Samantha Warfel, Contributing Photographer

On Thursday, New York Times writer and Jackson School senior fellow David Leonhardt ’94 spoke at Yale about the U.S. elections. 

The talk was moderated by Jackson School Dean James Levinsohn. The speakers discussed the final few weeks of the 2024 United States presidential election and the role of the media in it.

“You really should think of [the election] as 50-50,” Leonhardt said, adding that one should not put stock in the polls. 

Leondhart said that a unique component of former president Donald Trump’s campaign is his appeal to the working class and burgeoning message that a Republican who prioritizes a vote on the basis of issues not aligned with the economy — or directly related issues including international trade and immigration — is failing the party at-large.

In contrast, Leonhardt said Vice President Kamala Harris “won’t come close to matching Obama’s [appeal] with working-class Americans of all races.”

Recently, readers of the New York Times were asked to send in their biggest concerns about both candidates. Leondhart said that he read through each response from voters who identified as undecided and those who said they would “probably” vote for one of the two candidates.

Overwhelmingly, he said, there were concerns about Trump on the basis of personality, as people “really don’t like [him] as a human being.”

Some of the adjectives used to describe him in the responses from readers included “erratic,” “unhinged” and “selfish.” There were fewer complaints about his presidency, even as Leonhardt believes there should have been, referencing his handling of COVID-19 and policies skewed to favor the rich.

For Harris, the responses varied. Leonhardt, who does believe she has real weaknesses as a politician, was disheartened by a slew of concerns sent in criticizing her intelligence — something he suspects to be symptoms of sexism and racism.

He added that multiple people said that when she is asked a question, “she doesn’t answer it.”

“Most of her complaints were policy issues,” he said. “It was inflation, it was immigration, it was a whole bunch of people who said ‘I don’t even know what she thinks.’”

Leonhardt is the lead writer of “The Morning,” The New York Times’ flagship daily newsletter. One attendee, Ashutosh Bakre SOM ’26, said that Leonhardt’s “The Morning” is their newsletter of choice, as his articles “tend to have a level of analytical rigor which was reflected in the way he answered questions, which was measured and clearly not leaning one way or the other.”

“Sometimes at Yale, we get stuck in these little towers of our own knowledge and our own perspectives,” Naz Soysal ’26 said. “It is nice to have someone come speak and remind us that the entire country is not Yale.”

As the event winded to a close, Leondhart reminded attendees to center this election within international affairs, describing it as a “struggle between global democracy and autocracy,” as he believes global alliances shift and so does American leadership.

The Jackson School is located at 55 Hillhouse Ave.