Ripped From the Headlines! | Free Pronunciation and Vocabulary Lesson

Today, we're studying English with news  while we look at an article about the  

I'm Rachel and I've been teaching the  

English language to non-native speakers  of English for over 15 years. Check out  

Rachelsenglish.com/free to get a free  course on Mastering the American Accent. 

The headline: Where Harris has gained  and lost support compared with Biden. 

This is from The New York Times and  it published late last week when  

Kamala Harris became her party's nominee, she  inherited a democratic Coalition in shambles. 

Okay, a couple great vocabulary words there.  First, ‘in shambles’. This means something  

that's become a disaster, it's just fallen  apart. So the Democratic party, it's saying  

was in shambles. Why was the Democratic party  in shambles? Because there wasn't full support  

for President Biden running for a second  term. After a tornado goes through a town,  

it could leave the town in shambles. Coalition, this means alliance. A group  

of people coming together under a common  goal. In this case, the Democratic party. 

Let's look at the pronunciation  of the word ‘nominee’. 

It has last syllable stress. Any word that ends  in ee has last syllable stress. Just like the  

word ‘absentee’, which is another election  word ‘absentee ballot’ is when you can't go  

vote in person so you send in an absentee ballot  instead. Absentee, nominee. Last syllable stress. 

As she wraps up her party's convention  one month later, she's well on her  

way towards stitching it back together. Stitching it back together. Think of two  

pieces of fabric torn apart coming back together  and stitching. So, they're using a metaphor here.  

She's taking the shambles of the democratic party  and she's stitching the party back together. 

In this month's New York Times Sienna College  Battleground polls, she led Donald J. Trump  

by two percentage points across the seven  states likeliest to decide the presidency,  

compared with Mr. Trump's five-point lead in May. What does battleground mean? In the United States  

we vote with something called an electoral  college, there's a lot to say about it. It  

can be a little confusing, I'm actually going  to work on another video on that topic that  

will publish before the election, but for  now let's just say that in certain states,  

your vote matters more because it's a Battleground  state. That means that it's not clear ahead of  

time which presidential candidate will win that  State's Electoral College votes because the  

people that live within that state are pretty  evenly split about which candidate they like. 

It's then more important for the candidates  to really hit these Battleground States,  

that's where the votes are really going to  count that can change the election results. 

It's an enormous shift but Vice  President Harris didn't improve  

equally among all demographic groups. An enormous shift, a huge change.  

What does the word demographic mean? This is how we talk about people based  

on something like race, religion, age, income  level, where they live, these kind of statistics  

about people. And I don't know if it's this way  in your country but in our country we love to  

talk about the demographics of voters, the type  of person who typically votes for which candidate. 

Instead she made big gains on among young  non-white and female voters and made relatively  

few or no gains among older voters and white men. So here we've got some words defining people by  

their demographic. We've got young, we've got  older, we've got non-white female, male white men. 

I just realized I should comment a little bit on  the nominees. So, in the United States to be your  

party's nominee, you run in a primary, and whoever  wins gets to be the party's nominee that happened  

for Donald Trump. Now usually, with a president  who's up for a second term nobody runs against  

that person. That person is the presumptive  nominee. Now, in this case that was Biden,  

the current president but he stepped down about a  month ago. So that opened the door for who's next.  

Kamala Harris quickly stepped up and won support  of the party so now she is the party's nominee. 

So, this article is looking at different groups  of people, of voters and saying compared to May,  

when Biden was the nominee, where has  Kamala gotten more people to say yes I  

like the Democrats, and where has Kamala gotten  less people to say yes, I like the Democrats. 

So we have several demographics here. People  with an income less than $25,000 a year,  

non-white voters under the age of 45. The number  one place where Harris made gains unsurprisingly,  

is among people who said they have a somewhat  unfavorable view of Trump. So they don't really  

like him much but some of them were still willing  to vote for him because they disliked Biden. The  

issue in the Democratic party is that Biden was  too old and not mentally sharp. Among this group,  

the Republican candidate Trump still won back in  May with 11 points but now compared to Harris,  

the Democratic candidate wins by 36 points. A  huge change of 47 points. This says 46 but I  

believe that should be 47. So it looks like people  who had a somewhat unfavorable view of Trump were  

still willing to vote for him over Biden. But when  given a different option, they're going for it. 

