Darlie cook has been one of the leading election analysts and the business for decades as founder of the aptly named cook report, a nonpartisan newsletter covering elections and campaigns across the country. It is great to see you again charlie. We are also happy to welcome back mathew dowd who has worked for leaders on both sides of the aisle including cheneys race and Arnold Schwarzeneggers campaign for governor. He is coauthor of the best selling book and news junkies have no doubt seen him as a political analysts on msnbc or abc news. We are very grateful to have real pro moderate as these are all real pros. It is great to have you back john harward as our moderator. He is a long respected veteran of political reporting from washington and the white house you may know him from his bylines at the washington journal one of the best. Turn over to you john. John thanks very much. Just to add on to your introduction, [indiscernible] i am going through a blue. So maybe. I would like to start by getting each of our panelist to respond to a core question. This is why i am so excited because i will learn as much as members of the audience are going to learn. The court question is this. Rachel, i will ask you to kick it off. We are very familiar with the historical times Midterm Election. It is almost without exception, not entirely but almost. The president s party in the first midterm loses seats. It becomes a magnet for peoples discontent, and we saw it under president bill clinton, they lost control of the house and senate. He then came back to win reelection. The same thing happened with barack obama. Reagan loss how seats and came back and was politically robust. So, it was baked into the expectation that this was going to be about a bad Midterm Election for democrats. On the other hand, what i have heard for the last year and a half from joe biden is that you cannot take the old rules in this environment. The polarization is extreme. January 6 created a new context. Donald trump is is a is a new unique political figure who changes the balance of forces in the race. Rachel, to what extent do you think we are ultimately going to end up with an election driven by the normal historical patterns versus the circumstances that are unique to this moment, which by the way includes the supreme or on roe v. Wade . Thank you for asking me that. I will kick off by saying that the 2018 forecast work that i did was about theoretically bringing election analysis up to Political Science analysis about behavior and how this changes are Political Behavior and actual behavior of voters in meaningful ways that can affect predicting elections but how they conducted an best wage. When we think about midterm effects on Election Night of 2022 is when i began thinking of them midterm. Clearly we were going to have a messy end of the trump tenure. The midterm event advantages is a structured thing. It is the status quo bias as he described. In my book next year, a layout extensively for folks what the average american civic repertoire to draw on in interpret political stimuli is. It is very narrow frankly. The midterm effect is powered by some semblance of the electorate that is going to blame the president and party and that is defined entirely by the president for what is going on. It could be directly or pandemic inflation. It does not matter. The midterm effect is incredibly difficult. What i will say is this, what we should expect to see is Something Different than 18. In 18 we had a standard midterm. The negative partisanship drives democrats and independents to the polls. Instead, what we will see this time are two really engage electorates. The earlier dating vota and elections that have occurred since row indicate the coalition of democrats have been agitated by the robe reversal, but the conversion pool is really going to be extremely critical. I think in the conversion, the conversation has been successfully dominated about inflation and gas and prices and stuff like that. As to what to expect, we have never been in this situation before. We have voters that are behaving empirically different than they used to 20 years ago. We are in a spot where we are going to conduct a midterm with things that we have never had in the system. I think it is reasonable to proceed with caution in terms of assuming what is going to happen, but at the same time, i think we should expect to see some republican advantage, some gains based off the in party midterm effect. It is just a matter of how much are democrats able to blunted that. I would be very shocked if they were able to reverse a midterm effect. It becomes about management and that map and trying to mitigate loss. John thank you. How about the balance of historical ties verse sis the unique temp contours of this moment . I dont think there will be any disagreement on the unique contours of this moment we are in. I think this will be the most consequential election the country has faced since 1860. If you look at all of the patterns of this, we are in that moment where there i will give you an example. There was never a time when a pollster asked about as an issue threats to democracy. That was never on the list of anybody, and is a big concern of voters. I know everybody talks about inflation as number one, but it is not down that far. It is the number one issue among democrats, threats to democracy followed closely by roe v. Wade and third by inflation. As a motivator, that is there. I think it is very hard to describe this election and give odds and what is going to happen without saying that i think fundamentally, there is democracy at risk in this election. I think joe biden was correct. I wish that the speech was given many more times in a much stronger way. I know we will talk about that in a minute. There is no red wave and there is no blue wave. I think this is not 20110 and this is not 2018. This is not 1994. This is not 1982. This is not any of those years. If the threat to democracy and republicans had nominated normal candidates, i dont think there would be any russian about what would be happening. They didnt as we all know. Thats where this election, there is Historical Data that i am fully aware of where that is. We are also in a moment that is unlike any moment