UNLV PodcastDebate Episode

Ben:

[00:00:30]

The stage is set and thousands of news correspondents from around the world are in place. As the candidates perform their final preparations, America is watching. From UNLV, I'm Ben [inaudible 00:00:13]. It is no secret that this is an important day for our students, faculty and Southern Nevada residents, although the word "important" doesn’t seem to capture the intensity that we are all feeling.

[00:01:00]

The events of today represent the culmination of a full year of anticipation, hard work, dedication and focus from hundreds of faculty members, student volunteers, and countless volunteers working hand-in-hand to make everything perfect. This is our chance to showcase Las Vegas as what we already know it to be, the ultimate destination for events and meetings with a growing university on its way to reaching top-tier status.

[00:01:30]

Over eighty million viewers are expected to tune in to the final presidential debate where all eyes will be focused on Las Vegas. It is our time to shine. The strong partnership between the Las Vegas Convention and Visitor's Authority and UNLV is what brought such an amazing opportunity to our city. In our first segment, student journalist, Genevieve Grippo, met with Valerie Segarra from the LVCVA to discuss community partnerships and the story of how this all began.

Genevieve: I’m sitting here with Valerie Segarra here at the UNLV campus. Thank you so much for joining us today, Valerie. I just want to start by asking you what your capacity is at LVCVA and how you came to be involved with the upcoming debate.

[00:02:00]Valerie: Great, thank you very much. Thanks for having me here today. It's all about

partnership and this is a perfect example of partnership with us in the University. My name is Valerie Segarra. I'm senior advisor of industry relations for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitor's Authority. I've been there for 14 years and I’ve been a side lead project manager for our organization to partner with UNLV on the debate.

Genevieve: Wow, so how did LVCVA come to be involved with the debate in the first place?

[00:02:30]Valerie: Well, the opportunity arose in February 2015. We had got a phone call from Don

Snyder, the former UNLV president at the time and he had been speaking with Frank [inaudible 00:02:35] who is a co-chair on the commission of presidential debates and talked about the possibility of putting our name into the hat, if you will, to bid on a potential presidential debate. At the time, Don Snyder mulled it over with his staff and then made a phone call to [Rossi Rowan Cotter 00:02:52], our president and CEO of LVCVA and said, "Hey, how do you feel about trying to bring a presidential debate to Las Vegas?"

[00:03:00]

[00:03:30]

Well, the idea of being able to host a presidential debate has been so exciting to us because we really want to be able to enforce our message and our platform that we are a serious place to do business, and there’s a reason why we're the number one [connected 00:03:13] city for 22 years in a row. Rossi came to his team and said, "Okay, we're going to bid on a presidential debate." It’s got to be at a university because that's a stipulation of where they have to host them and we wrote together the bid with UNLV and here we are almost over two years later hosting the final presidential debate.

Genevieve: Wow, it's incredible. It really is, so the decision to host the debate at UNLV or for maybe UNLV to accept, do you think it was something that was an easy decision or did it take a lot of looking into for both LVCVA and University?

Valerie:

[00:04:00]

Well, I think there’s so many different levels of planning that goes into it, one from the security aspect from the over 5000 media that are projected to be here from around the world to cover it and being prepared for them and for the needs. It’s all about being flexible and being about to make last-minute changes, and it a definitely takes thick skin because you're hosting, like I said, a lot of media and a lot of people and all eyes in the political arena will be on Las Vegas. This is the last time we're going to see both candidates on stage together before the general election on November 8.

Genevieve:[00:04:30]

So you were telling us that you’ve been with LVCVA for 14 years. How has your journey led you to where you are now as the project manager for this?

Valerie:

[00:05:00]

Well, I think that my, well my background is actually meeting and event planning, so personally that’s my ... My former life, I was a meeting planner at Microsoft in my early days after college and being able to plan programs for the all different types of people, but I also think that you just have to be able to say, "Yes," and do the best you can to your ability. I don't think, "No," the answer anybody ever wants to hear so you try to find ways of working around it and that’s what our industry's about. The resort and hospitality industry is making our guests happy and comfortable and finding something that’ll work for everybody.

Genevieve: Las Vegas does it better than anybody else, right?

Valerie: Absolutely.

Genevieve: How exciting. You mentioned 2 ½ years ago, that is incredible that this has been in the works for that long. I can only imagine the hard hours that everybody has put in. Now that we're just six days out from the debate, how are you feeling?

[00:05:30]Valerie: Nervous, excited, in awe because you look at the planning that takes place and

we only found out in August of 2015 that we were going to be awarded potentially one of the debates and it was in September of last year, so less than a year ago that we found out that we were going to be a host of a presidential

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debate. Then we found out that we were going to be one of the, we were going to be lucky enough to be selected to be the final presidential debate location.

