Political and policy consequences if republicans win the house and or the senate. We have with us one of the founders of election watch. We will look for some of you after the fact. Im going to turn it over to chris who will introduce the panelists. A couple of pieces of business. We are going to have some presentations on big picture things, the house, the senate, governors, other things. We are going to turn to your questions. For those in the room, we will take your questions at the microphones. For those viewing from afar, we have a couple of ways you can pose questions. One is through emailing nate. Moore aei. Org. I will turn it to chris and we will begin. Chris of course, never tweet, as we know. [laughter] for your own sake. But we do look forward to have your questions. You are extraordinary lucky humans because i was thinking about this today. I do not think you could have a better group of experts then this lovely group of people. When hot takes are all around us, youre in for something good today. The reason youre in for something good today is because these people are thoughtful, smart, patriotic. They do not take any cheap shots, and they are funny. Through her work at echelon, she regularly advises government leaders on poland and has become one of the foremost experts on the millennial generation. It is Still Available in paperback . Just hardcover and ebook. She is the host of trendline. She is an onair political contributor at cnn and previously has been a contributor at fox news and abc news. You were a spring 2022 fellow at the institute of politics and public service. In 2013, she was named one of times 30 under 30 changing the world. That is cool. I am no longer under 30. [laughter] i was not going to say nothing about it. Sean is a nonresident fellow, but he has a home at the American Enterprise institute where he works on elections, american political trends, and demographics. He is the senior elections analyst for real clear politics. Before becoming a fulltime clinical analyst, sean practiced law for eight years. But he got over it, during which time he represented clients in a variety of settings. He has a law degree and masters degree in Political Science from duke and is currently pursuing a phd in Political Science at the ohio state university. When it comes to tracking this stuff and knowing this stuff, no one is better. Norm is a senior fellow america emeritus at the American Enterprise institute where he has been studying politics, elections, and the u. S. Congress for more than four decades. Previously served as the codirector of the brookings election reform project. He has been involved in political reform for decades, campaignfinance election reform and house and senate reform. He has played a part in creating the Congressional Office of compliance. He was elected fellow of the National Academy of the arts and sciences in 2004. You have read him everywhere. Foreign affairs l. A. Times, politico, on and on. He is also a contributing editor for the atlantic. In a New York Times bestselling author. Pretty cool. Ok. Here is what we are going to do. We are going to share with you the little specialties we have prepared. The chefs specials today. We will have a freeflowing conversation up here, but we are going to start with kristen, who is going to tell us what the heck is going on. What is going on . We are headed into a midterm where history tells us republicans ought to have a great night. You go back decades, if you were with a party out of power, traditionally headed into this midterm, you are poised to pick up seats. Voters get agitated. Whoever is in charge now are doing a garbage drop, lets bring in the other side. Republicans have a lot of historical winds on their back. They have an economy that is fueling an environment that makes it likely for voters to want to see change. Inflation being as high as it is, voters expressing the economy and cost of living is a major issue. In addition to anxiety about what is happening to my 401 k , that is hitting people in the pocketbooks and taking another look at the party currently not in power. Something i think in this election that is different, which makes it not a slamdunk for republicans is the fact that normally, the right track wrong track numbers would be a metric that would tell his republicans will have a great night. When you ask voters, do you think country is on the right or wrong track, they typically say things are on the wrong track. More of them are saying wrong track then we have been seeing in about a decade. They have hit their worst point early in the summer, got a little better, but the right track wrong track as a barometer would suggest the party out of power having a huge night. The difference is, you have a lot of people who are about democrats who are nevertheless saying i think things are on the wrong track. The reason they say things are on the wrong track are the opposite of why republicans say things might be on the wrong track. There is going to be a real pressure on commentators like us to come up with a unified theory of what is happening in this midterm. Is it inflation, is it abortion, is it immigration and crime, is it candidate quality is it gas prices . I would encourage all of you to resist the temptation to think it all comes down to one issue. Yes, it is the economy, stupid, is the line you can borrow from James Carville in the early 1990s. You can generally apply that here. I think it is about the insecurity, i think it is about americans feeling like economically they are not sure what things look like a month or two from now. They are not sure what it will cost to fill up their gas tank. They are not sure what their 401 k will look like. They want stability and security economically. In terms of physical security, they are concerned about rising crime. They are concerned about the border. They are concerned not necessarily about Foreign Affairs generally that is low in , the issue mix, but worries about, what if Vladimir Putin wakes up on the wrong side of the bed tomorrow . What happens if china decides they would like to bring taiwan back . What if these things start happening that leads to physical insecurity . The world and community as an unsafe place. Then, you have anxiety about our democracy itself. To what extent are we so divided . It is one of the only things i see impose that everyone agrees on is that we are all divided. Republicans believe voter fraud is rampant. People believe our democracy may be fraying and worry their rights may be at stake, whether folks are worried about roe v. Wade, their ability to live out their religious views, and so on. Anxieties, economic, physical , and anxiety about our institutions is leading voters across the board to feel unsettled and insecure. That is part of why my firm expects voter turnout to be absolutely skyhigh in this Midterm Election. Let me ask you about that. In the beginning, it seemed there was a consensus in the data that said republican intensity was beyond democratic intensity in the spring. It seemed like democrats caught up. Where do we think we are on the intensity gap right now . I think republicans have a tiny advantage. It is not nearly the kind of advantage that i think you would expect in a big wave election year. I do not believe the democrats feel complacent. I believe they feel under siege, under threat, and like their vote counts. I do think a big question mark is going to be Younger Voters. That is a specialty of mine, Younger Voters, there is data i emceeing that suggests they are not likely to turn out in as great of numbers they did in the 2018 midterms or at least as a proportion of the electorate may not be as influential. Which would be bad news for democrats. However, you are seeing Younger Voters more tuned in. Whether it is through social media or what have you, politics are more pervasive in their life. The extent to which democrats can hold together their coalition