podcast
The Assignment with Audie Cornish
Every Monday on The Assignment, host Audie Cornish explores the animating forces of American politics. It’s not about the horserace, it’s about the larger cultural ideas driving the American electorate. Audie draws on the deep well of CNN reporters, editors, and contributors to examine topics like the nuances of building electoral coalitions, and the role the media plays in modern elections. Every Thursday, Audie pulls listeners out of their digital echo chambers to hear from the people whose lives intersect with the news cycle, as well as deep conversations with people driving the headlines. From astrology’s modern renaissance to the free speech wars on campus, no topic is off the table.
Georgia’s Swing-State Spotlight
The Assignment with Audie Cornish
Jul 1, 2024
During the 2020 election, there was perhaps no bigger upset than Joe Biden carrying Georgia. This was the first time a Democrat had won the reliably red state in three decades — in years past, Democrats didn’t even think to campaign in the state. So, how do Georgia voters feel about their newfound swing state status? And will this change the way they vote in November? On this second installment of our series “All Over the Map,” John King and his team visit with two small-business owners aware of their electoral power.
Episode Transcript
John King
00:00:00
'Presidential politics is all about the battlegrounds. It's been that way for a long time, which I know firsthand because I've been doing this for a long time. I'm John King, CNN's Chief National Correspondent, and this is All Over the Map, a new series we're bringing you in the run-up to the 2024 election, where we're talking with voters in those key battleground states, the key battleground counties, the people who in November are going to decide this race. Last week, we brought you to Pennsylvania, where Republicans in the Philadelphia suburbs are wrestling with a choice they wish they didn't have to make. Today, we're taking you to a state that just a few election cycles ago, nobody would have guessed would be on our list of the 6 or 7 critical, decisive swing states. It's 7:00 am in a small town in North Georgia, and we're walking up a gravel drive in beautiful hill country. It's early, way too early for a drink, but my team and I are making a stop at a local winery.
Matt Vrahiotes
00:01:08
Our slogan is "Country wine for the country kind" because it's. It's who we are. Our winery doesn't have a French or European theme. It's very country.
John King
00:01:16
Matthew Vrahiotes is the owner of Sweet Acre Farms Winery in Alto, Georgia. It's a tiny town in the Blue Ridge foothills. It's rural and reliably red, ruby red. Trump won 71% of the county vote in 2020. Matt fits right in here. He's a Christian, a conservative, a registered Republican. On paper, he looks like a sure thing. Vote for former President Donald Trump. But Matt isn't ready to commit.
Matt Vrahiotes
00:01:43
I'm not a Trumper. I'm not somebody who's got the flag in the back of my truck and running around.
John King
00:01:48
The fact that a voter like Matt isn't totally sold on voting for the presumptive Republican nominee, well, that is more than telling. In a competitive state like Georgia, it's been called a purple state, yes, a battleground state. In 2020, Joe Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Georgia in close to three decades. But by very slim margins.
Wolf Blitzer
00:02:09
Biden has done what no other Democratic candidate has been able to do in some 28 years. Turn Georgia blue.
John King
00:02:16
In 2024, well, it is beyond a safe bet to say every vote in Georgia will count again. And Matt, not the only Georgia voter I spoke to who still isn't ready to tell us what their ballot will look like come November.
Christine Nguyen
00:02:30
I did not vote in the 2020 election, actually. I felt like both of the candidates were very difficult for me to align my values with.
John King
00:02:38
But you may get the same two candidates again.
Christine Nguyen
00:02:40
Yeah.
John King
00:02:41
So what are you going to do this time?
Christine Nguyen
00:02:43
I don't know which candidate I'll go for at this point.
John King
00:02:46
That's Christine Nguyen. She's also a small business owner, but her shop's in the metro Atlanta suburbs, about an hour and a half south of where Matt lives. Politically, it is a world away. We're going to sit down with both Matt and Christine, two voters with very different politics, who call different parts of Georgia home, to hear what they have to say about how they're going to make their choice, because it's these voters, the ones who are struggling with this choice in these flippable states, places like Georgia, who will decide who wins the White House. I'm John King, and this is All Over the Map. A new series from CNN.
John King
00:03:28
Now, most of the focus in Georgia, in this whole election, really, is on the suburbs, because that's where most of the swing voters are. And we'll get there on this trip. But these little towns, these deep red rural parts of Georgia, well, they matter too. They matter because the electoral math is not as simple for Republicans as many people tend to think. And that's why we're starting in Alto at Matt's Winery. It really is a beautiful place. Steep rolling hills. Woods off in the distance. And it's a working farm.