we have seen in my view in our lifetimes. I will give you one data point that has been ignored by a lot of people. The data point is among people that somewhat disapprove of the president , among people that somewhat disapprove of the president it is about 15 of the electorate that number is normally one by the out party by 30 points, that number, people that somewhat disapprove. Not strongly. Strongly vote 955 republicans. Normally the in party loses it by 30 points. Joe biden for the last two months and those people that somewhat disapprove, the democrats have at worst case split that boat, split the people that somewhat disapprove of the president. What that tells me is that this is what i think democrats could have done a better job on, why this makes this election anybody that says this is what is going to happen on Election Night is fooling you. I think this election is going to be decided by a few hundred thousand votes. Whether though those swing one way or another, i could not tell you. The house and senate and key statewide offices, 120 million plus people will vote in this election. All those three things we decided by a couple hundred thousand votes. That is the reality of the moment we are in. John i want to go to charlie cook, who is someone i have known for a long time who would never fool an audience, which is why he is the closer of this question. Charlie, i put that fundamental division that i put to rachel and matthew to your colleague amy a few months ago. This is when and so was saying no, throughout the rules, and amy said gravity. At the end of the day, gravity is going to prevent these Democratic Candidates from running so far ahead of joe biden. I get the statistic that matthew was mentioning, but that ultimately is going to way down democrats in november. Is that we are seeing right now . I think amy and i are on the same page. To me, fundamentals matter. We have had 10 full months this year, and 80 of them have had every indication of being a classic Midterm Election. August and september did not, but starting about the second week of october, it looks like every classic Midterm Election that we have ever seen. I personally acknowledge that none of us can be certain about anything anymore, but i feel virtually certain that the house is gone. I feel it is fairly likely that democrats lose control of the senate, and i very deliberately choose the phrase democrats lose as opposed to republicans win. Republicans i think are not going to prevail in the house and senate because they have better candidates or their policy ideas of what they are saying or doing or have done. What we have seen is an epic misreading by President Biden an epic misreading of the economy in 2021. I think democrats are going to pay an enormous price on that. We are a very, very amazingly evenly divided country, yet, the last six president ial elections, and four of them have each had margins that were less than the population of my hometown of shreveport, louisiana, which is only 180,000. When you have an evenly divided country, when you win the presidency by 126,000 votes in their states, when you win the senate by 55,000 votes in one senate race, when you hold onto the host house, in five congressional districts, you dont have a mandate to do squat. Now, republicans were like this after 2016 and democrats after 2020, it is never too small to declare a mandate. Now, strategists on both sides, i think they look at polling data and election data like a rorschach test. As a result, i think it was classic miscalculation, that is not what the country was looking for. Joe biden, who is a wonderful guy won the nomination because he wasnt bernie sanders, and he won the general election because he was a donald trump. He just barely won. An agenda, historic and transformational. They just wanted things to be normal again, that is all. They werent looking for fdr. Charlie, to press you on that point, is that by way of shooting saying, that joe biden has come into office and basically done nothing and simply pass budgets and said, ok, we will calm down and not try to press the priorities . Obviously, when you have a divided country, there is not a singular message from the electorate, and departed electorate that nominated joe biden wanted certain things done. Are you saying they simply should have stepped away from all those things . To be 126,000 votes after 150 million cast is a rounding error. There was no more mandate for historic transformational change. Im not talking about a mandate you start with a Coronavirus Relief package that is about one fourth the size of what they did. When you go with infrastructure, and tell people to shut up and sit down, and holding infrastructure passage to do build back better. I am not saying do nothing, but there was not a mandate for change anymore for democrats after 2020, the other was for republicans after 2016. Let me press you on one other thing. The notion of the epic miscalculation. If this is something that happens nearly every Midterm Election with the new president , that would suggest that there are forces bigger than the individual calculations of a president and his chief of staff and his political strategist that set the outcome. Saying that biden had a big miscalculation, is not also to say that reagan screwed it up and couldnt screwed it up, and obama screwed it up . I think the Opposition Party in each of those cases was weaker none of them were as weak as republicans were coming into this one. Republicans are going to win this thing. You never had something look as unappetizing as republicans have. They will just win because of who they are not, not because of who or what they are or where they stood. I just think, as i said, politically, it was misreading the election and then, economically, how could you have been more wrong about the economy seriously. Inflation would not be a problem it will be transitory and you blow the hell out of a stimulus package that was grossly too large given the economy has bottomed out in the Second Quarter of the year before biden took office. Maybe rachel wants to take this. I will say my part in this. I am a huge fan, i have always been a huge fan of charlie. I dont think there is anything joe biden could have done. How he