i think is a big question mark, Younger Voters being a big piece of that. One question on abortion and roe as a motivator, it seemed like that was overstated. I cannot tell. There is contradictory evidence. There were no is it women, independent women, who is being driven by this issue and how much are they being driven . That was a big driver of Younger Voters. The fact it has faded out of the headlines as an issue is part of the reason why you may be saying that. The reason for voting falling among Younger Voters. I think the narrative around ododds has changed the election. It may have been overstated, but i think another thing that has helped is if you had not had a rash of republican candidates stepping in on this issue. I believe perhaps last night in the Pennsylvania Senate debate, you have dr. Oz hand his opponent a quote around the issue of abortion that is likely to be on airwaves. I will allow my other panelists to dig into that race. I do not think republicans are out of the woods on that issue. I think they have blunted the damage it could have caused. My friend and colleague, john, is going to walk us through the house. John is going to give you the inside so you can go on your fanduel account and make a mint. Vegas would not be a crazy place to think about races up for grabs. Kristen did a good job laying out some big picture issues in terms of how big a wave this is going to be. I want to say a few things historically about what the house might look like. Then, delve into specifics. First, if the Midterm Election does go against president s party, that is a strong trend. Only three times since the civil war has the president s party gained seats. Those three times have been when the president has been dramatically popular, nearly 65 ratings for bill clinton and george w. Bush. Franklin roosevelt in 1934 i am going to stipulate was popular. Those are the only cases where you gained seats with a party in the white house. Other institutions, the senate does not follow quite as strongly. State legislators do because there are more races. The big point is, a president in the white house is usually not good for the Party Running for the house. As things are worse, as the president job Approval Rating is lower, things are worse. By that measure, all along last year and a half, we should be looking at what is a very good republican year. Joe bidens numbers are not very good. Kristin pointed correctly to the low point for joe biden, which was in the late spring. There was a drop even further down into the 30s of job Approval Rating. A little bit of a bounceback. Things are still not that great. There are contradictory trends that we saw over the summer, worries about abortion. Special elections that went one way, people looked at the generic ballot a bit and said, maybe it is not as good for republicans. I think you started to see while those may be factors, you start to see a return to the fundamentals. The number of seats that we are talking about that republicans are going to gain, the forecasters are upping those. That we are moving seats into the republican column. The place money is being spent is on races a contributor to us here had a column a couple of weeks ago have been seats that are pretty democratic. We saw in the last couple of days a number of democrats giving money to Julia Brownley and that is a district where joe biden won by 20 points. I do not think she is going to lose, but it is a place where you start to realize where people are worried about these outliers, Sean Patrick Maloney or katie porter. People like that who are in districts that are a little less democratic, but 12 or 13 points biden districts we move back a little bit, maybe not fully to where the worst of the worst Case Scenario for democrats, but i think we have moved back towards the fundamentals. I am more bullish for republicans than some forecasters. I think a 15seat loss for democrats would be a good day for them. I think they should be happy if they only lose 15 and therefore, lose the house. I think republicans are more likely to be in the 20s and a great republican night might start to flirt with 30, in the 30s. I think, generally speaking, we are going to see something more of the fundamentals that we saw back over the summer where we were thinking the fundamentals were looking one way, but these other factors were looking the other. A few things about where the seats are and what the house might look like in terms of the range of outcomes. First, where states republicans could gain more than one seat, there are quite a number of seats where it is possible if they do better. New york, pennsylvania, michigan, texas, nevada, oregon, virginia, and ohio plenty of , other seats with one seat they may be able to take. I know being a new englander originally that we have no republicans represented in the house in new england today. But there are actually four seats, one in each of four states. Maine, New Hampshire, rhode island, and connecticut. They may not all go republican but are being contested. That is an interesting i think point. You will see a republican at least in new england. And then, think about where some more democrats are able to win on trump territory and where republicans are likely to win on biden territory. I mentioned Julia Brownley, probably not going to happen the , but the outlier. But certainly republicans with david lilio in rhode island. Those are seats that are pretty democratic. Democrats i think might hold on to their most republican seats. In part, that is because of the electoral system, the top four system that they have at the plus 10 seat that the trump won by 10 seats. Jared golden might hold on by six, marcy kaptur at about a plus three. Trumps seat. They all could lose, but some may hold on. For the most part, those are the only seats in trump territory that democrats have a chance to win. If we thought about the gop winning all of the seats, they go up to about a biden plus seven. Biden won by 4. 5 points. That would be a 2. 5point swing to the republican side versus neutral, that would be a 235 or so seat gain or result for republicans. 235 to 200. Could be higher or lower, gives you indication of the types of seats we are looking at that will be in play. Finally, a few thoughts about women, africanamericans and hispanics in the house. Today, we have 123 women in the house. Most are democrats. 91 democrat, 32 republican. On the democratic side, i think that is probably going to be about the same. It could go down, not likely to increase. Republicans are likely they have a floor of about 30, there could be up to republican women 43 in the house. That would be a very good night. Certainly possible. Africanamericans are 56. All but two are democratic. On the democratic side, we will likely see a little bit of an increase, perhaps one or two. On the republican side, an interesting story. We are very likely to see at least four Republican House members africanamerican. ,four to seven African Americans. By far, the highest number of African American republicans in the house. Finally, hispanics, i think we will see the largest increase. The large, growing demographic. There are 40 hispanic members in congress today. I think we will be close to 50 at the end of the day. 29 are democrats. There will be more democratic hispanic members, a minimum of 30. Maybe up to 37. The current 11 hispanic members on the republican side are likely to increase. Certainly they will keep nine but i think up to 16. You will see changes. I think changes will be more to the republican side, but you will see underlying changes. How much did the reverse coattails of joe biden as he was listening to republicans talk and they are thinking about those years for them like 2010, 63 seats. They had in mind at the beginning a big year. Part of the reason those numbers do not seem to be in reach is because in 2020, republicans did better than expected and one won back some seats that they had lost in 2018. When you look at the universe of seats that are really in play, what are we talking about . 