John King
00:03:58
A donkey. We like donkeys. That's my body double. That's my stunt double.
Matt Vrahiotes
00:04:03
We visited in April, when spring was just gearing up. And you can hear in Matt's voice just how much he loves this land.
Matt Vrahiotes
00:04:12
We're in kind of a bouquet of pine trees and hardwoods. And we have pastures just right behind that. Flowers are just now coming out. I need to mow.
John King
00:04:24
We head inside and Matt pours us a glass. Blueberry wine, yes, fruit wine is what they make here.
Matt Vrahiotes
00:04:33
We're the first winery in Hall County since prohibition, and there were no wineries before us to help pave the way. So we were the ones that had to do it. It's been a lot of fun. Mean, it's been.
John King
00:04:42
A lot of fun, but a lot of work.
Matt Vrahiotes
00:04:42
Yeah, absolutely.
John King
00:04:44
And so tell me a bit about your politics. Not so much about the whos, but the whys and the whats. What makes you think, when you have to vote, whether it's for, you know, local office or the President of the United States, how's your brain work there?
Matt Vrahiotes
00:04:56
You know, I try to vote with my Bible. I really do. I try to think, well, what is the moral thing to do? What is the right thing to do? It's been a little harder over the past couple of years to pick a candidate that I think fits what I believe in and what I like.
John King
00:05:10
Why?
Matt Vrahiotes
00:05:11
Because I don't think, from a Christian standpoint, that anybody's, you know, living the Christian way, you know, and doing the things that I would like to do. I don't know any of these candidates, personally, so it would be really hard for me to say, well, they're they're leaning one way or the other, but I think that right now it's been it's been hard to differentiate somebody's background and what their goals are.
John King
00:05:34
And so when you look at your choice in the last election and your choice likely in this election is Biden versus Trump, when you look at them from a spiritual perspective, religious perspective, Bible perspective, who do you view as the more religious man?
Matt Vrahiotes
00:05:48
I don't know if I would say either one of them are, to be completely honest with you.
John King
00:05:52
Now, Biden goes to church almost every Sunday.
Matt Vrahiotes
00:05:54
Yeah.
John King
00:05:55
Trump does not.
Matt Vrahiotes
00:05:56
Yeah.
John King
00:05:56
But he talks a lot about faith and things like that. How do you how do you decide? How do you know?
Matt Vrahiotes
00:06:01
'I don't know if you can. That's one of the things that maybe one of the reasons why it's so hard to to pick a candidate or be definitive on one or the other. You know, I try to toe the middle line like a lot of other people. I am, I would say just right-of-center when it comes to this sort of thing. So, I think naturally everybody would say, well, you got to vote for Trump. I'm not a Trumper. I'm not somebody who's got the flag in the back of my truck and running around and that sort of thing. I, honestly, I wish there was another candidate that would have come through the primaries instead of it being just, you know, Donald Trump. You know, I like to call myself a reasonable Republican. So, yeah, I mean, I sit here and say, well, you know, Biden goes to church on Sundays, but there's a saying that someone told me one, a long time ago is just because you go to McDonald's doesn't make you a french fry. Just because you go to church doesn't mean that you're necessarily living the Christian way.
John King
00:06:55
Well, number one, did you vote in the primary, then? You say you wish there were another Republican. Was there somebody you said, I would rather vote for him or her than Donald Trump?
Matt Vrahiotes
00:07:02
Yes, I did vote in the primary. I voted for DeSantis. Chris Christie would, I think, would have been another good option at the time. If I'm voting tomorrow, who is it going to be? I, really, at this point, I really don't know. I mean, Kennedy is somebody who also could kind of take into consideration, I don't know, I'm going to have to do some more research, I think, in order to figure that out.
John King
00:07:22
But you're open to a third party.
Matt Vrahiotes
00:07:24
I'm always open to a third party. I think as an American, we all should consider every candidate that's out there, absolutely.
John King
00:07:31
Does it factor into your mind, or is this I always say the silly way Washington people think, strategic voting, in the sense that you live in a state that Joe Biden won in 2020 by 11,000 votes, right? Shocked the world.
Matt Vrahiotes
00:07:43
Yes it did.