Genevieve:[00:06:00]

Yeah, that's an incredible opportunity for everyone here in the city. How do you think that this will impact UNLV, Las Vegas as a whole and also the LVCVA?

Valerie:

[00:06:30]

Well, I think it's twofold. One, it not only enhances our entire community presence and it’s all about community partnerships and relationships and the University is getting to be center stage as well as a destination. Las Vegas, most people know Las Vegas or they're looking to come to Las Vegas for a great convention or a great vacation to see that we really are large enough and really good at what we’re doing and that we can actually host something such as a presidential debate.

Genevieve: Absolutely.

Valerie: It’s really going to have all eyes on Las Vegas and we're really excited to be able to see, have the world see who we are and what we do and why we're so good at doing it.

Genevieve: Yes, definitely. Las Vegas does seem to be the perfect setting for the final debate. Can I just ask you a little bit how this has affected you personally in your capacity as the leader, basically, for LVCVA and this partnership?

[00:07:00]Valerie:

[00:07:30]

Well, we all have normal day jobs and I think that’s what you have to really take into consideration because both UNLV and LVCVA and the Convention Center, we are public organizations and it’s really taken a village. We’ve had to pull out a lot of support from community partners from every division from our production and event planners to the faculty here and to faculty, or not faculty, employees on our side and really pull in together. I feel like we’ve become a tradeshow producer and we're producing CES to that level.

Genevieve: Wow, okay. Speaking about the levels of CES and some of the other trade shows and convention you’ve produced, where does the debate rank in this? All eyes, like you said, will be on Las Vegas, LVCVA, on UNLV. How does this compare to the other things that you've been a part of producing?

Valerie:

[00:08:00]

Well, I have to CES, we don’t produce CES. We host CES, but I feel like that’s what we’ve become is that this is as big as producing a trade show. It is, when you think about it, you’re going to be on prime time television for 90 minutes uninterrupted without commercials and you're going to be lucky enough to have over eighty million TV viewers. That's more than a Super Bowl and all eyes are going to be center stage at Thomas and Mack Center so it really requires lots of heavy lifting. If you look around the University, we start moving in and doing preparations on September 30 and stuff that you don’t see.

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Genevieve: Of course.

Valerie:[00:08:30]

Now you can see, seeing the media moving in and the media stand-ups being built outside and the infrastructure that has been put in place for this. It again, it’s taken a lot of teamwork and it’s an excitement because it's the first time for the University and for Las Vegas to host something of this magnitude on this level.

Genevieve: Okay, yes. We're definitely going to be in the spotlight, all of us. Take us down to Thomas and Mack, what what’s going on, the buzz around there right now?

Valerie:

[00:09:00]

The Commission on presidential debates, their staff started arriving a few days ago. Before that we started preparations, like I said, on September 30. What’s happening now is the whole front drive at Thomas and Mack, we have our fence line going up. We have our outdoor media stand-ups being built. It's a triple-decker stand-up and it’s new for the debates to see something of this magnitude. Some of the other universities, they have been using double-decker outdoor stand-ups, but because the way the University landscape is, we didn't want it to affect anything that was already in place so we built this beautiful triple-decker stand-up which can have a perfect view of not only Thomas and Mack, but the strip in the background.

[00:09:30]Genevieve: Oh, how nice. Yes, I cannot wait to see where this partnership goes in the future.

Hopefully the debate is one of many wonderful things that UNLV and LVCVA host together. What do you see possibly coming in the future?

Valerie:

[00:10:00]

Oh, I see great partnerships and we've been working with the University for a long time. We're only, our buildings are only a mile and a half apart from each other and it's about committee partnership. Las Vegas is really a small town and people think, "Oh my gosh, you guys host forty-two million visitors a year. It's so big. Do you live in hotel casino or do you work on the strip?" Really, it is a small town and it's about community efforts and it’s about everybody knows each other-

Genevieve: That's true.

Valerie: Everybody wants the best for our destination and I think that’s what makes it a really true partnership.

Genevieve: How will the debate being hosted here in Las Vegas affect visitorship for the city?

Valerie: Well, like I said, we’ve exceeded forty-two million visitors this year, this last year and our goal is forty-five million visitors by 2020, so it’s a lofty goal and I think we probably can achieve.

[00:10:30]

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Genevieve: Oh, definitely. I think so.

Valerie:

[00:11:00]

The way the economy's going and of course we just on had an exciting announcement. We are going to be having our first ever nonstop flight direct from Beijing, China with Hainan Airlines and that starts on December 2. China is the biggest up-and-coming market for us and so that’ll be more visitation and more conventioneers to Las Vegas, so really happy about that but yeah, there’s some great exciting things happening. We're all about welcoming everybody and it’s a great place to do business and we hope to get more visitors and keep the great experience going.

Genevieve: Wonderful. We’ve heard a lot how this debate was made-for-TV. Can you kind of describe to us what that means?