By the way, n here is the sample size.  The number of people in this category or  

demographic who answered the question: Are  you more likely to vote for the Democrat  

or the Republican in the general election. People whose income is less than $25,000 a  

year. Biden versus Trump, they were more likely to  vote for Biden but now that Harris is the option  

they're much more likely to vote for the Democrat.  She gained 20 points here, she gained 17 points  

for non-white voters under the age of 45. Live in a city. With demographics,  

people often talk about urban versus rural.  People who live in cities around a lot of  

people versus people who don't. I know both  of those words can be tricky to pronounce,  

rural. I actually have a video on how to pronounce  that word so you can search for it on YouTube. 

But in this case, live in a city this is referring  to urban voters. So Kamala has gained more favor  

with voters who live in a city who are urban. Women under the age of 45,  

she's gained ground there. A regular TikTok user. Honestly, I have  

not ever seen demographics that broke people out  based on social media use, but here it is. Kamala  

has gained ground with regular TikTok users. People who label themselves as somewhat liberal,  

they're more in favor of electing  Kamala than they were of electing Biden. 

Self-identified moderate. So this is somebody  who said says: I feel like I'm more middle of  

the road. I'm not super liberal, I'm not super  conservative, I'm in the middle, I'm a Centrist,  

I'm middle of the road when it comes to politics  and my views. I'm moderate. Kamala gained ground  

with moderates also non-white other in this  case, specifically not Black, not Hispanic, but  

someone who would identify themselves not as being  white, she has gained also with that demographic. 

If you draw up a list of President Biden  challenges this cycle, you could probably  

find a demographic group corresponding to each  one on this list of Mrs. Harris's biggest gains. 

Draw up a list. Draw up is simply means to  make in this case. To make a list. You might  

also use this phrasal verb with proposal. We're  going to draw up a proposal and we'll get it to  

you by Friday. This cycle, that refers to this  election cycle. Not the one four years ago when  

he won but this cycle, this election. And so now  we go into a lot of different words on how media  

and other people may divide people into groups. There's young non-white and low-turnout voters.  

What is a low-turnout voter? This is a group  of people that is not very likely to vote,  

even though they're of the age where  they can vote in the United States,  

and the places they tend to live, there's  the lowest income voters who suffered through  

rising prices, there's even the TikTok users  immersed in the bad vibes of the Biden era. 

Immersed in the bad vibes. When you're immersed in  something, it means you're totally underwater in  

it, so if you're going to immerse a ball in water  you're going to push it down so it doesn't float.  

But in this case you can be immersed in something,  in a feeling, in an environment. And here they're  

immersed in the bad vibes of the Biden era. The bad vibes of the Biden era, what does that  

even mean? Bad vibes is a way to describe  when you don't like something. It's not  

necessarily specific, it just sort of means  the whole thing. I don't like the whole thing,  

there's just bad vibes all about it. So on TikTok,  there was a lot of bad vibes about President Biden  

I'm not actually on TikTok so I didn't know that.  My demographic, I guess I'm just a little too old. 

The Muslim and Arab voters angry about the war  on Gaza don't make the list but only because of  

their small sample size, so there were just  55 respondents in August, so I guess that  

sample size was too small to include here. They  would have been number one on the list with a  

net swing of 49 points toward Miss Harris. To swing simply means to go in the other  

direction, the support is swinging towards Harris. The top of the list however is led by an entirely  

different group. Those with a somewhat  unfavorable view of trump in an extraordinary  

measure of Mr. Biden's weakness, Mr.  Trump actually led voters who had a  

somewhat unfavorable view of him back in May. Wow. So what that saying is people who have an  

unfavorable view of Trump actually kind of  still wanted to vote for Trump over Biden,  

but a lot of them now that Harris is their option  are saying yep, I'm going to vote for Harris. 

Now, Miss Harris has a wide lead among this  group at least for the moment. And there's  

one group that reveals Miss Harris's  distinctive mark on the race: women. 