Matt Vrahiotes
00:07:44
'That Georgia suddenly is purple. You know Georgia's in play. If you vote third party candidate in a rural county like this, these are the places that are absolutely critical to Donald Trump. He runs up the numbers in rural counties and that helps him offset, you know, Atlanta and the Democratic suburbs right around Atlanta. So, if, on principle, you think I can't vote for either, then I'm going to go to third party, will you even think, well, then I might help - that might help Joe Biden. Does that factor into how you think?
Matt Vrahiotes
00:08:09
I mean, yeah, absolutely, it does. But you also have to vote the way you feel it needs to be voted for. I mean, I would not hold that into consideration. I'm not a very political person, in general. I believe that it's reasonable to want a candidate who's going to keep my business open, who's going to keep costs of materials down. That's going to keep people's, you know, pockets full enough to want to come out and drink wine. And I think if people think that that person is a third party person, that they should absolutely vote for that person.
John King
00:08:40
When you said you're not a Trumper, you don't have the flag in the back of your truck. Why?
Matt Vrahiotes
00:08:44
Because, well, one, I'm a business owner and I have a lot of people who come from all over the state, all over, from all walks of life. Atlanta is not far from here. It's, you know, it's an hour away. And if I was to sit here and say, well, you know, we don't like this candidate or I love this candidate, I could really, really offend somebody. And I have to keep my business open. I literally turn bottles of wine into shoes for my kids and registration for soccer. And if I sit here and ostracize 50% of my community or 50% of my customers, all based on a divisive decision, it could hurt me. It could hurt my business tremendously because as of late, you know, people are dividing themselves. You're for this guy or you're for this guy. And it's hard.
John King
00:09:30
'Well, in the context of Georgia wine, when you look at. Biden - Trump and you mentioned Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., are you at a point yet where you can say which of those three you think it would be best for your business, or were you still in the research process?
Matt Vrahiotes
00:09:48
We've had two of them as president. And has either one of their presidencies affected me one way or the other? I don't know. The thing is, is we have we literally have experienced both of them. And Trump's presidency was crazy. And then Biden became president and everything's stayed crazy from there. I don't know if I could sit here and say, well, one's been better with the other. I've been open for eight years. I'll say this right now, numbers are down and this isn't speculation. You know, and this isn't because of, you know, the current president's reasoning, but numbers are down.
John King
00:10:30
People are spending less money.
Matt Vrahiotes
00:10:31
Yeah, they're not coming out as much. 2023 I was down a fairly good percentage. In 2024, I'm down below 2023 right now. I don't know what the answer is. And when I go talk to my peers across the wine industry, they're reporting the exact same thing. You know, it's just, it's tougher now to run my business than it's ever been. I'm not discouraged. I'm not going to close my door. But, I just hope that whoever, whoever becomes our president knows that it's affecting everybody from the top, all the way down to the bottom.
John King
00:11:04
Can you say now sort of how you rank things? Is it your livelihood and the business? So, it's more taxes and spending and economic policy? Do issues like abortion come into play? Is it more of a general your question about who's the leader and who are they as a person?
Matt Vrahiotes
00:11:19
'I mean, all that comes into play. My biggest thing is, is how can I keep my family going? How can we keep our lifestyle, all the dreams and the goals that we've set? My wife and I have been married for 15 years, and we have been setting a goal for 15 years and trying to achieve it. And what is going to take that away or what it's going to help it? Big, heavy subjects like abortion, the wall, whatever that is, I mean, I, I don't know, I've been - I've voted in every single election since I turned 18 and those sort of issues have been relevant to them since then, but nothing's really been set one way or the other. I mean, it's such a hot topic subject. If you want to talk about, like, what is valuable to me in politics is, you know, can we get the local government going? Can we get state government going? Can we get the federal government to help everybody else out? Yeah, I mean, from a very selfish standpoint, who's going to help me out here? And that's what I need.
John King
00:12:13
You say you've voted in every election since you were 18. Have you ever voted Democrat for president?
Matt Vrahiotes
00:12:17
I have, yes.
John King
00:12:18
Who?
Matt Vrahiotes
00:12:21
Oh gosh. It was probably my very first election, that was Kerry.
John King
00:12:27
2004.
Matt Vrahiotes
00:12:27
Yeah.
John King
00:12:27
So you voted for John Kerry?
Matt Vrahiotes
00:12:28
Yeah.
00:12:28
'And then, so, Obama - McCain?