Valerie: Well, it's actually not ... I don't want to say "Made-for-TV," because it's live. It is truly 90 minutes of live uninterrupted television so what you see happening is really truly taking place. It's not recorded, and it is truly a live television event.

Genevieve:[00:11:30]

The international and national exposure that this debate is getting is going to be incredible. What can you tell us about that?

Valerie:

[00:12:00]

Well, if you think about it, you’ve got journalists from all of the world that they really want to see who’s going to be the next leader of the free world. Everybody loves the United States and we actually are also welcoming as part of this an international study mission from delegates from over a hundred countries that the CPD has brought in and they’ve asked us to support them in this and actually hosting of what really a debate looks like and planning so maybe they can look at doing cooperative debates in their countries.

Genevieve: Wow.

Valerie: It’s really a great experience for them as well. We look at our visitation and we've got about 16% of international visitation which comes to Las Vegas. I think by seeing and hosting international journalists who maybe have never been here might give them a second look on really what we're about.

Genevieve: We could be, or this could be, the new standard for presidential debates, maybe not only in the US but also internationally like you were saying with the program.

Valerie:[00:12:30]

Absolutely. I think it could be really great and a learning curve and having these delegates here from these countries, what a great opportunity for them and for us, and to get their feedback and hopefully they can take something back to their home countries as well.

Genevieve: Yeah. That would be amazing. Being that we will have, hopefully, so many new tourists coming, so many new visitors coming to the city, how will that impact LVCVA as well as the University?

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Valerie:

[00:13:00]

Well, all eyes will be again on Las Vegas. If you think about if we're expecting to have over eighty million viewers and a Super Bowl gets eighty-five, that’s pretty exciting. I think from education standpoint to see how beautiful the campus is and what it’s really like, that we're not some little small University in the middle of a desert where there's nothing else around, you can see the energy and all of the happenings that are happening around campus.

[00:13:30]

We've got MSNBC and we've got CNN and we've got some of the major networks that are also not only filming live at Thomas and Mack, they have actually exterior stand-up locations on campus and we’ve got over a thousand student volunteers and we have faculty working on this. It really, again, it's about partnership and exciting, which makes me wish I was back in college again to say, "I want to be a student volunteer and work on the debate," because talk about a learning experience.

Genevieve: Yes. Oh, absolutely.

Valerie: A learning environment, right? You'd be able to put on your resume, especially if you want to get into the arena of events, or even the political world say, "I actually got to participate as a volunteer on a presidential debate."

Genevieve: It's an incredible opportunity for everyone involved, I think.

Valerie: Yes, it is.

Genevieve:

[00:14:00]

Yeah, absolutely. Perfect. Okay. Well, Valerie, thank you so much again for joining us today. It’s an incredible insight that you gave us. I know we're all excited for the debate that will be coming very soon, so thank you.

Valerie: Thank you very much and thank you for having me today.

Ben:

[00:14:30]

It’s really incredible to hear about so many wonderful partnerships that will benefit our sitting the long run. Great job Genevieve and thank you, Valerie. The debate event has brought together more than 1000 student volunteers to assist with planning. Student journalists, Jennifer Solis and Malika Powell sat down with a few more volunteers to hear about their experience thus far.

Jennifer Solis: As the UNLV campus draws closer to the presidential debate, students are lining up to volunteer and be a part of this historical event, a few of which I got to sit down with for interviews.

Christian: My name is Christian [inaudible 00:14:49]. I am 21 years old and I'm a political science major.

Katarina: My name is Katarina [Trent 00:14:53]. I'm 19 and I’m majoring in hospitality.

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[00:15:00]Layla: My name is Layla Rogers. I am 23 years old and I am a dance major.

Jennifer B.: My name is Jennifer [Bell 00:15:03]. I'm 24. I’m in the broadcast program in the journalism department and I will be graduating in spring of 2017.

Jennifer Solis: UNLV will be hosting the final presidential debate at the Thomas and Mack Center and students like [inaudible 00:15:15] are anticipating using their education thus far to contribute however they can.

Jennifer B.:[00:15:30]

This is an experience where we're actually going to get to put everything we’ve learned here in the journalism program to work. We get to show off our skills and hopefully learn new ones as well, so I’m looking forward to that. I love learning new things and actually seeing a national news outlet do their thing. Come on, that’s just, it's priceless and I’m glad to be there.

Christian: For me, as a political science major, it’s really interesting to see how it all goes down because I think that when you watch debates or like watch what happens, you just sort of see it from the moment it happens and you don't really see the build up, and I think that that is a really exciting part of it too.

[00:16:00]Katarina:

[00:16:30]

At first I was just very surprised to hear that UNLV actually holding the presidential debate and then I was very interested in, since I’m concentrating in meetings event, I was very interested in if they have some roles for hospitality student to volunteer in. When I go to interviews now day to companies, they definitely requires work experience and for a college student to get a lot of work experience is not very common and definitely especially for international students so having that opportunity is very precious to us.