30, 35, that range . You are right, the fact republicans are within spitting distance of the 213 if you count vacancies, that is a high watermark, meaning some seats are already taken. I think we are probably talking about a universe of 45 or 50 seats, some of those are outlying. They are mostly on the democratic side. But there are a few places where republicans are struggling to hold on. Perhaps in ohio. Maybe sean can talk about that. I think it is a smaller Playing Field and the realignment we had, it took a long time. But very conservative Democrats Holding republican seats which were some seats that lost in 2010, 2014. Those are not there, either. I think the Playing Field is smaller, but the wave is decent for republicans and therefore will lead to some gains. I think that is a very right analysis. That is a smart man. Im going to make you listen to me about Gubernatorial Elections. But you got a free lunch, so that is how it goes. I love Gubernatorial Elections, it is my favorite because they are one of the weirdest, last, weird things in politics. The governor of maryland is one of the most popular governors in the country. He is a republican in a blue state, the same goes for the governor of massachusetts. The governor of kansas, which is about as republican as mississippi, is a democrat. She is not favored to win, but she is in a tossup race. It is a very tight race. People are still able to defeat toxic partisanship on the gubernatorial level. Sometimes, it is because as a West Virginian, i can say the governor from the other party goes to prison, and you need somebody from the other party. In oneparty states, there is often a necessity of an in case of emergency, break glass and release the opposition party. It is, i think, something i do not want to encourage anybody to do anything, but that should be admired. People, americans have the ability to do this. Lets quickly go through the races where it because of what kristin talked about with turnout, because, this is a long way for me to get out of taking responsibility for the following forecast. But, basically, the states arizona, kansas, nevada, oregon , and wisconsin, these look like tossup races. You pick them. It will depend on how it goes. I think as a good example of a state where you have a strong connection between the governorship and a senate race, tony e verse evers in wisconsin would really have liked it if mandela barnes, the Senate Candidate, was more competitive. Instead, it is working the opposite direction. There is this linkage. Sean is going to break this down. If we look at pennsylvania and georgia, here are states where a republican in georgia are going to stomp, it looks like, his democratic challenger. But the Republican Senate candidate is struggling. In pennsylvania, you have a basically the bottom has fallen out for the republican gubernatorial candidate in pennsylvania. Doug mastriono has been left for dead for his party. The senate race is competitive. How much ticket splitting can go gubernatorial races . On for these how will these be reconciled . Will 7 of the electorate split . Will 8 of the electorate split . Those are joe manchin level types of numbers. It is rare. When you start looking at Gubernatorial Elections, you can see there is existing tension in the atmosphere and personnel. Who the candidates are, and how that is going. Arizona i think is a particularly interesting case about democrats efforts to prop up people who supported trumps efforts to steal a second term. Doug ducey, the term limited income, is a normal conservative republican. The republican trying to succeed him in arizona is wild. She is full on, all the way live. The democrats nominated katie hobbs, who is the state s secretary of state. She has turned out to be a flop. What democrats in arizona thought was kari lake will be easier to beat because she is kooky. They didnt pick a good candidate, she will not debate kari lake. Democrats in arizona are correctly anxious about what could happen in a swing state electing a governor who is enthusiastically would like to abet in the theft of electoral votes. She is, much like in pennsylvania, this is concerning for democrats and should be concerning four republicans. This is an example of the backfire for the democrats in overestimating how easily it would be to beat some of these people. Arizona is still a republican state. Georgia is still a republican state. The defeat of donald trump in these states was not indicative of some change. This was not a flip, this was just movement. Other ones to think about, oklahoma, keep an eye on oklahoma. Kevin stitt, i think he will be fine, the incumbent republican governor. He will probably be fine. But it has gotten weird out there. His challenger is impressive. Joy hofmeister has been on him about crime. This is another thing to remember. Democrats only belatedly found out they could use crime as an issue to their own advantage. She has given kevin stitt hell over the fact, she had a great moment in the debate. She said, we have a higher Violent Crime rate in oklahoma than they do in california and new york. Stitt said, can you believe she said that about oklahoma . Factcheck, entirely true. By the way, crime as an issue works for governors races. Senate, a little more tenuous. If you have an income it and crime is high, democrats waited too long to say that. Ron desantis looks like he is ron desantis looks like he is going to bomb Charlie Crist to the stone age. Whether he has a fan under his desk were not. Beto o . Rourke will cost democrats another 100 million into a sinkhole in texas. New york, i do not know. I really, i would have told you two months ago there was no way lees eldon would be competitive with catchy the climate is turning more republican. He is a tireless campaigner. I do not know. That will be one to watch. I can only promise you, at least one gerber notorious election Gubernatorial Election will be, we were not even watching that one. That is why i like to get to cover the governors stuff. I was going to ask you if you had hinted what is your race outside of the time why does another one that comes on the board . Im not sure you are willing to go there with oklahoma. Maybe new york. I would have said one of those two. I will say, if we are doing that, i will say maine. Maine is like the West Virginia of new england. Paul lepage has a certain kind of appeal. Another thing here is the giving up part. The way you have strange things happen is that one side or the other gives up. If democrats in pennsylvania give up because of the senate race they are focused on, that has down ballot consequent is. If people stay home and main could be a place like that. Who the heck knows. What about oregon . We should talk about oregon. I want to get everybodys names right. In oregon, we have term limited, she struggled at the beginning. Basically is finishing fine. Kate brown. We have an independent named betsy johnson. I do not want to say that she is the mad bomber of this race, but she just does not care. Everybody said, you are going to ruin the democrats chances and are going to let christine drazan, the republican is going to get past tina co. Tech, the democrat. You are creating this opportunity and she is a very liberal, unabashedly if you saw her, you would not think she was from a state other than oregon. I mean that with love. That was a great deal of love. No one would be like, you are probably from south florida. No, she is from oregon. The trail mix is real. People are responding to her message which is, these people stink. We should not have to put up with these package, blowdried politicians. It looks like she is taking more from the d than the r, but i will be watching. As a frenchcanadian, i appreciate your maine reference. The poutine is flowing. Shawn is going to walk us through