Matt Vrahiotes
00:12:30
I voted McCain.
John King
00:12:32
'Obama - Romney?
Matt Vrahiotes
00:12:33
I voted Romney. Yeah.
John King
00:12:36
'Clinton - Trump?
Matt Vrahiotes
00:12:38
I, I voted for Trump the first time. Yeah.
John King
00:12:41
'And what did you do last time? Biden - Trump?
Matt Vrahiotes
00:12:45
Now we're getting a little too close. I think that, again, one of the biggest fears that I have is that if I sit here and take a stance with who I'm going to be voting for, that is going to affect my business.
John King
00:12:58
Even who you voted for four years ago?
Matt Vrahiotes
00:12:59
Absolutely.
John King
00:12:59
You worry about that?
Matt Vrahiotes
00:13:01
'Absolutely. Yeah. If it wasn't, if this wasn't so - if it didn't literally separate people. I mean, people stop becoming friends because of because of politics. I have a twin brother. And when I had mentioned that, hey, I'm going to be, you know, on CNN, he said, well, you know, if I realized that there was a business owner that didn't vote the way he wanted it to be done, that he would stop showing up to that business. This is my twin brother, and he was literally just chewing me out over the phone about this. And I was like, wow. I mean, this is my brother, who I'm close to more than everybody except for my wife. And he's sitting here, like, if you don't do this, I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to support this, or there's people who he won't support because of it. And I think it's really hard. I do know this, that I am more conservative. I'm a Republican. But if I relied on only Republican businesses to keep my lights on, I probably wouldn't keep my lights on.
John King
00:13:57
And is that different, you've been in business here, eight years?
Matt Vrahiotes
00:13:59
Correct.
John King
00:13:59
Is that more so now than it was at the beginning? Are we becoming more polarized, more intolerant of people who disagree with us politically?
Matt Vrahiotes
00:14:08
I think so. I think it's gotten harder for everybody across the board. And I don't know if it's because of social media or it's become, you know, because of Covid and we all, we're stuck in our boxes. And, you know, we all got, just, more aggravated. I don't know, but I do think that it is harder now for somebody to be freely one way or the other than it was yeah, four years ago, eight years ago. Absolutely.
John King
00:14:36
That's backwards. But that's one of the reasons we're here.
Matt Vrahiotes
00:14:38
Well, why's that?
John King
00:14:39
Why can't we talk about things and debate things? It doesn't make you a bad person if we disagree about something.
Matt Vrahiotes
00:14:42
'Well, I agree, I completely agree. And I think if it was just you and me sitting here drinking a glass of wine and you wanted to talk about politics, I can give you any and every single policy or idea that I've got. But to talk about it on the national stage, it's really, really tough. It's really, really hard. And when things haven't been going your way for the past couple of years and you see a downturn in your business and you have a seven, a five, and a two-year-old, and a wife that you love terribly, you really have to be careful about the things that you do and the things that you say. It's part of being a small business owner. And when you're in a purple state and you have 50% one way and and 50% the other, you absolutely have to make sure that you say the right things. This is the world we live in right now, unfortunately.
John King
00:15:30
Well, we'll see how it goes between now and November.
Matt Vrahiotes
00:15:31
Absolutely.
John King
00:15:32
Thank you.
Matt Vrahiotes
00:15:33
Yeah, no problem. Thank you.
John King
00:15:36
Matt's ambivalence, you hear it, right? His sense that he doesn't have a real choice. His reluctance to put on the record how he's going to vote. Well, we heard that all over Georgia. And from people who might otherwise seem to have very little in common. We'll be right back.
John King
00:15:59
'Welcome back and welcome to Decatur, Georgia. We're about a half an hour now from downtown Atlanta, depending on the traffic. Coming back to the suburb since the last election, well, it looks different. I mean, you can come back after 2 or 3 months and it looks different. New stores, new restaurants, some big chains, but also a local music shop, a mom-and-pop jeweler. It's all catering to the growing metro Atlanta population. We're drinking again, but this time a new experience for me, matcha bubble tea.
Christine Nguyen
00:16:29
Do you like it?
John King
00:16:30
Oh, it's great.
Christine Nguyen
00:16:31
Okay.
John King
00:16:31
And you say it's loaded with caffeine?
Christine Nguyen
00:16:34
Yeah.
John King
00:16:34
Yes!