governed or whatever, that would have changed the dynamic that we sit here this year from a policy standpoint. Joe bidens numbers, fundamentally started turning down as global inflation fundamentally turning down. Afghanistan, the way afghanistan was covered, we look at the numbers, and as that number settled in and began to rise, global inflation hit. England faced it, germany faces it, all that. Nothing joe biden did his job approval today, 43 or 44 . Exactly on average of every president , not george w. Bush who had 9 11, of president s that have faced the first midterm. I will say, from a communications standpoint i think the dynamics, regardless of what joe biden has done in the presidency or not, he would have been at a 43 or 44 job Approval Rating because of the dynamics of what was going on fundamentally. That is my view. I agree with him, about 2020, though i would argue it was the 7 million margin. What he won the country by was 7 million votes. I get the Electoral College number in this. So, to me, i think the problem, fundamentally, was communication. Not the policies he pushed, but, the communication, not in 2021, but for the last six months. Rachel, let me invite you in here and add one other element to this question. With charlies formulation, there is no chance that you would do anything, for example, on Climate Change, which is what they did as part of that inflation reduction act, which is what build back better ended up with. Do you agree that as a matter of political strategy and attempting to make yourself healthier in 2022, they should have set aside priorities like that in order to appeal to a Broader Group of the electorate . I think you need to unmute. [laughter] i didnt have a direct line for joe biden, which occurred under armed guards that was shuttered and held by the national guard. If i had, i would have told him, you might want to make that speech a little different than you had planned. He ran for president on these policies under the assumption that we will have a normal functioning country with a normal functioning Opposition Party. If you tell people you are going to do all this stuff, you have to do some of it. I really think they did strategically screw up by not making what is happening in america crystal clear. None of this is normal. When you stand on the stage under armed guard after an armed insurrection and do the regular political stunt, that is normalizing the abnormal. Anything that normalizes what the Republican Party morphed into and what it does come out to me, is a bad strategy. That said, is charlie right . In some regards, the democrats master massively underserved the progressive base. This progressive and spirited base. At the end of the day, either he could do everything or he could do nothing. At the end of the day, the problem is not what you do, it is what people know that you do or think that you do. Our system operates on the assumption that millions of people will walk into the ballot booth and they will know everything that happened and make an informed choice. That is not what is going to happen. Most people dont watch news, not even local news. Dont read news anymore. They dont do any of the things like that. For them, it will really come down to statistical bias. So, really what it comes down to is, what kind of strategic answer the democrats bring to the problem of the very aggressive Opposition Party. Just mulling through and hoping that if we just a normal, things will stay normal for us, has been an abject failure. I know mathew agrees with me, the election needed to be broadly defined by the electorate. The more that we do that, the better. I think in the coming days, especially coming out of the election, the governorships of the midwest is evidence that effect a, a midterm win for democrats. But, b, radical to having a free and fair 2024 election. The wisconsin governors race is probably the most pivotal race in the whole country. Making a clear to america as best as we can come out without the media coverage, that on their ballot is democracy, and what that means to them at the personal level, what it would be like under an economy run by one party, or to own a business, they did it in nazi germany. They got the business communities under the revolution and then took over. We really need state training to have any chance. We may fall short, as charlie just pointed out. They dont look great for the house. At the same time, what we should be looking at, one week from this election cycle, we would be, even with all of our work on reform, without roe v. Wade being repealed, it is we should be looking at forecasts by charlie cook, getting upgraded from 20 seat to 30 seats to 40 seats. They have a very strong strategic operation on the right. Much better than ours across the board. I really do think this ultimately is about accepting the systems, there will always be one immigrant that got in and killed a girl or whatever. It comes down to us accepting that we have to transition and play the way they play it. The characterization of inflation, our inflation shot up before comparable countries did, long before the russian invasion of ukraine. Our inflation shot up, on the backs of two previous rounds of stimulus, was everything the fan had done, we did a greater stimulus than other countries did, and inflation shot up before it did in these other countries, and long before russia invaded ukraine. I reject the notion that while everybody got inflation, the president is a victim of a global circumstance, no, it was shooting up long before russia went into ukraine, long before these other countries have their inflation go up. Let me just say, charlie knows this. There is no Economic Data, not an ounce of Economic Data that says passage of a stimulus package and those things drove inflation. The Federal Reserve bank of San Francisco read it. Charlie, i dont want to argue joe bidens economic policies. All i am saying, my bottom line was, joe bidens approval number today is exactly the approval number every president but george w. Bush intimate term. Matthew, i am not going to linger on this, you are getting to my point. If the issue is that they are bad communicators, and every president ends up at this Approval Rating, it sounds to me like you