the senate race. Is a homecoming coming back to ai. I did the math, it cannot be right that i was a Research Assistant 25 years ago. That would mean i only had two months to get my 50 under 50, i do not think it is going to happen. For the Research Assistants, i do this spiel. It takes 30 seconds. He would never have a top, a better place to be in your early 20s, early 30s, in your life. It is a fantastic opportunity to work with ansi presentations by some of the countries best scholars, the institutions that go out of the way to bring scholars from the other side of the spectrum. You can be introduced to topic areas you never considered. In 1998, i was a Research Assistant or an economist at i decided i wanted to do a presentation on the 1998 election. That was the first time i gave an elections talk. Here i am. Take the most of your time here. I have friends for life. People i am facebook friends with when i come to d. C. It is a fantastic place to be. Moving to the senate, the Senate Elections are i phrase them as Irresistible Force meets an immovable object elections. The Irresistible Force is the national environment, which we have talked about consistently. The one thing i have used to predict an elections has been president ial job approval. If i have to give my big take about, that is what it tends to be. Joe bidens approval is shaping up to be worse then obamas interim string the midterms. The immovable object, the Senate Candidates on the republican side are terrible. They are probably the single worst collection of Senate Candidates for competitive races i have encountered in my 25 years of following elections. It is that bad. For a good part of the summer, it looked like i conquered i expectations. The immovable object went out. Win out. Over the last month, things have started to shift back. It looks like gravity is taking over in a lot of these races. I am in republican plus two as a top line, i am not sure which races are going to come through. The battle for the senate comes down to five senate seats that are at the core, and a senate seat on either side as a periphery. Probably, i think the best start out with 5050 senate. Republicans have an edge in the Nevada Senate race, where adam lampe saw is the grandson of a senator and a son of a senator. He is the candidate who can appeal to both the trump wing and establishment wing. That is why he is the candidate doing well, he is the one Senate Candidate who is able to put a foot in both camps. He has been leading his opponent, the firstterm senator, pretty consistently. Although narrowly in the polls. He could lose if there is a pole error. Right now, i think he is the front runner in that state. What used to be my counter senate race was pennsylvania. In the car ride over, i gave a lot of thought and how i was going to talk about that. It is tough. I think if you have not heard about the debate last night, John Fetterman had a stroke in april. He disappeared from the campaign trail for six months. This debate was considered to be his opportunity to put concerns about his health to rest. He did not. His opening line was for the intro speech everyone measured about memorized, his opening line was, good night, everyone. My first reaction was to chuckle, but it was like that someone should have stopped him. It was sad. On the other hand, dr. Oz, all he had to do was stand back and forget fetterman was there and give stump speeches to the questions. There is the old joke, the differences between a surgeon and god. God understands he is not a surgeon. [laughter] oz decided he would go in for the kill. He had a snippy comment about, i didnt do that slowly enough for you to understand, john. Which i think is probably he would bet on the assumption that fetterman would be performing well. He also, this was alluded to earlier, he had a line where he says that he thought abortion should this is a parody of what prochoicers say prolifers believe. He said he thought abortion should be a choice between a woman, her doctor and local elected officials. Needless to say, that is going to be like every commercial you see in pennsylvania for the next two weeks. I think enough undecided voters probably saw fetterman and decided he is not up to the task, that oz becomes a favorite now. My one caveat is, it was so bad that there he was sympathetic. There is a real chance that republicans pick up aside from republicans pouncing the other media narrative about republicans is they are going to overplay their hand. This is actually a chance were republicans could overplay their hand. They should be careful in how to handle this the next couple of weeks. I am not sure. That is still, in my mind, leads republicans up one. Senate races, one in georgia with herschel walker, bless his heart. Herschel walker did the opposite of fetterman. He was saying things like, the reason we have bad air is china took our good air and send their bad air over to us. He was accused and denied but he was accused by his son of having paid for a girlfriends abortion, even though he was running as a prolife candidate. These are bad facts. He showed up for his debate. As low as expectations had been set for him, he exceeded them. He did have this weird thing where he pulled out a toy cop badge. Im not saying he performed spectacularly good as fetterman, expectations had been set so low, he exceeded them. He has been righting the ship on the abortion story, when you look at the warnock and walker trendlines, they go like this. Warnock does not do this. Warnock keeps going right about here. Walker is coming back up. I do not think warnock picked up which he needs. That race is probably going to a runoff, almost certainly. We will have a better sense for how that goes. How that race goes in a runoff is dependent on how republicans have done in the senate races elsewhere and we can discuss that. That leaves arizona, were republicans nominated peter teal, invested heavily in blake masters. After he won the nomination, they were like, congratulations and walked away. Leaves masters unfunded. The establishment hates him, so he is not raising money from normal sources. He floundered over the summer. As gravity has taken over, that race has closed. Within a couple of points. The funders have said, ok, we have got to support the sky. We cannot toss away the senate seat. My basic thought is republicans are probably going to win arizona. And one of those other states, probably pennsylvania. The two seats briefly on the periphery is wisconsin, ron johnson is not a good fit for the swing state of pennsylvania. But, he has now been consistently up on the polls by a few points on mandela barnes. Three points now on average. For a republican incumbent running in a year where there is a unpopular democratic president , that probably gets him off the finish line but he is not resting easy now. The other race on the periphery, speaking of candidates democrats have helped nominate, New Hampshire i am blanking on his name. Dan. The frenchcanadian. He has out there theories about vaccines and not like election stuff, vaccines and the whole nine yards. Democrats, it did look like it would go to the state Senate President who was a normal republican. The closing we, the democrats dumped 2 million on the state Senate President s head. Won the nomination by half a point. That is close. Again, the last two polls have the incumbent Democrat Part of me i think is, i cannot accept the fact he might win the senate race. I am probably wrongly putting it on the periphery when it might be more of a tossup. If Current Trends continue, which all trends continue until they dont, but if these trends continue, he would have a good chance of winning that senate seat. About tickets splitting. Talk about the interrelation in the two weirdest senate races. You have governors of the opposite party, who notorious candidates of the opposite Party Gubernatorial candidates of the opposite party. Herschel walker