John King
00:16:36
We're at Rebel Teahouse, a boba shop right on Decatur's main drag. It's run by Christine Nguyen. She grew up not far from here in the outer Atlanta suburbs. And she has watched this area change in real time, diversifying and leaning more and more to the left. Christine opened this cafe at the tail end of the Covid pandemic after years of working as an ICU nurse. Those were hard years, she says, taking care of sick and dying patients. She says that sharing tea became a refuge.
Christine Nguyen
00:17:07
'We were, like, right there, front line. And there were all these battles about whether or not we should be vaccinated. It weighed heavy on your minds at night when you slept, what people thought about everything. And seeing all the death didn't help either. Whenever I was needing support, I would sit out in the parking lot with my family and we would drink boba together. So I wanted to sort of recreate that space for the community, be able to bring some happiness and see, like, the other side of things, the not-so-sad side of things.
John King
00:17:36
What about your politics? How would you describe yourself?
Christine Nguyen
00:17:39
'I would definitely describe myself as somebody who is a little more on the liberal side. I stand for a lot of LGBTQ rights. I'm not pro-life, and a lot of the things that I believe in, I didn't grow up being surrounded by that, so it was very strange. But I think that we're all human, and we all deserve to have our own rights, our own voices and everything that we believe in. A lot of the people who I'm around, they aren't quite interested in a lot of politics. There are a few who are very strong and who are very educated and who are like in that realm. But I would say, like all of the other small businesses that are in this area, they're involved with a lot of local politics. But when it comes to like the presidential election, not a lot of the times do they speak their opinions or, you know, I don't even know if we all vote.
John King
00:18:30
Do you vote?
Christine Nguyen
00:18:31
I did not vote in the 2020 election, actually. So, yeah.
John King
00:18:35
Why?
Christine Nguyen
00:18:36
Because I felt like both of the candidates were very difficult for me to align my values with.
John King
00:18:42
But you may get the same two candidates again.
Christine Nguyen
00:18:43
Yeah.
John King
00:18:44
So what are you going to do this time?
Christine Nguyen
00:18:46
Yeah. I definitely will do my research this time. During the 2020 election, I was actually away from my home state, which is, you know, I could still mail in my ballot and everything, but I think at the time, like, still, there wasn't enough for me to base my vote off of. And now that actions have been made, it'll be a lot easier for me to look at what they stand for.
John King
00:19:08
'Right. That was right in the middle of the pandemic, and a big issue in the campaign was the then-president, Trump's response to the pandemic, including things like, you know, well, maybe we should ingest bleach or things like that. As a medical professional.
Christine Nguyen
00:19:23
Yeah.
John King
00:19:23
When you watched him as your president, what was your reaction?
Christine Nguyen
00:19:28
I definitely didn't want Trump to win again, so that was something that I didn't want to happen, but I didn't feel like I supported the other side so strongly. It's pretty crazy to hear those kinds of things from, you know, your president. Because you would think that they're supposed to be an example, a role model for kids to look up to. So it's a little hard to imagine that a president would say things like that without the background knowledge, so.
John King
00:19:56
But Biden didn't do it for you.
Christine Nguyen
00:19:58
Yeah.
John King
00:19:58
Why?
Christine Nguyen
00:19:59
Yeah. I think because he was out of touch with our generation. I think that a lot of us would say that if we did vote and we voted for Biden, it wasn't because we thought he would be the best fit for the president. We just felt like he would be a better fit. And I think that rang true for me. And that's a huge reason why I didn't vote, because even though one is better than the other is a truly the right choice? You have to see it from the perspective of our generation where it's like, okay, are they on the same page? Do they understand the same struggles that we're going through?
John King
00:20:32
And has President Biden done anything, Vice President Harris done anything to get you to think, okay, you know, there's a generational problem here.
Christine Nguyen
00:20:40
Yeah.
John King
00:20:40
From your perspective.
Christine Nguyen
00:20:41
Yeah.
John King
00:20:41
But at least they get my issues. Are you still like, eh.
Christine Nguyen
00:20:44
One of the things that did influence my view on the presidential election a little bit is the view on abortion rights. You know, I'm very much for, like, a woman, it's her body, let her do what she wants to do with her body, what she needs to do with her body. So I think the battle that's going on right now with abortion, I think that's something that speaks to me. Sustainability is a huge thing that speaks to me as a boba shop owner. You know, it's really important that we can do whatever we can do to decrease climate change. With recent action, it's actually made it a little bit harder for me to decide, because I know that there's conflict going on in the Gaza Strip, and that is important in the presidential election, too. So I think there's a lot more research that I have to do before I make my decision.