Distinctive mark, this means a noticeable  impact. It's clear to see that Kamala Harris  

has made a difference here. She didn't simply make gains  

among young and non-white voters, she  made outsize gains among young women. 

Outsize means more than what you would see in  other groups. More than what you see in other  

ratios. Her gains there were even bigger. Overall, Miss Harris has gained 11 points  

compared with Mr. Biden among women while she  improved just three points among men. The shift  

among women is broad and includes nearly every  demographic group including older white women  

and white women without a college degree. So again, different ways we separate  

people. Older versus younger, has a college  degree versus doesn't have a college degree. 

On the other end of the spectrum,  the top 10 groups where Miss Harris  

didn't gain much support looks very different. A spectrum is the entire range of something.  

So they're talking about the spectrum of  demographics. On one end where she made  

gains is pretty different from the other end  where she didn't make gains or made loses. 

People who identify as somewhat conservative  were maybe more likely to vote for Biden  

than they are now for Harris. Because at  this point 10% more would vote for the  

Republican candidate than for the Democratic  candidate compared to when asked in May. 

Those who are very conservative also less  likely to vote for Kamala Harris than would  

have voted for Biden. More likely now  to vote for former president Trump. 

Let's skip down to number six,  rarely uses social media. Again,  

this is the first time I've seen people broken  out into social media use in something like this.  

Maybe it's been happening for several election  cycles but it's the first time I've seen it. 

So she made a little gain. She gained a little  ground over Biden from that demographic. 

Rural, again that tricky word, opposite of urban,  rural. She made a small gain among rural voters. 

Number seven, honestly I'm surprised by that.  When they asked people who voted for Trump in  

2020 who they would vote for now. In May, 93%  said I will vote for Trump, but now in August,  

91% said they would vote for Trump. So Kamala  gained a little bit from that group of people. 

Many of the groups sticking by Mr. Trump are  those where no Democrat can realistically  

make big gains like Republicans, Trump 2020  voters, self-described “very conservative”  

voters and those with a very favorable view of  Mr. Trump. I'm going to skip ahead here a bit. 

One group that stands out for not being  a relative strength for Miss Harris:  

non-white voters over 45. Mr. Biden held his  own among these voters and still held around  

70% of their votes in our last round of polls.  But perhaps the most telling area of weakness of  

all for Miss Harris is among white men. Although  she made outsize gains among women and non-white  

voters, white men barely budged it all. There's that word again, outsize. She  

made outsized gains even bigger than expected,  bigger than compared to other demographic groups. 

And white men over 65, a level of grand  granularity not included in the table  

actually shifted 6 points toward Mr. Trump. What does the word granularity mean? 

A level of granularity, when you get granular.  That means they're going smaller and smaller  

to study something. So this table that we  saw didn't have all of the granularity from  

the study. In other words it had bigger groups of  demographics but not like the really small ones,  

like the one here. It just didn't have that level  of granularity in this publication of the results. 

There are so many ways we divide people. White,  non-white, older, younger, conservative, moderate,  

liberal, and honestly I feel like elections  make those differences feel so important.  

I'm lucky enough in Philadelphia to live in  a very diverse area politically. Right in my  

little neighborhoods, there are people of all  different views. And I've got to say that's  

really challenged me because for me it's more  comfortable to just hang out with people that  

think like me. But I've definitely come to  realize that that's not the right way to live  

our lives because that's not really the country  that I want. I do want a country where we're  

talking about our differences with each other. And as I read articles like this I think about  

how much these divisions, these demographic  divisions play a part in our lives because  

of what we're told but what it comes down to  is just person-to-person communication and  

care. And that's one thing that I've really  learned from being an English teacher from  

teaching non-native English speakers is I've  learned that there's so much about a person  

that I don't know when I first meet them  and everybody has an interesting story even  

if demographically they seem really different.  There is always a way to connect with somebody. 

So to end, I'm just going to say no matter how you  get categorized or how you categorize yourself,  

I value you. Thank you for watching this  video, I love so much being your English  

teacher. Please check out this video and  be sure to subscribe with notifications  

on so you never miss another lesson. That's it  and thanks so much for using Rachel's English.