and John Fetterman. How does that get reconciled . In previous years, i would say they are not correlated. Because governors are special. Vermont has a republican governor, most Democratic State in the country. Increasingly, things have conversed. One thing that is interesting is that Stacey Abrams and warnock are not that far apart. Warnock is doing a little better than abrams. Kemp and walker were substantially apart, which tells me this is my theory of how this plays out. Undecideds are republicans. They are like, i do not know if i can vote for this guy. Which is why i think we have seen this tightening. When you have a president with 48 strong disapproval, there is a chance the voters disapprove of the job the president is doing. I think in georgia, how many kemp warnock voters are there going to be . How many schapiro, oz voters are out there . It is an increasingly polarized environment. You have to think everything is going to converge. A ton of under votes. Yeah, i think there will be some republicans will say, i do not have to pull the lever for warnock. I think you will see a fair amount of that. We cannot let you out of here without talking about your home state of ohio. You didnt put it on your list. I understand why. The ohio race is much closer than you would expect. Also, a big delta between the governors race. J. D. Vance might win by smaller, what is your opinion . I like to say polling errors are random and you cannot predict them. If you get a few in a row, ohio polling has been atrocious for a decade now. It is really bad. In 2018 where the polling there wasnt a single pole mike dewine lead in. The contrary case of tim ryan comes from young, found, the swing area of the state. Which is a weird thing to say. He might over perform. At the end of the day, the fact that he rise at 44 i think this is a classic race where it probably adds up ryan gets a point or two up to 46 or 47. But, vance wins by six or eight points. We have talked about bad candidates. That primary is that was the worst primary of my life. J. D. Vance, josh mandel, the quintessential establishment candidate who decided he was going to be coming just because. And was terrible at it. He burned money at one point. He had a video where he said, by, bitcoin and lit a 10 bill on fire on twitter. People were like, i do not know, j. D. Vance. I do not know. That was a doozy. Mike gibbons challenged someone to a fight on the debate stage. It was real. Ok. Now. I think we have got an idea of which way the wind is blowing. It is republican, but how republican . Norm knows a lot about what happens when he when you have changes when stuff goes on. Now, he is going to give us the lay of the land. If things were to go as i think the four of us have concurred, that would, what is going to happen . First, let me say, this is the 40th year we have done this. I was president present at the creation. We have the creator here. Here, here. [applause] they started election watch before anybody else was doing anything like it. Also, sean mentioned Research Assistant. One of our own is sitting in the front row. Andrew helped a lot with election watch when he was here. With that, a couple of comments as we move along. Adam, like josh mandel, has a characteristic. 18 members of his own family said they were going to vote for his opponent. So, you lose your own family but that doesnt necessarily mean that you are going to lose your state. I would keep and i on iowa, 89yearold Chuck Grassley is the republican candidate. He was campaigning yesterday in the nursing home. Ask a resident, do you know who i am . She said, no, but if you ask at the front desk, they will tell you. [laughter] first used on George Walker bush. North carolina, if in fact our panelists are wrong and the trend swirls more, we may see a couple of upsets in the senate. It is not clear. I would add that the polling is terrible. You cannot trust polling. Response rates are down to an almost trace element level. This is not science anymore. Cooks trying to get the right mix of people. We have some polls that are horrible. Media are doing a terrible job of sorting out the ones to Pay Attention to and the ones that you do not Pay Attention to. There are some out there that rigged the results early on so they can get included in the composite numbers and then try to adjust towards the end so when they are rated is when they are decent pollsters, they come out ok. We do not know a lot about where we are, we know there has been a surge of early voting. All of that taken into account, it is hard to imagine the circumstance now where democrats hold onto the house of representatives and the senate is in the balance. Lets talk about the consequences. Again, i fault the media. It is a horse race, or all about John Fettermans stroke. It is not about what these elections actually mean, there is little about what the candidates are saying or what they stand for. One thing we know is, as fivethirtyeight. Com is pointed out, at least 126 republican candidates for the house with a 95 plus chance of winning are election deniers. Almost 300 republican candidates for the house, senate, governorships, attorney general positions and secretary of state positions, a substantial majority of all those candidates are election deniers. That does not mean they are narrowly focused on whether 2020 was won by biden or trump, it is a radical, populist attitude. That means the republican majority in the house is going to have a substantial majority of its own members who fit into that category. That means when we look at what will be divided government, almost certainly, we will talk about the senate in a minute. It means we are headed for extremely difficult times. We can look at an analogy. The analogy is the 2011 congress coming in after the disastrous 2010 election for democrats. The tea party surge coming in. We know that people already surge was embedded and encouraged by the three Republican Leaders at the time who called themselves the young guns. Paul ryan, Kevin Mccarthy, eric cantor. We know right from the getgo, they planned a confrontation with barack obama over the debt ceiling with a series of demands. We came dangerously close to going into default. If it were not for that was egged on by Kevin Mccarthy and eric cantor. If it were not for john boehner and Mitch Mcconnell, who saw i think in boehners case that this would be a disaster for the country, in mcconnells case, a disaster for the republicans who were trying to recapture a majority in the senate, pulled us back from the brink. We came close to breaching the debt ceiling. Interest rates went up and was estimated by economic consultants a few years later, it probably cost an extra 18 billion to the federal government because of just simply the threat of that happening. The biggest question mark we have heading into next year is, will we get a repeat of that . I would say, we will get a repeat except we will come closer to the abyss. Back then, the tea party group, that populist, conservative group coming in, was a driving force in the republican majority. But, not the majority of the majority. We did not have a Freedom Caucus at that point. We had the Republican Study Committee, created in 1973 to try and move the party in a conservative direction. 