John King
00:21:31
So on some issues, it's not the person, you look at him and you think, he doesn't get me? Is that fair?
Christine Nguyen
00:21:35
Yeah.
00:21:36
But on on many issues you would be inclined, okay, maybe hold your nose, maybe not be thrilled about it, but vote for Biden. And yet you see a few other things, including Gaza, that make you say, I need, I want to think about this.
Christine Nguyen
00:21:47
That's exactly it. But I don't know which candidate I'll vote for at this point. But we do plan on voting.
John King
00:21:54
Do you think that when you get to, you know, the end of October and you have to vote, will it matter at all to you that Georgia might decide the election, and so, I'm going to do this, even though it kind of pains me because I don't want Trump or I don't want Biden, whatever it is, in the end?
Christine Nguyen
00:22:10
It's still comes down to, like, how I feel about the candidate, because now that I'm a small business owner, I realize how much leadership affects small businesses. We just got broken into yesterday morning at 5 a.m. they broke through our glass door. But right down the street, another business was broken in that same day. So the amount of security that we have here is top of mind for me right now.
John King
00:22:35
So if you saw, over the course of the next six, seven months, Donald Trump saying I'm stronger when it comes to law and order, and if you run a business, I'll cut your taxes or make the regulations easier for you. Would you be open to voting for him?
Christine Nguyen
00:22:48
I wouldn't say so, because there's still the human side of it, too, that you still have to consider. It would be easier if there was a candidate that just was in my shoes at some point, or had somebody who understands that side of things.
John King
00:23:03
Christine says she still doesn't know who she's going to vote for come November. But she does know one thing she will not sit this one out. She's actually now hosting quarterly events at Rebel Teahouse, encouraging young adults to register to vote.
Christine Nguyen
00:23:18
I think it's important because all of the younger generation needs to know that their has a voice, has a say. A lot of the times they think that, you know, it's not going to get anywhere, but if you actually vote, then you can see the difference. Like, you know, Georgia was red and it turned blue. You know, that's crazy. Like, I never, like, when I was younger when I was like, you know, 15 years old, I never thought that that could happen.
John King
00:23:48
I want to bring into the conversation my sidekick on the road, my chief of staff, our senior producer for All Over the Map, Allie Malloy. Ali has a very tough job just to keep me on time and on the tracks, and sometimes that can be interesting. Allie has a lead foot, I should tell you that part. Allie, welcome.
Allie Malloy
00:24:06
Thank you. John. And it's a good thing, you know, we haven't actually gotten a speeding ticket yet. It's been a year. I'm kind of surprised, but we definitely will on our next trip now. Did you ever think in 2024 you would be covering Georgia as a purple state?
John King
00:24:18
So, one of the things I love about this job, literally my Back to the Future dream job. This, and I'm retracing so many steps in my history, and my first visit to Georgia in national politics was the Democratic convention in 1988. And I was the AP, the Associated Press pool reporter, standing up on the platform when Dukakis gave his acceptance speech. And one of his top aides turned to me after that and he said, we just won an election. They were so cocky and so confident coming out of their Atlanta convention, because they were up 17 points in the national polls, and then they lost. Not only did they lose, they lost 40 states, including Georgia, by the way. That wasn't close. So to go back to these places, the map has changed so much. We said at the top of the podcast that, you know, it's the battleground states, but the battleground states today are different than the battleground states in 1988 and in 1992 and in 1996 and in 2000. That's what makes this so fascinating. Georgia and Arizona are the two sort of new, huh, that's interesting. They were the wows of 2020, and now we take them into 2024 to see in the conversations with all of our voters, including Christine and Matt, how their eyes kind of light up when you have that part of the conversation. It was literally a revelation to them. Oh, wow. You see that it has changed how their wheels are turning in their head, not only about their own personal thinking, but to the point of these small business people, but how they talk about it.
Allie Malloy
00:25:35
So John, Matt and Christine, who we just heard from, they have a ton in common. They're millennials. They're business owners. They work in hospitality. They both told us how much serving others means to them. But politically, they're super different, even though they're both swing voters and they both don't really have their minds made up yet. But what is so interesting about them to you?