Jennifer Solis: Beside the excitement of being part of the political process, there’s just excitement in general for the debate itself.

Layla:

[00:17:00]

Such a historic events, it's not just a presidential election, but it’s the one with the first woman. The first female is running for president, and the fact that it’s going to be here and documented on our campus, her steps to hopefully becoming president, it’s something that I wanted to be a part of. Being an African American female and Obama coming into the office and that was just kind of like another win that she even made it this far, for a female to get as close to the presidential office as she has come, so I'm very, very proud at this moment.

Jennifer B.:

[00:17:30]

I’ve never been to a big political debate or an event of this gravity so it’s just huge. It’s great. I want to see how this happens. There's going to be over 5000 journals from all over the world here. We're going to have Secret Service. We're going to have other politicians present that I have only seen on TV before or on social media, so I’m definitely excited to rub shoulders with these people.

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Jennifer Solis: The volunteers say that the fact that UNLV will hold the last presidential debate almost feels unreal and it’s taking them a moment to adjust to the idea that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will be on the same stage as them. Are you looking forward to possibly meeting Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton?

Christian:[00:18:00]

Oh my goodness. That'd be wild. I've seen Hillary Clinton speak once. I was actually at [inaudible 00:17:57] and she was there. That was really weird but yeah, I think it will be really interest- ... Just really exciting just to be anywhere near the Thomas and Mack. It'll be pretty crazy. I think campus will be just like a mess, but in a good way.

Jennifer Solis: Well, many of the volunteers said they never thought of themselves as political people. The excitement of the debate has led them to new thinking.

Katarina:[00:18:30]

Since I’m international student, I'm very looking forward to really knowing how the US government and the election's happening right here, so yes, to understand how the United States government works and how the voting process, it's very exciting.

Jennifer Solis: You’re definitely getting a lot of hands-on experience with that. What have you learned so far about the process for American presidential election?

Katarina:[00:19:00]

I learned that it’s very different from my country where there’s only a day when citizens go and vote for their candidates and there’s not a lot of publications, but since I here in the US and seeing from the beginning of how all these debates coming up, it's a lot of process people have to go and a lot of predication on social media's and TV YouTube's and people ranting a lot about it. It's very interesting for me since we don’t have a lot of publics talking in my country.

Jennifer Solis: What country would that be?

Katarina: Vietnam.

[00:19:30]Jennifer Solis: Yes. UNLV students are glad to finally see their university on a national stage and

hopeful about what that might mean for its future.

Jennifer B.:

[00:20:00]

I think they're going to take UNLV a lot more serious. They’ve been trying to be a top-tier one university for a while now. Lynn Jessup is doing a great job of putting UNLV on the map. We've got a great football team. We have great students. Our diversity is at its peak. Our organizations on campus are amazing so this debate is only adding to that. People will know who UNLV is, what we do, what we're all about and hopefully that’ll just increase our student population and bring more people here. They’re working on Marilyn Parkway to make this more of a college town feel. I’m all for it. I’m excited to see what this is going to do for UNLV's future and hopefully we'll be considered a top school in the country and people will want to flock over to us after this.

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Layla: I’m hoping and praying that Las Vegas will be looked at something more than just a town to go party in.

Jennifer Solis: Sounds like you have a lot of pride in the city. You really want it to advance.

Layla:[00:20:30]

[00:21:00]

Yeah, I wasn't born here but I’ve grown up here, high school, middle school, little middle school and I’ve come to, just besides [inaudible 00:20:32], but I’ve come to really like and enjoy the people here. This is such a diverse city and we have so much to offer. Speak to anyone outside Las Vegas, they just picture the strip but when I come back and I say, "Look, no. The University, there’s a university here and there’s people here who are doing big and great things for the community, in the community, and then leaving Vegas and representing for Las Vegas," you never really hear about that so I am very proud of Las Vegas and where we have come from.

Katarina: When I came to UNLV, a lot of people that knows me, kind of surprised that I actually choose Las Vegas as a place to study. It doesn’t have a good image for a education but now I can brag to my host family and my friends and everybody’s that I’m actually volunteering for the debate.

Christian:

[00:21:30]

It’s something that will bring a lot of attention to the University and the city itself and just sort of help us with showcasing all the great things we have to offer as a university and really just making sure that everybody knows that we're such a great university and really help us with our top-tier initiative. A lot of things happen here and I think that it's oftentimes seen as sort of a vacation spot, but I think it will help the city be seen more as a spot where like really big things happen, especially politically. Nevada is a really important state for elections, so I think that it sort of puts a spotlight on the city as more than just a vacation spot. It's something like, we have a university here and it’s a great [one 00:21:59].

[00:22:00]Jennifer Solis: Many of the volunteers for the debate night have spent their time serving the

community in other ways.