are saying every one of those president s have a bad Communications Operation as opposed to these are forces embedded in our politics and the way our politics work that occur over and over again. I am going to go to something that you said, i would have argued, but for the last four years, the weight of a midterm always comes into play. This is different. We have not seen a this is a different year because there is a large segment of voters that believes there is a threat to democracy in america today, and large segment of voters believe that. I agree with rachel. The dynamic of this race the communication is a problem for me. If you understand that to be the case in where we were as a country, the democrats and the president and every single committee should have drawn a line and made this entire campaign about that. If the normal standard of a midterm falls into play, they had no chance. If they argued about the economy, they had no chance. The chance they had was the dynamic and the consequential election we are in today. Whether or not you can succeed, i think the democrats will do better than normal in this normal year. I think they will win races that they normally would lose. For the republicans being bananas in this time, i dont think it will be a red wave. It may be a red trickle, but my problem with the communications is not setting the line on the selection and spending the 4 billion which they will have spent by election day on television. They will have spent 4 billion to say, this is the dynamic of this election and this is why it matters. Im going to move to a different topic. I suspect you disagree with what mathew just said, but we wont linger on it. Lets talk about some specific races. The house races are somewhat more anonymous and somewhat more influenced by the tides of the election in a broad sense. Senate races stand on their own a little bit more. You have a bunch of them that are very close, which is why people say, toss up, maybe republicans favored a little bit. We really dont know the outcome. I wonder when you think about pennsylvania, nevada, georgia, arizona, maybe on the fringes, ohio and north carolina, do you see all of these dominoes falling in the same direction . Or will there be something a little more idiosyncratic about the results . Historically, the dominoes tend to fall in very clear directions. The last four elections we have had, republicans have won the lions share of the tossup senate races in all four, and in the house in three out of four. In 2020, when the blue wave became the dead sea in the last week or two, you had every single tossup house race in the country that went republican. Every single one. I think a lot of the rhetoric that had taken place during the democratic president ial primaries came back to haunt them. During the summer of 2020. It is hunting them right now, too. Whether it is defund the police or Green New Deal or medicare for all, or whatever. I think it is a function of lack of ideological diversity that both of our parties have that i think strategist, the leaders, i think they are so obsessed with reaching their bases that they dont even know what it looks like. What pure independence looks like. I think it comes down to while there are a bunch of close ones, arizona, New Hampshire, maybe even colorado, washington, north carolina, wisconsin. At the end of the day, i think between nevada and adam, georgia, warnock, walker, ohio, vance, ryan, pennsylvania, oz, fetterman, whichever party wins three out of four will be the majority in the senate, i suspect it will be republicans. The polling has understated republicans in recent years, very consistently. You are assuming the same as the case this year . Yes. Let me ask you about one specific race there. How in hell is Herschel Walker in a position to win a United States senate race given the way he has performed on the trail instead of issues and controversies and scandals that have trailed him running against a respectable democratic opponent i dont know how you would assess him, what does it say about our politics and how is it that Herschel Walker might be the next senator of georgia . Let me explain this. In american politics, because we have a pretty bad civic culture, most people are forming their political opinions about heuristic. That effects mostly voters who have claimed independent, they vote nine out of 10 times on the sign they lean. Really important for people to understand how powerful that party heuristic was. It is 10 times more strong now, as gary jacobs who doesnt research every year on the elections, has shown great party loyalties, all that stuff has increased dramatically. It is not true that we have two parties with a homogenous ideologies. The model spectrum on the Republican Coalition is conservative. The modal ideological spectrum on the left is still moderate. Those are really important points to keep in mind. We look at the Alabama Special Senate election between moore and jones, when we look at the polls, what we see is that 90 of republicans voted still for moore, that was after a very credible allegation of serial child molestation. I think that 95 of georgia republicans will cast votes for Herschel Walker, yes, i do. I think a good portion of the rightleaning independents do. Where we are seeing the polls go and do right now, is fairly predictable. We see partisans who are getting stimulus for campaigns get rejuvenated, it reminds them which tribe they identify with. We always see this narrowing of the polls. As charlie pointed out, our polling infrastructure is very challenged. It was never designed to tell the truth. It has a statistical margin of error. That makes it literally impossible for calling to tell us that. They are usually generally good at picking up prevailing wins. I was equally certain that the democrats would not only hold all of house seats in 2018, but pick them up. I was using nothing but Empirical Data to make those assumptions. That is exactly not what happened. They lost 14 seats. That is why they are in so much danger of control of the house now. It is really important for people to go into Election Night understanding, the results of the house will take days to know , because seven of the seats are in california and that is