John King
00:25:53
That's it right there. That's what makes them fascinating. They are so much the same, and yet they are so very different. They're young, 29 and 40, millennial generation. They're incredibly polite to your point about they want to serve their neighbors. They want to make people happy. They're willing to talk about anything except they get reluctant when you ask them who they voted for last time. Christine sat out, she told us that. Matt wouldn't tell us last time. Presidential politics, national politics is something that they just feel ugh about. It's toxic, it's caustic, it strains relationships. But they'll talk about anything else. So different but so similar. An hour a half away in one of the most competitive places in America. They're just, to me, fascinating.
Allie Malloy
00:26:36
'One thing that was interesting, they, both of them, spoke about their local politics, and that's something that they talk about with their customers passionately and - but national? Absolutely not. Don't bring it up. Don't offend. Why do you think that is?
John King
00:26:49
Two reasons. One, they're both incredibly polite people. They believe in getting along. They believe in conversations, whether they had these businesses or not. That's who they are by DNA. They're just nice people. Friendly, conversational, open minded. But they're also business people. And we've heard this elsewhere in our travels. And again, this is part of the new revelation for them in Georgia. It's like, oh wow, this is a 50/50 state. So if I say Trump or I say Biden, I may drive somebody away. I may hurt my business. Christine's just getting started. I may hurt my business if I get into national political conversations here. So let's not do that. Matt, again, on paper: Christian, conservative, Republican. I vote my Bible, but let's not talk about that when people are sitting in the stools sampling my fruit wine because many of them drove the 60, 80, 90 minutes from the Atlanta suburbs and they're Democrats. So let's not offend them because I want to feed my kids. I want this business to grow. So they have become smart businesspeople, strategic businesspeople. Customer comes first. Let's not offend them.
Allie Malloy
00:27:55
I would wager that both of them probably feel that way outside of work as well, to not offend their neighbors, their friends with their ideas.
John King
00:28:02
'That, well, Christine talked about that in the local businesses. You know, you're on this main street. She was broken into not long before we visited. And she says, you know, the crime's an issue, shoplifting's an issue. And so, she goes across the street, maybe doesn't know that business person all that well, but that's a neighbor when it comes to the business. So they talk about lighting, they talk about policing. How do we band together for our - for the common good of the street and the businesses on the street? But she says, just - you don't you don't talk Biden. You don't talk Washington because that just takes you on a detour that gets nasty and toxic and divides people. So focus on the things that matter next hour, next day, next week, local, and stay away from that stuff because it can become a cesspool so fast.
John King
00:28:42
The debate was here in Georgia, so of course it was critical for us to get back in touch with all of our Georgia voters, including Christine and Matt, and they agree on this: it did not help them. They're both anguished about their choice, and the debate did not help them. Christine's first text was: it was wild. And then I pressed a little bit. We know she leans left, but she just has a hard time voting for Biden because she feels such a disconnect. And her response was, I was genuinely shocked with an emoji that suggests stress. A smile with a little teardrop there. So it didn't help her make her choice. We know where she is on the issues, but the debate, to Christine, like a lot of Democrats you can tell, was a disappointment. She's waiting for a reason to like Biden, and he didn't give it to her. Matt, again, incredibly polite. He said, though, you know, that Joe fumbled, looked spacey and aged. But then here's what he says about Donald Trump: same old Donald, talked about himself, didn't move on well, Donald's ego convolutes facts and getting to the points. He did say he seems to be more cognitive and mentally sharper than Biden. But then he went on to say, why not allow Kennedy on the stage? Remember, Matt's a Christian conservative in a rural county Trump needs to win big to win Georgia. And Matt's on the fence because he looks at Trump and he doesn't see a conservative. He doesn't see a Republican. He doesn't see a Christian. So he's looking around and he says, why wasn't Kennedy on that stage? So, two people looking at the first debate who clearly were not moved from their central position, they're very different voters, and they still don't like their choices.
John King
00:30:31
This podcast version of All Over the Map is a CNN audio production. This episode was produced by Dan Bloom, Grace Walker, and Allie Malloy. Our editor is Graelyn Brashear and our senior producer is Haley Thomas. Dan Dzula is our technical director and Steve Lickteig is executive producer of CNN audio. Support from Nicky Roberson, Jacqueline Kalil, Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, Jon Dianora, Leni Steinhardt, James Andrest, Nichole Pesaru, and Lisa Namerow. Special thanks to Wendy Brundige. I'm John King. Thanks for listening.