Christian: I also am on the debate team so my debate coach is involved. He’s on a committee and then I’m also the chief justice for student government.

Layla: I am in a sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated, and one of our initiatives, our targets, is to get people out to vote, especially young people because a lot of times we don't think our voice matters.

[00:22:30]Jennifer B.: I’m very involved in a lot of community organizations. I was going out to register

people to vote. I've been [inaudible 00:22:34] Latino before. I volunteered with just different things around the Hispanic community, mostly. I’m a Latina so that means a lot to me to register that demographic and have them involved in the

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[00:23:00]

civil process, so definitely, I would like ... I would hope that this debate changes minority's outlook on voting, on being a part of the electoral process, of actually listening to politics because these are things at the end of the day that affect us every single day.

Jennifer Solis: With so many dedicated students working around the clock on this debate, it’s hard not to get caught up. This was Jennifer Solis. Thanks for listening.

Ben:

[00:23:30]

It is so inspiring to hear such energy and excitement from a group of student volunteers. Thank you Jennifer and Malika for such a refreshing take on the debate event. Nevada has always been considered the swing state in the election cycle. Student journalists, Albania [Guido 00:23:32] decided to learn more about Nevada’s influence and the political process from assistant professor for the Department of Political Science, Dan Lee.

Albania: Thank you for joining me today. I’m sitting here with the assistant professor of political science, Dan Lee. My name is Albania Guido. I’m a journalism major here at UNLV. Professor, how did you start out here at UNLV?

[00:24:00]Dan Lee: I came to UNLV last year, so I've been here for one academic year. Previously, I

was on faculty at Michigan State University, but I've got to say, I'm really enjoying the warm sunny weather out here and my students. They've been great so far.

Albania: Okay, what would you say is the most interesting thing that you’ve seen so far during the campaign?

Dan Lee:

[00:24:30]

[00:25:00]

The most interesting thing so far for me, so I’m a professor in political science and I study, do a lot of research on political parties and for me, the interesting this year I guess is kind of obviously is just looking at Trump’s influence on the Republican Party as far as kind of shifting the policy commitments of the party and attracting different types of voters into the Republican Party. We're just seeing all the infighting right between Trump and Cruz and Rubio and Bush. We even some of that infighting in the Democratic primaries as well between Clinton and Sanders so for me, as a researcher looking at how the parties can adapt or try to resolve these sorts of conflicts within the parties has been interesting to see.

Albania: Okay. Since you said you do a lot of research based on political parties, would you say that has swayed you to not want to be like impartial to not be partisan, is the word?

Dan Lee:[00:25:30]

For me, for my research in both teaching and research, I try to be nonpartisan. Hopefully my students can't tell which candidate I favor, so a lot of the times the questions I ask are oftentimes, "How do things work or what do we predict will happen," and less about which side is better or which side do I support. It's more those kind of questions of how politics works and trying to predict what will happen in this election and beyond.

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Albania: How do you take that into your personal life?

[00:26:00]Dan Lee:

[00:26:30]

How do I take it in my personal life? That’s a good question. For me personally, I actually try to not think about politics too much because it's part of my job and once I'm home, away from my job, I like to hang out with my dog, do other hobbies, try not to focus so much on politics because it could make you turn a little cynical and kind of give you sort of a bummer world view, just looking at all the conflict going on. For me personally, I tried to stay balanced both in research and teaching, but also in my personal political beliefs, try not to get sucked too far into either side.

Albania: What made you want to pursue a career in the political atmosphere even if you’re not running for office or anything but your teaching students potentially that they could, why did you choose to do that?

Dan Lee:[00:27:00]

[00:27:30]

The honest answer is actually, after I graduated college I got a job in the government, in the Department of Labor and it was boring so I needed to find something else to do. That was kind of the first nudge I had into going into graduate school and eventually becoming a faculty member. For me, I've always been interested in understanding how things work so a lot of times when I study politics, I don’t see necessarily like the political debates that you see a lot of pundits talk about on TV shows, but I’m more interested in just how things work, so kind of looking at it ... At the end of the day, politics is about group interaction and group decision-making, so in elections how to vote or decide who to vote for, or how do interest groups decide what strategies to try to get someone elected?

[00:28:00]

Everyone’s working within a group. Election outcomes depends on how everyone votes, not just on how you vote or it depends on what a lot of political action committees are doing, not just one pack in isolation. A lot of it's group decision-making just, so for me it's interesting studying group dynamics, just how do groups interact, individuals within groups interact. For instance, why do people vote when we know that your vote on its own isn’t going to make a difference? Just understanding how your actions are just one part of a bigger puzzle is interesting for me to study.

[00:28:30]Albania: Since you mentioned that you don’t understand, a little understand why people

vote when it's mostly the electoral college is vote, that’s the one that counts, right?

Dan Lee: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Albania: Do you feel like that’s why Nevada has such a low voter turnout because people know that their vote doesn’t count?