2015 in the middle of that revolution, we got the Freedom Caucus. The right wing Republican Study Committee was not rightwing enough. Now, we have another group that says the Freedom Caucus is not rightwing enough. I would wager to you that the Freedom Caucus, or its equivalents, will have a majority of the majority. A substantial majority of the majority. Back after we came back from the break, jason chapins, tea party person in the house said, we would have pushed this over the cliff. They did not. This time, they might. One of the Big Questions we will see in the lameduck session after the ducks have settled from the selection is whether the two parties, and in particular, Mitch Mcconnell who understands the consequences of this, will work with democrats to try and get a fix to the debt ceiling. We are the only significant nation that has a requirement that you increase the debt ceiling every time you come close to where it is. If not, we could be headed for extraordinarily difficult times. Let me say in addition, we are going to have divided government. We will probably have divided government. I think it is more likely than not, sean aside, that democrats seek out a narrow majority. Lets stipulate that for the moment. You cannot plummet legislation by yourself. Even if you have both houses of congress. You have to overcome president ial vetoes if you are trying to implement policy change. It is not clear what policies would be on the table for that. What you can do if you have the legislative branch is use two powers to assert your authority. One is the investigative power. We already know what is on the agenda. It will be investigations of afghanistan, hunter biden, large numbers of both of those. Of the border. It will be investigations leading towards the impeachment of at least Merrick Garland and Alejandro Mallorcas and others. We will see a lot of investigations that have been promised by jim jordan, who will chair the judiciary committee. And Kevin Mccarthy himself has said he wants to give Marjorie Taylor greene a prominent position on the government oversight reform committee, which itself is a major investigative outlet. The second is the power of the purse. Using that leverage, the debt ceiling and spending itself, we already know in the works is an attempt to cut back on or cut out aid to ukraine. We also know that both the debt ceiling and the appropriations are going to be used as leverage probably to try and force resignations of some cabinet members. Also to try and bring about fundamental change in medicare and medicaid. Kevin mccarthy has said that using the debt ceiling to try and dramatically change medicare, medicaid and social security. These are going to be nonnegotiable items. We are likely to see government shutdowns at least for period of time, targeted appropriations. It will not be every appropriation. But, and an enormously contentious time. It may be some things below the surface that will get done. But, in more than 50 years of being immersed in this process, i have not seen a dynamic as potentially disruptive as this one to governance in the broadest sense at the federal level. If republicans take majority in the senate, they have an additional power. That is the power of confirmation. We know that there will be no more judges during the final two years of joe bidens term. And we know we are likely to see significant disruptions in the administration itself. What happens in every administration, after two years, you see a lot of turnover. Cabinet members some cabinet people, and a lot of others leave. They leave before the end of the term, sometimes they are just tired. Other times, they are looking for the next opportunity and one will leave before the end of the term. Normally, what you hope will happen if you are a president is you will have filled all the lower ranks. The third, the fourth, the fifth level. The Deputy Assistant secretaries. So when the assistant secretaries and under secretaries or cabinet officials and agency heads leave, you have people confirmed and in place where you can move them up. Even if they are not confirmed for their new position under the vacancies act, you can move them as acting people. A lot of those positions have not been filled in the biden administration. Some of them at the lower levels will leave. That will mean if they do not get confirmed or the people coming and do not get confirmed with any timeliness that they can be dragged out or blocked entirely, you can have a hollowed out administration. Where you have a congress and a president that cannot Work Together to get legislation work, you use executive action. It is going to be harder to use executive action if you cannot have your own people in place to actually administer those jobs. What will that do to the electorate is one of the most interesting questions we have. I think one of the reasons we have seen this populace of not just emerge but persist through bad times and good times is that since that government isnt working. One of the consequences of this is two generations of Younger Voters do not think much of democracy. We know that we are getting close to a majority of people if polls are to be viewed as accurate who think a strong leader who is unelected would be better than a weak leader who is elected. We are moving closer to a point where the dysfunction of government is going to make autocracy seem more attractive. The consequences for this are not just about what happens in the next year or two. But, much more broadly for what kind of a republic, if any, we will have looking ahead towards 2024 or 2025. I just come back as chris was talking about governors, if some of these elections denying governors. If some of these gubernatorial candidates win, keep your eye on the Supreme Court and the independent legislators doctrines and cases moving forward. The case for the 2024 election becomes crucial as well. One followup, you talked about what Congress Might do, we had clinton and 94 and barack obama in who lost their majorities and i would say they took different stances. Clintons opinion was more conciliatory and barack obama continued with his stance over all. What do you think joes stance will be . What is his legislative Program Going to look like with a partially Republican Congress . There wont be a legislative program basically. Biden is a 36 year veteran of the senate still basically believes in the legislative process. As youve seen over the last few months, he recognizes its not what it was. I suspect he will be more combative in his public approach and he will try as best as he can use that executive authority. One of the other factors to keep in mind as we now have a Supreme Court that has changed its fundamental view of executive power. Perhaps because there is an executive they are not as happy with stuff we are very close to having the Supreme Court reject the chevron doctrine. That was one of the things that Antonin Scalia a with most ardent about. If agencies follow the administrative procedure act and make an honest effort with ambiguities in the law to carry out their constitutional functions of faithfully administering the law, it has to be very specific in the legislation and we saw that in the case of the epa. Congress came back and basically gave the epa back authority to deal with clean air. Even over the last 20 years where its been more difficult to do things and they are more ambiguous you could build a coalition to make it work, along with the reality that things happen, you dont know what will occur. We had the cdc curtailed when it comes to its authority to do with Public Health with the pandemic. There may be a different kind of pandemic or a chemical attack that comes along that is not specifically covered in the law and we may see the court say you cant act under those circumstances. There will be more challenges to executive authority if you find that congress and the president cannot Work Together in the federal government may become less and less functional from a low functionality otherwise. If somehow democrats manage to win both houses, we would see reconciliation where you can overcome a filibuster. If they got a few more senate seats and held the house, the likelihood which is infinitesimal, we might see changes in the filibuster rule where more be done but we are far off from any of those options and i think biden will try to take this to the country and as to how the country asked all of that, its an unknown. We will get to questions momentarily. If you are watching at home and have questions, you can send your emailed to us. I like to enough that you