what by mail. Also, it was extremely hard whipped democrats to hold the house without margin. If they only win the senate and three midwest governors it has to be all three if you want free and Fair Elections in 2023, i will be through the roof so excited. I wanted 4 million so i could do exactly what he wanted to do. I failed in that effort. There are certain candidates that campaigned in certain states that are running reform strategy that matches charlie cooks strategy. Very aggressive, hyperbolic, branding operation. I would never bet against it. Matthew dowd should be able to tell you this. The Republican Party has perfected the art of manipulation and turnout. We dont have a system that even comes close to matching that. This has been about how much reform can we push in two years if we can keep a red wave to a red trickle and save those three midwestern governorships, i think we will be talking pretty strongly about how strong a performance democrats have. Rachel referred to structural problems with polling. Very difficult to get good samples and try to compensate for problems not always successfully. Sometimes they do ok. Let me ask you about a different structure, the structure of election ministration. After the 2020 election, after january 6, chance to jigger the election, how quickly do you think we are going to get the results of next weeks election and secondly, how confident are you that the outcome will reflect, fairly reflect the will of the voters in that election . I will take the second question first. I am very confident that the election results, when we have them, will be a fair and accurate representation of what happened, what the people of the state that voted wanted. I am very confident of that, that 99. 9 of the people that are in place today, which could be different on november 9, the people are confident, they want to do the job, they want to do it well. The next question completely depends on the jurisdiction. A place like New Hampshire will have it fairly quickly and fairly certainly very fast read they always do, they do it well, they do it fast. It will actually be interesting to me, the state will now fairly quickly directionally where this election is headed. I think that is one of the one of the first directions that we will know the margins in those two house races and what happens in the senate race. A place like california, i agree with rachel, we probably wont know for at least a week. Arizona could take four days. I dont think that we are going to know who won the United States senate we may have ideas about it. And who won the United States house, for at least 48 to 72 hours after election day. For certainty. We may have a good indication because of seats that were called, for certainty, we are not going to know what is going to happen until probably two or three days after election day. One more question to charlie, then we will go to questions from our audience. Charlie, matthew talked about the threat to democracy and said democrats should elevate that as a core issue of the campaign. I have heard Many Democrats state the opposite argument, you cant move the voters that way, they should have been talking about inflation. Let me just ask you a question of substance. Do you personally think that the threat to democracy has been exaggerated or overhyped . Or do you think that there is a genuine question, depending on the outcome of the election . My wife calls me a pathological optimist, that is my nature. I do have very real concerns. I also think there is a fair amount of hyperbole on both sides. For example, when you have the highest Midterm Election turnout since 2018, since 1914, at the highest president ial turnout in 120 years obviously there werent that many votes suppressed. May not have been for lack of trying. I think democrats i think confidence in our institutions and elections is being eroded, and being eroded more by what republicans are saying and doing then what democrats are. When you have Stacey Abrams go a year plus before conceding that she had lost in georgia, it wasnt that darn close. It undermines confidence. I have concerns. What i dont know is how many republicans who are saying they are not sure that joe biden won the election, how many of them actually believe that . And how much is just the path of least resistance . I think if you are in a lot of situations, for a republican, if you said, i disagree with everything that President Biden has done, and i wish he hadnt won, but he won fair and square, that would basically be saying, i dont ever want to win a republican primary again, i would rather not have republicans turnout for me. It is not excusing their behavior, but it is, in terms of the people that would be in the secretary job or ag job, i am worried about that. I think that every time democrats talk about anything other than the economy and inflation, they are basically sending a message that i dont get what is scaring the hell out of you. I think a lot more people are scared about the economy than they are about threats to democracy. The questions that show the threats to democracy so high, they are generally ones that accept two or three different biggest problems. Not the single most. It is not up there with the economy and inflation. T. I invite you to return to the screen and begin helping us parse some audience questions. Im not trying to hide. Im always mugging. Good. That was a terrific and sobering conversation that ive heard from you so far but we have heard a few questions on the board, i want to start with cans of ascii ken sebaski. The question i have is the Democratic Party does, Republican Party that, but it strikes me that one of them is a party and the other is a fragmented fraction to group that has a hard time speaking with a single voice and has a hard time mobilizing with a single voice, which by definition makes it difficult to compete with the other party that is a very good at that. Very good at understanding what them one message needs to be and aligning and mobilizing their troops to be that way and i say that sitting here in alabama being a big small blue dot in a red ocean and wondering what the heck. The Democratic Party is its own worst enemy. Rachel, why dont you take that . Unmute. Ken, you are