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Dan Lee:

[00:29:00]

Yeah, there’s a lot of explanations of why turnout isn't that high. A lot of people just aren’t interested in politics, so they don’t take the time to get informed about politics. If you don’t even know who to vote for, you're not going to go turn out and vote. Even nowadays, a lot of people don’t trust the government or feel like it doesn’t really matter how people vote because at the end of the day, our elected politicians are just going to pander to special interests rather than care about what their constituents say, so there’s a lot of disaffection within the electorate as well.

[00:29:30]

[00:30:00]

[00:30:30]

You can argue that that led to the success of Sanders in the Democratic primary, and Trump now, is they're tapping into that disaffection, the satisfaction of voters with the establishment. It's kind of the term that’s been thrown around. Then the electoral college is kind of funky too because we're not even directly voting for the president but in all intents and purposes, we are because the electors vote in accordance to how the statewide vote goes and the popular vote within each state, but for Nevada ... That’s the question with presidential elections is states like Nevada, people feel like their vote matters more than other states because we are a swing state where the election right now ... There really probably isn’t, maybe aside from Florida, there isn't a state that is as much of a tossup as Nevada right now where it's literally close to 50-50 tossup between Trump and Clinton.

[00:31:00]

In states like Nevada where it's a tossup, we're also getting a lot more advertising from the candidates and from outside groups like Super PACs, so voters are getting inundated with a lot of information. I mentioned that’s one reason why voters don’t vote. They just don’t really know what’s going on. They don’t feel like, they don't understand how the election outcome might influence their daily life, but when they're getting inundated with all this information and the election is close, they feel like their vote might matter more, this is why in states like Nevada where we might expect a higher voter turnout.

[00:31:30]

There’s also, Nevada is also weird for countervailing reasons, where we might not have high voter turnout because the electorate is younger, more transient, so it kind of balances out between the two, but definitely being a battleground state, getting inundated with a lot of information from candidates and from Super PACs both contribute to higher voter turnout.

Albania: Do you think that you UNLV holding the last presidential debate of this election is going to influence voters or people that are able to vote to actually have their voice heard?

Dan Lee:

[00:32:00]

Right, yeah. There's a lot of debate on whether debates even matter or in what ways they do matter, so by the last debate, most voters, there are not that many undecided voters and so that’s an argument that the last debate actually might have the smallest effect of all of the debates just because by that time in the campaign, later in the campaign, most people have decided who to vote for.

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[00:32:30]

[00:33:00]

I think the one caveat for this year is that there is such a high number of third-party supporters and undecided so there are a high number, so I think in the polls now, there's maybe like 15% or so that might vote for a third-party candidate or are undecided. We know that with research that a lot of [third 00:32:34] party supporters end up not voting for a third-party candidate because they perceive that their vote might be wasted in the sense that, say for Nevada, Johnson doesn’t really have a chance of winning so if I vote for Johnson and let's say you are a Clinton supporter, then some might say, "Oh. Well, you’re throwing your vote away and a vote for Johnson is a vote for Trump," so we tend to see third-party supporters kind of drop off towards the end of campaign and move towards one of the two major party candidates.

[00:33:30]

In that sense, especially for Clinton, when you look up poles that include third-party candidates, she is losing him quite a bit of support and especially from young voters, voters that were supporting Sanders, but now a lot of them have moved to, some of them have moved towards vote and supporting Johnson. The question is whether she can draw those voters back into her camp. That sort of dynamic of people moving away from third-party candidates is something that's slower, so there might be a big shift. There might still be an ability for her to shift those voters by the last debate. That's kind of the caveat for this year, I think.

Albania:[00:34:00]

Do you think there’s anything that she actually could do because Trump is so vocal with his opinions? Do you think if she were to just straight out say something that that would actually draw people’s to her?

Dan Lee:

[00:34:30]

I think it’s ... One question is whether there’s going to be some bombshell that comes out in the last debate that can really shift opinion. By that time, there's not going to be many surprises, I don’t think, so really all the candidates can do, including Clinton, is just to hone in her message over this last month and a half and think of, she's going to need to think about how she can target the message to reach specific voters. Looking at the data, one specific subset, and I'm not saying that just because we're at UNLV right now, it is the young voters where she’s doing way worse, significantly worse, with younger voters age 30 and younger, compared to how Obama did.

[00:35:00]Obama would do, was getting maybe 60 something percent of the support of younger voters and Clinton is pulling around the 40% range. It's not that younger voters are going to Trump. It's just like I was saying, a lot of them are going to third-party candidates so that’s something that she ... One strategy she might need to think about is exactly how to appeal more to younger voters.

Albania: Do you have any suggestions as to how she could do that?

Dan Lee:[00:35:30]

Part of it is just going to be thinking about it in terms of winning over Bernie supporters. What do they want? They wanted to kind of close the income gap, so things like increasing the minimum wage, higher education as far as free tuition for college, so issues that resonate with younger voters.

