Transcripts For CSPAN Charlie Cook Discusses Election 2016 Results 20161112

To handle some housekeeping, you will see two mics on either side of me in the center aisles. There will be a questionandanswer portion of todays event. When it comes to that moment, we do welcome anybody that has a question to lineup behind the mics. When you are preparing to ask a question, we ask that you first state your name and organization. Now, getting to introduce charlie. Charlie is the founder, editor, as well as publisher of the Cook Political Report. He is also a political and election analysis analyst for nbc news. Charlie founded the Cook Political Report in 1984, and it has been what i would call the bible for election and political Trend Analysis in washington. One other housekeeping matter, we have a hashtag today. It is njdayafter. We certainly welcome you tweeting on social media about the event. Without further ado, i would like to introduce charlie cook. [applause] mr. Cook gee, im sorry we have nothing to talk about. [laughter] mr. Cook i first want to ask your indulgence. I did not go to bed last night. I got back to my hotel room in new york at about 5 00 a. M. And had an 8 00 train, and thought, you know, what is the point . So if i am moderately incoherent, i hope you will understand. Im glad we have such a great crowd here. You know, i dont think any of us will ever have to be reminded where we were last night, what we were thinking. You know, a lot of times i can think back about elections and not quite remember was that 1996 . And everybody in this room we have been around politics for a very long time, and seen a lot of things. You know, we saw the reagan tidal wave election in 1980, and the gingrich election tidal wave of 1994, all kinds of very, very interesting elections, but i have never experienced one that felt as much like a baseball bat on the side of the head as last night. You know, it seemed over the course of the day it seemed kind of normal. I guess, being in a cab, i finally had a cab that had a wreck in new york. I figured that had to happen sooner or later. Seems like it was an omen. We were doing something with chuck todd on msnbc. It was between 5 00, 5 30, and the first wave of exit polls came in. When they give you the first wave, they dont have the first line of clinton trump, Something Like male, female, party, demographics, but they deliberately dont give you the bottom line. So you have to kind of do the math in your head looking at gender. Looked like it was probably clinton ahead by about three which was not far out of line with where a lot of the polling was. It wasnt until we got deeper in the evening, particularly when we started looking at specific states, that we started seeing anomalies wait a minute, this is not heading where we all thought. And i think historians and political scientists and pollsters and operatives and all kinds of political aficionados are going to be pouring through the data for years to come to try and figure out exactly what happened, why we did not see it, and how it got to be so underestimated. When you think about what this election meant, it was an unprecedented rejection of so many people and things. It was a rejection of, in no particular order, hillary and bill clinton, of the Republican Party establishment, of the national establishment. When you think about it, we have five living president s. None of them have endorsed donald trump. Bob dole was the only living , former republican president ial nominee who endorsed him. Of the forbes 100 ceos, not one has made a contribution to the trump campaign. Best i could tell, there were two major newspaper endorsements. One was the Las Vegas Review journal, and the other was the national inquirer, and i didnt know they did endorsements. [laughter] mr. Cook it is like, wow we are going to be unpacking this for a long time. As i am sure, many of you have been glued to various sites, you know that secretary clinton pulled ahead by 2 10 of one point right now on the popular vote. That in high dollars that and five dollars will get you a cup of coffee. What is interesting is that during the 19th century we had split Electoral College popular vote outcomes three times. None during the 20th. And now, we have had two in the first 16 years of the first 21st century. So, we had 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000, and now, 2016. The thing is, we knew that this election was going to be about change. I mean, we kind of knew that. On one level, it is not terribly surprising. We knew the history that whenever a party has had the white house for two consecutive terms for eight years, five times out of six since the end of world war ii, the American People voted for change. The only time they didnt do that in the postwar era was eight years after president reagan, when they elected his Vice President , george h. W. Bush. There was a tendency there, but there were so many factors that seemed like it might be this might be different this time. While Hillary Clinton certainly had incredibly ugly numbers, favorable and unfavorable. So were Donald Trumps. The desire for change seemed to be so great a poll where 31 felt the country was headed in the right direction, 62 wrong track. The interesting thing about that number is, the last time peter hart and fred yang on the democratic side, and bill on the republican side, and bob teeter had been asking that question almost monthly for the better part of 30 years, and the last time the right direction was more than wrong track was back in january of 2004. 