not wrong. I knew that on Election Night 2020, that we needed to fix major Communications Issues that will be difficult to do because we are taking paths to centralize them and it would be best to do it through a super pac where you didnt need to answer to the needs of this bureaucracy. It has been difficult to affect those changes. Theres been more ground work on the side. Some of the establishment side has been making chances changes as well. I only want to save and make sure that people understand that this is a problem with the party is aware of, work is being done there is much work to do and if we hadnt next at least some of the problems we would be in a much worst position. When we look at where we are doing well, it is with candidates who are running aggressive, random oriented, strong band brand fasteners brand ambassadors, and painting what change will look like under this definition of the Republican Party. Those messages will have the best resonance. I would like to build empirical analysis to show where we need progress on this tree and how much of the gap we closed. How much of the reform messaging made a difference and where we still have room to grow. Again, thats three midwestern governorships that are critical that will give us time to make critical changes. I realize that i am part of the war in the church house metaphor. I disagree with the premise that the Republican Party has moved further to the right than the depalma then the Democratic Party has moved to the left. Davids is not show that. Republicans have also data does not show that. Republicans have gone to a cult of personality and then on this jack in authoritarianism, on a straight left right basis, i think the democrats have moved further to the left than republicans to the right. But republicans have moved in other directions as well that are fairly bizarre. Dont you think, charlie, that the specter of violence that has been raised by events, not just january 6, but the statements and behaviors of republican candidates, isnt that a profound change . I dont think that violence is liberal or conservative. It is horrifying. It is absolutely unacceptable but it is the conservative party that is raising the can there is raising the specter of violence, not the Democratic Party. I think that the temperature you quoted amy walter, she was meeting with the republican strategy just strategist in 2020, they went through polling data in key states. At one point she asked him, whats the likelihood of surviving this . People want to know who is going to make my life normal again. That is what people were looking for in that election, and then after that election i was talking to a house member, fairly moderate, and i asked him, what do you think the voters were saying, and he said, dont being and an asshole or a socialist. If you one by an fdr landslide, it would be warranted but when you go with an aggressive genda agenda like that you are going to move the numbers the other way. Joe biden has a 45 strong disapprove. We are talking about for someone who is not an offensive guy in any way for him to have a 45 strong disapprove in the nbc poll, something needed to create that got him there. I know that charlie wants to be the skunk and i i dont hate to be one, i am a guy who worked for george w. Bush and arnold schwarzenegger, it is patently false to say that the center of the country is not where the democrats are on almost every single issue. If you look at the center of the country, do they want an increase in minimum wage, gun reform, health care for all, do they want roe v. Wade, do they want all of these work done on Climate Change . In every single issue if you ask where the center of the country is its where the democrats are. You have outliers that go like you would, at the center of the partyware nancy pelosi puts the line in the sand in the house, is much more aligned to do the center of the country than republicans are. Republicans are opposed to roe v. Wade, or post any gun reform, opposed to increasing the minimum wage. When we say that, yes, the democrats have moved to laughed but that country has moved the left. Gay marriage. Almost every single issue, weve moved laughed. The center is better aligned to where the democrats are then where the republican are on every single issue. I think we need to leave room for audience questions. Lacks shirt. Im going to ask patricia to call on more questions. Chuck, asked, what do you think that the impact is of the january 6 committee hearings, if any . Substantively, i think it had a huge impact. Ed is absolutely necessary in the moment we are in to hold people accountable. Subsidence will subsidence will he it is good for our country. In the moment. It helped democrats combined with a lot of other things in the summer, combined with the Supreme Court decision and a number of other things that raised the standard for democrats where they were behind and then by the end of the summer they were up by two or three. I dont know how that was, but for today, because nobody is talking about it because it is not on the air, liz cheney is talking about it but it is not on the air, its not in the conversation, democrats are making a full throated argument tying this together. Substantively, i think it is important, but it doesnt have an impact on the election. Patricia . From david williams, he wants to know, about the Ohio Senate Race. Let me get through three quick data points that jim ryan can win in ohio. One, largest number of registered female voters second only to kansas. Republicans, and lets remember, the original antitrumper, john kasich, there are a lot of republicans in ohio who are prepared to vote for tim ryan. What do you guys think . I thought for a long time that the Ohio Senate Race shouldve been in the taza category, in my mind, it is. Tossup category, in my mind it is. I think it is unreal the poor Financial Support that tim ryan has received. If he just barely wins, there will be questions asked about why did so much money going to places that loss by wider margins. I said i suspect that will happen. I think he is the most outstanding candidate of either party in the country. And he went . Can he win . Ohio, is a state like iowa, every four years it has become more