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Albania: Do you see Nevada choosing the presidential candidate this year as well, the winning candidate?

Dan Lee:[00:36:00]

[00:36:30]

Right. Yeah, I guess I can’t really say whether Nevada would correctly pick who ends up being the eventual winner. Really it's just a tossup, whether that'll be the case or not because really, right now in Nevada, it's a tossup as far as whether it's going to swing to Clinton or Trump. As far as whether it’ll be the pivotal state, so most predictive models has ... They kind of try to estimate which states will actually be the pivotal one and Nevada isn’t one of those states as far as the way that they make these predictions, partially because we only do have six electoral votes. We're a smaller state, but for sure, for the candidates, if they want to win the election, they're focusing all of their energy on these swing states.

[00:37:00]

If you look at spending, how much Trump and Clinton are spending, as well as Super PACs, where they're spending, as far as which states they're spending at, there's a ton of spending going on in Nevada. Everyone certainly is building their strategies as if they do need to win Nevada to win the general election. You look at the amount of spending of Nevada compared to other swing states, it's actually, when you look at per capita because we're again a smaller state, we have only six electoral votes, compared to some other swing states like Florida and Pennsylvania, which population-wise are much larger and have way more electoral votes, the amount of spending is pretty comparable to those states.

[00:37:30]When you look at per capita spending, like how much outside groups and how much the candidates are spending per person, population-wise, then Nevada has the highest per capita spending. They're spending enormous amounts of resources in Nevada with again, the idea that they need to win Nevada to win the general election.

Albania: Do you think Nevada’s diversity has any impact on that because as of right now, UNLV is like the second most diverse university, so do you feel like Nevada’s University has an impact on their spending or even just their campaign strategies?

[00:38:00]Dan Lee:

[00:38:30]

Right, so for sure. On face value, looking at the large Latino population in Nevada, you would think that Clinton should be able to win the state but again, most of the polls over the past month and only the recent ones after the debate actually had Trump ahead in the polls, so the question is, what is going on in Nevada? One answer is that polls are not very accurate in Nevada. It's just hard to poll in Nevada but for Trump, there are certain demographics that we forget about.

We tend to focus on the hype, how there are a lot of Latinos in Nevada but Trump's support also comes significantly from whites without a college education so that’s where the demographics in Nevada helps Trump because there are a high proportion of whites without a college education. That’s kind of why we

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[00:39:00] focus a lot on, "Oh, there's like a lot of Latinos in Nevada," but we also need to look at the other side of the demographic spectrum and how it's helping Trump and a reason why it’s so closely contested right now between the two candidates.

Albania: Would you say that even though Nevada has such a large white population with no college education that Nevada’s Latino vote has an actual difference compared to that, the white, Latino-

[00:39:30]Dan Lee:

[00:40:00]

Yeah, so I guess at the end of the day, when you think about campaigns, you can think about strategies as two parts of the candidate's strategies. One is persuading voters to vote for them. The other one is mobilizing voters so getting people to turn out and vote. That’s really what might end up making the difference for what happens in Nevada is, can the democratic party and Clinton get Latino voters to turn out and vote. Conversely, for Trump, can he get the whites without college education to turn out and vote because both subset, the both groups tend to have lower voter turnout. It's a matter of getting them to actually come out to the polls is going to be an important part of their strategies.

Albania: What would you say is each candidate's kind of poll point for both of those demographics?

Dan Lee:[00:40:30]

[00:41:00]

For Trump, a lot of his support is, again people and folks say, "Oh, he’s just focusing on immigration," but a lot of people are voting to support him because of his positions on economics, on the economy and if you even look at, "What issues do Nevada voters really care about," it's actually the economy, so these are ... Trump has done a good job of reaching out to working-class Americans, to the working class, who don't necessarily have a college education and trying to sell to them how his economic policies are going to benefit them.

[00:41:30]

On the other side, Clinton with the Latino vote is going to stress Trump's immigration policy because that’s something that they’re not too keen on so to win that group specifically, she would focus on immigration while at the same time recognizing that economics is also important to the Latino community. It's not just about immigration. They were also hurt by the great recession so she also ... Focus on Trump's immigration policies but also not forget that at the end of the day, people want to feel financially secure as well. She’s also going to have to focus on those sorts of issues.

Albania: What would you say Nevada’s biggest influence is on elections in general, not even just for this election?

Dan Lee:[00:42:00]

What makes Nevada so interesting is just how politically competitive it is so even if we look beyond ... We see it's a swing state so the parties, interest groups, candidates, they funnel a lot of resources into campaigning in Nevada but we've only talked about, so far, about the presidential election, but there’s other elections, down ballot races, going on in November and those are also very

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competitive. We have the Senate seat to replace Senator Reed and that is a tossup right now between the two candidates.