12 years ago. And so, we knew there had been sustained anger and hart had done a series of seven focus groups, so far this year or this cycle i should say for the Annenberg Center in pennsylvania, around the country. The last one was two weeks ago. I think the Annenberg School has it on their website. You can watch the focus group, but you could see the anger, the alienation. This was a focus group of late deciders, but, even in that focus group, even listening to these people, it seemed like they desperately wanted change, but that donald trump seemed, you know listening to these people, donald trump seemed to be a little too risky a change, risky of a change. That they wanted change. They wanted something different, but he might have been a bridge too far, and maybe i read too much into it. There were two quotes in the analysis that hart did that stuck out to me, that i thought told me something. One was a woman named donna saying, i so much wanted trump. I so much wanted a nonpolitician, but i dont trust him and im afraid of him , and i just dont think he knows when to shut up. If he would just say, im a businessman, im not a politician, and im going to make America Great again and and stoppedin right there then i would vote for him. You know, it was like, ok, i can kind of see where shes coming from. Another woman, jennifer, in the focus group, was undecided. I wanted to like trump, but i dont know that i can because it is embarrassing the way he acts. His temper tantrums, hes an embarrassment to our country. I dont embrace clinton, but i would vote for her. Its probably just going to be a vote against trump. That was sort of the theme what we were picking up around the country. People desperately wanted change, but was he an acceptable risk . You know, he was clearly change, but was he too much change, was he too risky a change . So there was reason not to say, well, maybe this is going to come up short . Clearly, there were a lot of voters out there that think that our political system is not working, or, at the very least, its not working for them, and they think that our Economic System isnt working or at least not working for them. Then, you had people that, some you have some people that seem to feel like things are not changing fast enough, and think about you know, some of the Bernie Sanders supporters, for example. Sanders went out and campaigned awfully hard for clinton and cannot be faulted, and Elizabeth Warren went out and did a lot, so this is not criticism of them, but that clearly some of the people that they were tapping into were restless and they did not see this as enough change and may not have turned out in quite the numbers expected. I think, far more, there were people that felt like things were changing too quickly. And whether they were looking at society and culture and all of the debates on transgender bathrooms, and this and that, that maybe too much was happening too quickly for them. Or in the Economic System, in terms of whether its globalization and trade that has put, obviously, some people out of work. But then there are other people that were probably replaced by robot machines and things, but as far as they were concerned, they were replaced by workers abroad, when it really may have been productivity. But clearly, the world for these folks that either chose or didnt have the opportunity to go to college, people that could have made a really, really good income, have a nice living back in the 20th century, but far fewer of them could make that work in the 21st century. Clearly, they were afraid, angry, looking for something else. Clearly, that was sort of building up out there. And then, we saw something and i had a lot of questions before the election, was sort of brexitrelated, and i think we could talk about the polling in just a minute but maybe thinking about brexit in a sense of, you know, all the experts in the United Kingdom and all the experts around europe were basically telling the people of the u. K. You dont want to do this, you do not want to leave. And by 52 to 48, the british people voted to leave. They did it despite the fact that the vast majority of the countrys leaders, economic leaders, the experts all were saying dont do it, dont do it, and they did it anyway. I think it reflects something there and here that this devaluing of this feeling that our leaders let us down and our experts dont know what they are doing, and they see the quagmires in iraq and afghanistan, and they see all of the problems in the middle east, and the rise of terrorism, and they blame leaders and experts for it, and so they say, well, what the heck. Have to lose . That sort of thing. They look at relationships with china and russia and see that gosh, if things are going so so badly, how can a Real Estate Developer do any worse than that . We are just sort of seeing this thing where they were willing to sort of defy all warnings that in the past would have, may have scared them off from doing something, and they did it anyway. I confess that looking at and watching focus groups and looking at polling data of all the problems that secretary clinton had in terms of trust issues and being perceived as evasive and all of that, it really looked, i mean, it looked like Donald Trumps past and things coming back up as well as just behavior i mean, think about, we could see a change in polling data after the first debate. If you want to lump in first debate, the billy bush tapes, where it looked like that made a real difference. That that was sort of a seminal point in the campaign. Clearly, it either was not, or it got undone by subsequent events. I do not know what the effect of all the comey backandforth did, but i suspect it probably sort of kept that alive, pushed it back to the front of peoples mind, reinforced doubts or re reminded them of things they didnt like about secretary clinton. All of these things. We also saw a sign of things happening in, you know, just sort of think about how debate discourse in this country has changed over the last 20 or 30 years. And whether its cable news, talk radio, the web, social media, but we have gone from a place that i guess in retrospect seemed like it was moderately polite to just bareknuckle brawling. Last recommend sunday night, how many of you saw 60 minutes . Fair