hostile. He is very in a shared ground, running in that ilk. The question is can you bring another one in . I dont know. I know that ohio has maintained competitiveness is why i am not willing to join charlie on the train because he is absolutely right that you can pick up any tickle science forecasting book you can pick up any science forecasting book and it will show that it is not good. But i think that partisanship has changed things. I think that there is a potential, we just dont know what is happening in the electorate very well with the new registrants, the new turnout. I dont know who tim ryan is targeting. In the tactical operation i think that matters, in pennsylvania we are seeing strong returns from the federman fetterman youth vote. They are also talking about a contest that could come down to either think that the fact that its been contented of it as evidence that republicans blue what their Real Advantage was, the midterm effect, when they dismantled roe v. Wade in august. I i agree parliamentary in the house and senate. I think having a candidate with a metabolism problem which is a nice way of saying lazy and another candidate that is extremely aggressive, sometimes on the margins that can make a bit of a difference. I realize democrats spring in ohio because it is a six or eight points republican than a country as a whole. Ryan has hung in there as he has suggests that republicans hit the panic button earlier because they knew their guy wasnt under performer. I think its going to be extremely close. I wouldnt be flabbergasted if tim ryan one. I would add to what charlie and rachel said. The interesting thing is, i know we were talking about this, mike dewine is going to win by 18 points. That means even if tim ryan was to lose, which i actually think the odds of him winning is 5050. The race is at play. Even if he will lose, he is going to split, 16 of voters in ohio will split their ticket. Youve got a similar ticket dynamic in pennsylvania, not as large but you have a substantial margin in the pennsylvania governors race. And in New Hampshire. Sununu. I would love to see every party awarded on the senate side , for example the ability to do political mulligan one month before an election switch out your weakest candidate because i do think republicans would get rid of Herschel Walker in a heartbeat and the democrats would get rid of John Fetterman in heartbeat. I never thought because of his health issues, i thought John Fetterman was a terrible candidate. In pennsylvania i dont know whos going to win. The better candidates in each candidate came second each party came second in the primaries. That is speaking of what is happening in the parties come of their becoming ideological. Ok. Were going to get you right now. We will go to a brief and go to christine. One more question after that. Thank you, christine. Hello, thank you. I read several articles that republicans are making inroads with younger black and latino men. Im starting to worry about shrinking democratic populace who actually votes in both midterms, not registered voters would likely voters. Have you read the same thing or heard the same thing . Does it give you cause for concern for democrats in the future especially for states like georgia or nevada, and of course texas, everybody kept her beating predicting texas would balloon. It never happened. Rachel . I want to make it clear. What the republicans are doing within the latino voter file is return on investment. Its best in the voter pool that is not getting contact. Thats being tragically under invested in. You start hitting them with, hey, democrats are mouth breathing socialists that will groom your male children and turn them into girls. Its going to be effective. They bought a ton of spanish radio and got smart. Its an easier party to come in and shake things up. The idea of spending money in a critical race in florida, hunting latinos was a pretty radical idea. [laughter] yet someone in the Republican Party was like, hey, if we have this divide on education, republicans have made gains in the noncollege educated whites in the midwest and other places, with brenda busting, brand busting, stuff that will not get them to vote for democrats. They started to pull that resource and methodology into targeting latinos. It was a brilliant strategy. They have built four years of infrastructure. The democrats are beginning to build some furious permanent latino outreach. I would expect we will see increased gains for them. It will be because republicans built innovated this latino contact operation, we have no match for as of today. 20 or 30 years ago, people started writing that democrats are having a problem with white men. We started hearing the democrats had a problem with working class whites. And more recently with workingclass latinos and africanamericans. And with africanamerican and latino men. At some point, theres a pattern. The pushing of the cultural agenda and certain issue agenda, its obviously not resonating with certain segments of the electorate. While democrats were doing a lot better with suburban voters and women, they were bleeding it out on the others. Now, we find that they bleeding support of suburban women as well. That tells you what kind of jam the democrats are in. I feel the urge to doubt. The Republican Party tried to overthrow the government. Theres something more that has to occur between the voter and the occurrence. Im arguing, to make clear at least, im arguing, it is a communication deployment. If you are telling heres the thing, i hear democrats say this all the time, weve left the workingclass behind. In terms of culture, yes. Assuming the workingclass which i think is a wrong assumption is socially conservative christians. Cultures need some segment leave some segment of the population behind. Its an exploitable aspect. What democrats are doing within that voter file is trying to argue the facts. Its no true there is no crt. What they dont realize is they have to match hyperbolic propaganda, motive, grievance politics into that voter. Pilot the same time when we think about erosion. Its true. All of these groups have eroded. The reason the line is education, my friends, is because the people who dont have strong educational backgrounds