can say you can go on twitter with the election watchadi. The New York Times poll that was out at the beginning of this week said that 80 of americans, including all per lyrical persuasions if left unchecked would destroy the country. You laid out how republicans could destroy republicans. I promise you republicans are sincere when they say they think democrats are trying to destroy the republic. They point to a lot of cultural issues and Economic Issues and they are sincere. I know you are sincere. What do we do to come back from a place where 46 of the country thinks another 46 of the country is not just wrong but evil and is not just incorrect trying to destroy the country . How do we as citizens, i was going to say intellectuals but how can we come back from this and not persist in this acrid space . You are right about where the space is. Its the cancer of tribalism. We dont simply have polarization. Weve been talking about the quality of candidates and the quality of candidates does not matter anymore because you were looking at whether you will give comfort to the enemy by choosing someone who is a better candidate over someone who is utterly unqualified for a position or incapable of serving but hes one of your own. Weve lost a lot of the acuity you would hope to find in elections and we are seeing primary elections that are decided not on the basis of who is the best person to serve in office but over how much they carry the tribal armament forward. Its very hard to get out of that and its hard to get out of it because its a cultural problem even more than a structural problem. Changing culture is extremely difficult. I will also tell you that if we didnt have any of this, i could be up here saying weve got a serious problem of legitimacy Going Forward because our constitutional structures are getting skewed in a way that moves us further from voters choosing representatives who actually represent them step number i use over and over again as we are almost at a point were 70 of americans will live in 15 of our states and 50 and 80 in eight states. That means 30 of americans will all accept these senators. We talk about the house and its interesting that nobody mentioned redistricting or gerrymandering. Because of both natural geographical patterns and the way in which redistricting is taking place, we are increasingly skewed in the house. You have elections in which a majority of americans vote one way but the legislatures dont show up that way and in the states, its even more skewed. In wisconsin you could have exceed percent of voters voting one way and the legislature from the other party. If voters go to the polls over and over and see that what they are voting for doesnt come out, you will have a crisis of legitimacy in the same is true with the electoral college. If you put all of that together with the tribalism where looks like government cannot do anything that is resolving problems that face the country, where do you go . I think what we have to do is focus first on people who would be happy to move us away from a republic and toward an autocracy and try to isolate them from the process. Then weve got to try to do what we can to nominate and elect people who will work to solve problems and not to just act in a fashion thats all about lowering the place of so we can ultimately prevail. This will not be easy for dish or a shortterm problem. Its the biggest challenge weve had since the 1850s or 1860s. I heard they were not great. Its question time so lets start with somebody online stuff do we have anybody on the machine . Yes, someone online says that early voting used to be huge. It used to be the democrats used to benefit so what has changed . Its not true that low turnout benefit republicans. We had evidence that says that is not so. Anyway, why dont you field this one. I would encourage everyone to exercise great caution reading anything into early voting data that is coming in because it is true that perhaps a decade ago, early voting or mailin voting was perhaps split between the parties during the 2020 election and then we saw republicans, the idea of mailin voting in early voting was poisoned on that side its entirely possible its coming back. We dont yet know so i would encourage everybody people dont say republicans are doing well because all of these red precincts. Take all of that with an enormous grain of salt. The president ial election of 2016, 40 of the votes were cast early and then it went to 60 the next cycle. We dont know what percentage will be early voting. We have permanent shifts in pandemic voting. Get a hunch and bet a bunch. People showing up early might not show up later so it says nothing about the overall turnout and doesnt say anything about the differentials. I agree, with caution. Early voting is dictated by the latest democratic leaders. These are the jokes. Lunch and a show, not bad. Who has a good question in the room . This young lady right here. Hi, im interested in why you all think democrats have lost their game since the summer. Is it an unpopular president or did democrats misplayed the politics of dobbs and the economy . What would you have told them to do . I am not inviting thedccc. Is that the fundamental and inflation and the economy or did democrats actually mess up and choose the wrong message . I think it can be a little bit of both. This will always be a challenging year for democrats and they got very much in their anger about the Dobbs Decision and it felt like they could they had been dealt an incredible political hand. There are questions of if that peaked too early and was the anger around that decision, has it cooled off a bit . There was a chance that some of the states passing laws that would have gone one direction or the other and candidates putting their foot in the mouth on the issue could have kept alive perhaps more than it has so far. I think by going all in that this is the thing that will save us the election meant missing out on opportunities like chris mentioned earlier, to go on the offense with crime or mental justice. There were opportunities that may have been missed in the sense that dobbs just opened this opportunity that would allow them to defy gravity. They may have gone too far there and as gravity reasserts itself, its hard to come out with this. Maybe its a message on inflation but it might be too late in the game. I think a lot of what happened was the democrats were angry about joe biden. They thought he had not been progressive enough and there was a lot of biden complaints within the Democratic Party which is why you saw the college, the student loan forgiveness and you saw the speech in philadelphia at frankensteins castle. This is why you saw all that stuff because he was trying to get democrats to reengage. What do you think . I dont think i think those democrats were always going to come home and be democrats. They were saying they would sit out or they were undecided but those were democratic votes in the end. Part of this is a question of enthusiasm. We can look back and if i had been joe biden with gas prices sparking, i would have hauled in the top executives from the Oil Companies and beat them over the head about excess profits and show your fighting. I think thats one of the reasons why ron desantis is doing as well as he isnt is in florida despite a lot of things that should not be working to his advantage because people think hes tough and hes later step thats how you get your enthusiasm levels up. In the end, we dont know but we may look back and say this is keeping us strong in the kansas referendum was striking. We are living in a world where issues last for five or 10 minutes unless they come right back in front of you on a radar screen. The inflation issue because of gas and food prices, if your family because paycheck to paycheck, you see this every week or every day. To really destructive thing for a party to have to deal with most of i come back to the