting people to go and cast a ballot. And the theory of the case of the Trump campaign is that there are voters who are out there who aren't yet voters, who are people who have not voted in the past, who felt disengaged, who feel like there's nobody speaking to them, and that Trump is going to be the one who gets them off the couch and gets them to vote.

And so this sort of language, I mean, I don't know if it's going to work to persuade the 500,000 Puerto Rican voters in Pennsylvania, but the idea here is, this was a rally, this was a giant safe space for Trumpism, and for people who feel like they can't say stuff like that in their communities.

And this rally was an embodiment of Trumpism, and that is motivating for a lot of voters.

Jasmine Wright:

I mean, frankly, it's risky, right? I think, in elections, staffers and aides and people who are putting together a strategy, they want to focus on high-propensity voters. They don't want to have to rely on their wins for low-propensity voters, because it's just not clear what works with them. It's not clear what is enough to motivate them to go to the ballot, to put those ballots in the mail, to really show up on Election Day.

I call this the base-plus election. I think for a long time we thought it was the base election, Democrats would be talking to Democrats, Republicans would be talking to Republicans. But I think that we have seen both campaigns, both the Harris campaign, go a little bit outside of that Democratic lane, go to right-leaning women, conservative women, Republican women, suburban women, to try to inoculate maybe some of the losses that they have seen with voters of color.

And then we're also seeing Trump go to that low-propensity, maybe not so educated, maybe not very clear about when they can vote or how they can vote or what they want to vote for, but they like his message, they like that draw, they like that real kind of grit that they believe that they're getting from Trump and people who are associated with Trump.

They believe that they're being seen when he says or when people who are supportive of him say quasi-racist things or things that are misogynist or calling people names or belittling because they can't feel — as Tamara said, that they can't stand in their real life.

And so I think this is the base-plus. They're reaching just a little bit outside the edges to try to get some of those voters to come over.

Jasmine Wright:

Yes, we initially saw her leading into the freedom argument, really talking up reproductive rights. And now we have seen her in some ways kind of regress back to that democracy as core.

And it's because it is attractive and it is motivating for base Democratic voters. It is something that Democrats like to hear. They like to talk about Project 2025. They're scared of Project 2025. It motivates them to get to the polls. They like to talk about the fact that they believe Trump is unstable, that he's a mean person, and that he's going to do mean things in the government, and that he absolutely should not be back there.

And it's also kind of attractive with those suburban women who may feel that their rights are under threat or who may not like where the Republican Party has gone on reproductive rights or abortion. And so it is an attractive thing for Democrats to put out there because they see that in some ways, at least, it motivates people to get to the ballots.

But, of course, we know that on these surveys, time after time after time what Americans are saying that they are most concerned about is the economy. And so I think right now you're seeing the Harris campaign kind of walk a tightrope between whether they should be talking about the economy or whether they should be talking about democracy.

But, clearly, we're going to see democracy win out tomorrow.

Geoff Bennett:

And we should say this election is already under way. Election Day is really when voting ends. And 40 million Americans have already voted early in person or by mail.

And Trump and his surrogates, as we said earlier in this broadcast, continue to spread lies about election fraud. And there's a new CNN poll that shows more than two-thirds of Americans say Trump will not accept the results if he loses. The question, will Trump accept results and concede if he loses? Sixty-nine percent say no, 30 percent say yes.

When that same question is asked of Vice President Kamala Harris, 73 percent of respondents say yes, 26 percent say no.

Tam, help us understand how Trump and his allies are laying the groundwork to contest his potential election loss.

Tamara Keith:

Just look at the way he talks. And this is very similar to language that he used in 2020, when, of course, we know he did contest the results of the election. He claimed victory before it was clear that he had lost. And then he continued to this very day deny that he lost the election.

He is talking about, oh, this could be rigged. He is — in particular, a lot of the misinformation that he was spreading about the hurricane recovery also had tinges of — as we saw in this previous report, had tinges of, well, and maybe those voters are being suppressed.

So the groundwork is there. And what I will say is, the groundwork was also there in 2016, but he won. So he didn't contest the results. In 2020, he lost and he did contest the results in a lot of ways. And he — they have more lawyers. They have a greater emphasis on lawyers.

When Trump took over the RNC, he was like, we need less on voter turnout and we need more lawyers.

(Crosstalk)

Jasmine Wright:

You didn't hear about the election being rigged as much because he was actively governing.

But, instead, because he contested the election in 2020, you have heard or Republicans have heard, people just in the apparatus of the U.S. have heard for four years that the election has been rigged, that Democrats are not playing fair, that the Democrats most recently are the enemy within.

And so he has really laid the groundwork that shows up in that poll; 70 percent of people that are supportive of Trump don't believe that the election, if he loses, will be fair, according to that CNN poll. I may have botched the words a bit, but, in genesis, that's what it says, right?

That is a huge amount of the American public that no longer feels really confident in our electoral system. So whoever wins next week or whenever we figure out the results will have to address those amount of people because that is a huge amount of people. And, of course, it is what led to, in some parts, that feeling January 6.

It's what led to the conversation around election and voting for the last four years.