to inoculate themselves from propaganda are the ones that are going to be most susceptible to the effects of it. Wire democrats because they are the end party are the opposite. Thats what their challenges always been the cycle, can they disrupt the midterm . Getting them to accept it was coming took me a year and the sacrifice of the state of virginia. It was they didnt win because they were fantastic people they won because it was republican. Lets go to one or two more questions. For all of the problems mentioned of the republicans won the popular vote in the last 30 years. All of the problems the democrats have, the problem democrats have is the distribution of their voters in the structural political system that exists today in america. It is a problem. Overwhelmingly, when you hold the National Popular vote, the democrats are heavily favored, even with all of their losses among demographic groups. Thats true in president ial races. We have one more from christina. Can you be very brief, please . Hi, yes, i was wondering if the panelists could talk about the republicans in virginia. We see her trying to portray herself as a moderate, but she has been throwing bones to the maga crowd. She was one of the handful of republicans in the Virginia Senate to vote for an election audit. Can you talk about feeding moderates and maga . What about people like alyssa frock and what about people like these . Thats a pretty tough fight to win. As we have said over the course of the conversation, in the house, candidate quality, issues matters less than otherwise. Theyve been in the middle. That is the democrat d1 district. Shes got a challenge and if democrats are having a bad night i would look at whether the race gets more competitive. The thing about these wave years, i dont think this is going to be a tsunami by any stretch, they go bigger than what you expect. , john and matt remember in 1994 it was pretty dubious that republicans would get to 40, certainly not 52 what they did. Republicans getting 63 seats in 2010. These things tend to get bigger not smaller. That was before we had some of the polling concerns about whether polls are not capturing certain kinds of voters that are not predisposed to go towards democrats. Can ask another question . Charlie, if on Election Night and 9 15, lets say she has won by three points. Would you reassess completely this . I would not reassess completely based on one single race. What would it tell you . You do a shopping basket, 10, 12 races two or three in new york state, at least one in new jersey may be all three in virginia. You put together a basket of them. In deal individual races can be idiosyncratic. You put 10 races and you can sort of see a pattern. I would not pick one. I simply will not do it. I guess, would that be encouraging for democrats . Sure. If you knew she was going to win by two or three points that would be encouraging. What i would want to look at at least 10 others before i johnny conclusions. Before i draw any conclusions. If we were to see that to win that race, we would see the democrats are in position to hold the house and it would make me feel that there is confidence of that. In 201890 was gonna hit my 40 seat forecast off of virginia. One of them was five and that was the spanberger district. That one, was a clear sign we would end up with 40 seats, even though the vote count took a couple of weeks. You have one more . I think you answered it with the last one about what the range might be. Does anyone have anything matthew or any of you even john, if you think this is going to be a trickle wave . I am just going to say, i normally have a pretty good idea of what will happen in a pretty good sense of it. I have no idea. If we woke up two days after election day in the democrats kept the senate and the house was basically dead even i would not be surprised at all. In this case. I know we are in a moment, the data is not clear one way or another like it was in 2018, like it was in 2010, 94. The date is not clear. I will not be surprised with whatever results happen and get prepared for three or four races that everyone is like i did not see that coming. Charlie can i just a followup on this point. You have said that you would not be surprised if tim ryan wins the race in ohio. If he does win the race. Does that tell you something about the election or would you see that as an idiosyncratic result reflecting his quality as a candidate . I just dont believe and looking at any one race i dont think that is good policy i would not do that. It would make me feel better about democrats than if you lost by five but no, i think you look at a basket. I personally think its going to be north of 20 but probably not north of 40. And probably one or two for republicans in the senate. There is a lot of uncertainty. My fear based on what is happened in the last four elections is that it would be more dangerous to understand war republicans are coming from than understating it. I think theyre in a position where we dont know what is going to happen as was pointed out we dont have a clear signal and we did had clear signals and those other cycles including 2020 which told us unequivocally that democrats were going to do well in the house and possibly expand the majority. They have lost 14 seats. We suspect that was because they unilaterally disarmed during the pandemic and did know in person fieldwork because they were denying the reality of the virus. We think that we have uncovered a pretty significant evidence of a fieldeffect but we have no idea of what caused that. We know that there is nothing in the data no forecast noah not a crystal ball anywhere that that republicans would gain 14 house seats. Farm Holding Onto Something other than the if im Holding Onto Something for this election cycle im holding onto that that this is uncharted territory and we did not see the house result coming at all last cycle. I want to thank our panelists for a smart and spirited discussion, apologize to the audience for the fact that im sitting in a room with a lot of windows and the sun is going down. I apologize for my background music. Thank you so much. Everyone stayed with us, thank you all for joining us and for your questions. That was excellent. Thank you so much