[00:42:30]

[00:43:00]

Some of the Congressional races, the US House races are also very competitive, so all of these races are attracting a lot of campaign money, a lot of advertising and then that’s going to influence what voters do as well because again, they’re getting more information, it could spur them to actually turn out and vote, given them the information of deciding who to vote for because that’s one argument of why all this campaign spending might be good.

[00:43:30]

On the one hand, it's bad because we have to watch these annoying ads, but on the other hand, it does provide some information to voters to help them make good decisions or to make better informed decisions of who to support. I just think a key thing about Nevada is just how competitive it is and that provides certain resources to voters that could help mobilize them, help them participate and help them make better informed decisions.

Albania: Do you find that the political ads and whether they be negative or positive actually have more sway with voters rather than if a candidate has like a rally or an event or something like that?

Dan Lee:

[00:44:00]

Yeah. When you think about rallies and events, those are generally geared towards their supporters. It's more about mobilizing their supporters. The ads, television ads are more geared towards trying to persuade voters to change their position or change their support for the other, for one or the other candidate. Then the question is, "Well, how effective are these ads," especially given how negative ads are, so there’s been a lot of research on that and generally has found that ... People sometimes have the concern that negative ads might depress voter turnout because it'll just turn off voters.

[00:44:30] If they just see the two candidates just mudslinging between each other, voters just might be turned off from that and decide not to vote, but there’s other research that shows that these negative ads actually can increase voter knowledge because if you think about it this way, if there’s a positive ad, a lot of the times it’s just a fluff piece about a candidate.

[00:45:00]It doesn’t really give any hard information about the candidate versus a negative ad, so there’s a question of whether the information is biased or is truthful, but at least it focuses on, potentially, on more hard information about the candidates and research has shown that information that’s in negative ads are more memorable so it's easy for voters to remember that type of information. Again, it could have a positive effect on voter information, but again the big caveat is, "Well, how truthful or accurate is that information?" That’s still an open question.

[00:45:30]Albania: Do you feel like the negative, even untruthful information still gives viewers or

whoever's voting, it actually makes them geared more towards the person that's

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actually making the ad? Say Hillary Clinton has an ad out right now where Donald Trump is saying negative things about women and at the end she says, "Is this the kind of president you want for your daughters." Do you feel like that brings people more towards Hillary Clinton?

[00:46:00]Dan Lee:

[00:46:30]

Right, so this is, the question is, okay if negative ads maybe don’t even work because again, the research shows that it doesn’t tend to have a net effect on candidate support but then everyone still does it. Everyone still uses negative ads so everyone certainly acts as if they do matter. It may be these studies that didn't find a net affect find that because if both campaigns are using it, then they'll just kind of cancel each other out. Certainly the campaigns produce these ads with the idea that they do in fact work, but I'm just saying that political science research has not conclusively shown that but it’s hard to deny that outside groups and candidates all do believe strongly that they do work and that they will work. It's kind of a complicated answer.

[00:47:00]It's kind of like, kind of the bummer about political science is we have all these ideas of how campaigns work and what things, what strategies might work. What we do in political science is we try to show, we try to prove it, try to show statistical evidence that supports these effects and it just so happens that it’s hard to actually find these effects. A lot of these campaign effects are small or it's just inconclusive.

Albania: Would you say that has an effect overall on all campaigns, not just the presidential?

[00:47:30]Dan Lee: It starts in the negative ads?

Albania: Yeah.

Dan Lee:

[00:48:00]

Yeah, for sure. It's hard to match that negative ads don’t have an effect, but it's just these countervailing effects. On the one hand, they might demobilize voters because it turns off, because it just turns people away from politics when they see that it's so negative but on the other hand, it might mobilize supporters because with negative ads, it kind of hammers home the point of how important the election is so that motivates people to turn out. It’s just hard to know what the net effect is. It's kind of ... Is it important? Yes, but what's the net effect? It’s hard to say. I think that’s where political scientists, where we come in and we say, "Yeah, it’s hard to actually gauge what the net effect of these sorts of ads are."

Albania:

[00:48:30]

Okay. Well, thank you for joining me Professor. This has been very informational for not just myself but our listeners and hope to hear from you soon. If there’s any events you're doing or talks, lectures on campus.

Dan Lee: Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, and just point out that there are a lot of debate

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related events going on so check out the UNLV debate webpage. There's a list of events, so hopefully I’ll see you guys out there.

Ben:

[00:49:00]

This is Ben [inaudible 00:48:49] reporting from UNLV and I want to thank you all for listening to today's episode. If you like what you heard, let us know by subscribing on iTunes or Google Play. We would love to know what you think so do us a favor by leaving us a rating and review. We are excited to announce that you can now also listen to the podcast on a website at UNLV.edu/podcast. Tune in each week for new episodes as we still have a lot of great stories to tell.

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