crime issue and i think chris is right, democrats could have used this issue to their advantage and they ignored it. This is something where you can use to say you are tougher on crime but then you they put republicans more on the defense. Where democrats were doing better, we were going to see a lot of the republicans move back. We were trying to fit things into a narrative and the special election probably is another place we got off on that. They all have peculiar characteristics but they were held at the same time as the primaries. Its a different set of people so we started to add up a bunch of things. There was all this good democratic news against the fundamentals but it wasnt always as good as we thought back in july and august. Are you suggesting a political analyst would over interpret data . Never. We would never do that. Lets do another one before we go online. [indiscernible] Parental Authority in Public Schools is a major issue Going Forward. A year later, to what extent if any is this an issue . I think we can still call this a pandemic election step when we so the education scores in every state got shelved, this is a pandemic election in ways we are probably not thinking about. Terry mcauliffe gave one of the worst answers to a question for a highlevel candidate. Was it a debate or an event . He said something to the effect that parents shouldnt say with their kids. Even when you look at virginia, there has been a parental journalists need a story. In Northern Virginia was to concentrate on that fight in loudoun county. If it really were a parental right election, you would expect big republican games in the last go round and thats not what you saw. You look at the swing on the county level and it was former trust estate. In areas where parental rights have a lot of issues joe bidens job approval is just starting to nosedive. You had that afghanistan withdrawal and inflation was certain starting to take upward. Youngkin was an attractive candidate stuff he was a good republican candidate. I dont think that was that kind of election come i think it was put a brake on democrats. We cannot underestimate the importance of covid fatigue on mood or that election. The School Closings were disruptive for people in the society. If you are a family with two parents working in one of them cannot work for two years because there is no place to take the kids, thats a horrible thing to have happen. If you dont have two parents working but you got six people in a twobedroom apartment, thats not any fun either. It takes a long time to come out of this and i think democrats made a huge mistake because it looked like they basically were not empathetic at all to what was happening to families out there. They said the science tells us to do this and we will just do this and that was a big backlash. We may go back into a threeway crisis with flu and the respiratory issue and the next strain of covid but even if we come out of it, the residue of that is still there and its a very sour one for people. You are all sunshine and rainbows. Lets take another one from the folks watching, what do we got . Gary wants to know more about the utah senate race. Why hasnt romney endorsed . Mike lee defeated the incumbent senator who was a very conservative republican. I cant remember if it was a balanced budget. They get to start thinking about the voting booth and what power they want controlling the senate. Utah is still a very republican state. I think it will be a close race then you would expect. People will likely decide for the republican. As far as the mitt romney component, im sure mitt romney finds it hilarious that this guy who used to torch him, how dare you not endorse . The advantage of being a quarter billionaire is not caring. Hes been diligent here of ron. Hes been just diligent here, right here. Do you get the sense that there is a silent majority out there in the privacy of the voting booth may in fact reject the doctrine . I didnt hear the last part. I guess the democratic antidobbs. In kansas there were 220,000 voters that didnt vote on anything except the referendum. Whats going on . I am skeptical there is a big group out there. On the very high side for historically, there is not a lot of people out there that are not coming to the polls. More people are coming to the polls then we expect. I guess i am broadly a believer to the extent that there might be something out there that is moving and we see the movement in republican direction. Maybe because its an election where the president of the Democratic Party is not doing so well i dont see a big silent majority with dobbs. There are three different ways you can wind up with a silent group of voters. One they are just not being contacted. You had problems like that in 2012. If you did not have a landline phone, you are not being called. The second ways they are contacting people but some people dont want to take the little take the poll at all. But maybe some people are just not comfortable at all and they say they are undecided but they are not. The problem the polling world is facing is its not clear how you would solve each of those problems which one may be more in play. In 2020, you had polls in states like texas which were off. Donald trump wasnt going to lose texas with a whole city would post a why were we missing top voters in texas and not just arizona stop why would you be missing trump voters in florida but not missing them in georgia . Thats one of the big challenges we as an industry are facing is its entirely possible that holes are missing groups of people systematically but the pattern is not clear and you dont have a clear pattern of whats wrong, there is no clear way to fix it. The governors race is the one affected by social issues. Oz is the media guy. You are ok saying oz. Doug could win the pennsylvania governorship and democrats who spent more money on his candidacy then he did should be ashamed of themselves for doing that stuff it was reckless and i use that advisedly, just patriotic, it was a rotten thing to do stop dispatriotic, it was a rotten thing to do. The discussion about the democrats about strategic choices they couldve made, the rise of crime, though sort of things. Ive talked to democratic organizers but i get no sense that organizers have any idea how far they are to the left on the political mainstream. Also that their views and what the right thing, whats unquestionably the right views are is unshakable. It seems that if the leadership of the democrats had not gone the way you are suggesting, people wouldnt have come out to kansas. The sort of worstCase Scenario question is are democrats are now trapped in that situation where they are simply now increasingly up party of college educators. One of the consequences of siloed media and people able to create their own media ecosystems they live in is that they are unaware of how crazy they sounds to other people. The people of pennsylvania who were voting for doug mastroiano, they assumed other people thought like them. They hadnt met anybody who doesnt think the election wasnt stolen and north korean zodiac boats were dropping ballots. Just like how democrats blew it in 2021. Instead of talking about how great it would be to pass infrastructure legislation and help Terry Mcauliffe when in virginia, they were ashamed of it because of their base. I think this is a media function. I will stop talking now. With thank you for coming today. Its not the end of election watch. We have a postelection event as always we hope you are there but we would like to thank everybody. Thank you all for tuning into this election watch and janice join us again thursday, november 10 where you will also get a free lunch and we will also have postelection analysis another wonderful set of panelists. Before we wrap up and say goodbye, how about a round the applause for our panelists . [applause]thanks. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2022]