-JOSH MENDELSOHN: Hi. Welcome.
-(MARGARET TALEV LAUGHS)
TALEV:
You weren't gonna shake my hand.
-MENDELSOHN: Oh yeah.
-TALEV: Nice to meet you.
MENDELSOHN:
Nice to meet you, too.
-Welcome to Hawkfish.
-Thanks for having me.
♪ (MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
A mirage, by definition,
is something that appears
to be there,
but then
doesn't really exist.
And you have a model scenario
called the red mirage.
What does that mean?
The reason we talk
about a red mirage
is in fact because we believe
that on Election Night,
we're going to see Donald Trump
in a stronger position
than the reality actually is.
We are sounding an alarm
and saying
that this is a very real
possibility.
That the data is going to show
on Election Night
an incredible victory
for Donald Trump.
That is likely to be
what we see.
When every legitimate vote
is tallied
and we get to that final day,
which will be Sunday
after Election Day,
it will, in fact, show
that what happened
on Election Night
was exactly that, a mirage.
It looked like Donald Trump
was in the lead,
and he fundamentally was not
when every ballot gets counted.
You have a result
on Election Night
where it appears
that Donald Trump has won,
but a result after ballots
are counted
that show that Joe Biden
has actually won.
That's right.
Let's get an obvious question
out of the way first.
Um, Hawkfish is a company
that's...
-started by Michael Bloomberg...
-MENDELSOHN: Yeah.
...that does work for the DNC,
that's doing work
for pro-Biden super PACS.
If I'm a Republican voter,
an independent voter,
a skeptical Democrat,
why should I listen to you?
MENDELSOHN: One of the things
that we believe
is that facts matter.
It's not about, um,
disinformation
or misinformation or using fear
as a tactic.
There are objective truths
in this world today.
And how do you
build your modeling?
How are you
basing your projections?
We essentially built
a simulator
where it's a sequence
of sliders,
and you just pull the sliders
to start seeing
what the scenarios
will show you.
What's it gonna look like
on Election Night,
what's it gonna look like
the day after
and the day after that
and day after that?
In most every year, Democrats
are more likely to vote by mail
than Republicans and that has
only increased this cycle.
We see in the data that twice
as many voters intend to cast
a ballot by mail than
have ever before.
They are disproportionately
Joe Biden supporters.
'Cause there are
absolutely some ballots
that were mailed in
that get counted sooner
because folks were proactive
and got it in
as soon as they possibly could
or dropped it off
or showed up
to a polling station
where early vote's allowed.
But it's gonna take a while.
It might be weeks.
Because absentee ballots
inevitably are harder
and slower to count,
we are gonna find ourselves
that when you have
those prototypical,
uh, cable news talking head
moments of saying,
"Well, you know, here's
what we're seeing
and this is what it looks like,"
it's gonna show Donald Trump
in the lead
in a lot of key places
on Election Night
when in-person reporting
has occurred.
-TALEV: What about California
or New York, a huge blue state?
-So California--
-California is blue,
New York is blue, right.
-Okay.
-Some of the-- like Virginia's
a really good example of...
-TALEV: Okay.
...a state that should be blue
that turns out red
-On Election Night? Okay.
-in this model--
On Election Night.
So a state like Pennsylvania
or Florida,
it's in play
by just a couple points,
and that's what tips it
in one direction or another.
If you were to, uh,
essentially average
battleground state polling,
Joe Biden appears to ahead
by about eight percent.
And so if you have a number
of ballot challenges
in a state like that,
as big as it is,
as large as the population is
as diverse as the population is,
it could make
a really big difference
over those next ten days.
And so when you start accounting
for that in your modeling,
you see that eight percent lead
kind of whittle down
a little-- a little bit more
and a little bit more.
We might have the results
saying something
on the evening
of November 3rd
that it will not say
the evening of November 10th.
TALEV:
What difference does it make
if, um, the results seem
to show something on one night,
and then several days later,
the results show something else?
Won't the facts just bear
themselves out?
I think that's the America we
all wish we probably lived in.
I think,
we've got the Trump team
who's quite intelligent
and sees what's coming,
and so we have the president
messaging through tweets,
through what he said
in his rallies and speeches
this notion of any change
from that result
on Election Night,
he is signaling they will say
means fraud
has entered the equation.
TALEV:
What impact could it have?
How could it actually change
the outcome?
MENDELSOHN:
You're then setting up
the American presidency
for even more failure because
even if you ultimately get
to the end result, which is that
Joe Biden would be President
of the United States,
now you've taken what
in politics
would be thought of as a bit
of a mandate to govern and go in
and really help clean things up,
you in fact find yourself
in this--
this deeply polarized situation
where the American electorate,
a-- a portion
of the American electorate,
a real portion
of the American electorate
feels that injustice was done.
What can people do to ensure
the most accurate results
possible in this election?
If you want your ballot to count
in 2020,
you need to request your ballot
early,
as soon as you possibly can
in a state
where that's the procedure.
You then need to mail it back
as fast as you possibly can.
But if you can early vote
at a polling station,
take your mask,
take your hand sanitizer,
go and vote at the ballot box
and get your sticker
because you want your vote
to be counted.
That is what's gonna change
from the red mirage
and sort of burn off the mirage
and get us to where
American will is clearly
demonstrated
in a legitimate
and unquestionable way.
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
♪ ("AXIOS" THEME PLAYS) ♪