number. You can go on the 60 minutes website. Frank once did a focus group, that was and i have watched a lot of them, and i remember at the time being a little suspicious, because it was like, i have seen lots of focus groups where they had some people that seemed kind of angry or pretty angry, but i have never seen one where its all of them were. And i was a little suspicious that, you know, maybe there had been some aggressive recruiting of people that were particularly ok, lets call up 300 or 400 people in the area and pick out the 25 most tickedoff people that you find, and lets put them in a room with some Network Cameras and see what happens. I have to tell you, it was compelling television. Im not sure it was straight up, i sure cantspect, say it was fixed, but it really gave you a sense of how debates and people interactions had changed. How pointed things had become. And so, we come back to this choice that people were having, and there was one set of focus groups that were done with walmart moms. And this one woman characterized the race as between quote, between a dishonest washington politician and an unqualified hothead. A different focus group, one in charlotte, peter hart said a man said that it had come down to quote, vote for me because im less of a sleazeball. I mean, thats how voters were seeing this choice. I mean, wow the fact that we could see this in the exit had for example, and this was out of the 24,000, as of about 2 30 this morning, when i printed out the crosstabs, it was about 24,000 interviews. President obamas Approval Rating of voters yesterday was 53 approve, 45 disapprove, and , normally, if you look at that, you would say well, ok, the party of the sitting president would have a fair chance of holding on and actually did win the popular vote, but looking at the favorable unfavorables of just the two candidates where Hillary Clinton had a 44 favorable, 54 unfavorable, so 10, but trumps was 38 favorable, 60 unfavorable and that was the one that won. Wow, wow. [laughter] mr. Cook like i said, we will be unpacking this for a really, really, really long time. In an analysis, by the man who does the abc Washington Post poll, sent out an analysis this morning. One line that kind of hit me was a revolution against politics shook the country tuesday, with workingclass whites venting their economic and cultural frustration by lifting insurgent candidate donald trump to the presidency, and where this was, we heard a whole lot about ok, it was noncollege whites over here, against whites that were College Graduates over here, and minority voters over here and that is a way, and i will go through some of these numbers in a second, that is one way of looking at it, but part of it was this urban versus of versus smalltown rural, and one of the first signs that things were starting to go in an unexpected direction last night was david wasserman, our house editor, and he was across the room. We were in the decision desk room at nbc, and he comes over and whispers in my ear, something to the effect of, you wont believe the numbers we are seeing in some of these states and in some of the Rural Counties where they were getting turnout levels in places that were just absolutely unprecedented in these rural, smalltown settings. Which raised the question of, clearly, i mean, we knew about the noncollege whites versus college, and we kind of knew that part. I mean, i was personally aware of the sort of this Cultural Divide between smalltown rural america, and i might say Middle America geographically compared to the coasts on each side. But it was much, much, much, much hotter than we expected, and so, there is this, kind of the city people or people from the east coast, west coast telling us how we ought to live our lives and really just sort of a rebellion there as well. Our colleague from Atlantic Media National Journal from atlantic magazine, ron brownstein, has a great turn that we have seen this inversion, this political inversion. If you think back to the franklinroosevelt new deal coalition, one essential element of it was basically bluecollar whites, workingclass whites, central part of the new deal coalition. They have either left, or i guess you could say the Democratic Party had left them or driven them away or however you want to characterize it, to the point where trump won noncollegeeducated whites by a 39point margin. Heres a frame of reference. Reagan won them by a 32point margin. So seven points more, greater than what Ronald Reagan got, and reagan won a 10point landslide. This was an election where trump actually, you know, seems to have lost the popular vote by, you know, a fraction of a percent, but certainly, it was not anything like the 10point blowout 10point landslide like Ronald Reagan achieved over jimmy carter. Let me just run through just some of the exit poll data that just jumped out at me as particularly important. Those voters under 45, they were 44 of the electorate and clinton won them by 12 points, 52 to 40. But those 45 and older, that was 56 of the electorate, and we knew that people, particularly 65 and older, turnout at a higher level. Trump won them by nine points, 53 to 44. Gender, women made up 52 of the electorate, and clinton won by 12 according to exit polls. Men made up 48 of the electorate, and trump won them by 12 points. Seems to me, given that women are usually 52 53 of the electorate, you know, my Louisiana Public School Arithmetic suggests that she was supposed to you know, she should have won this given that, but go figure. Then, lets look at race. Back in 1992, when bill clinton beat president george h. W. Bush, 87 of the electorate was white. In 2012, it dropped 15 points to 72 . This electorate was 70 , and the thing is there were some folks that were saying this could drop down to 59 to 68 , Something Like that. It ended up being 70 , but of the whites that voted, they voted for trump by a 21point margin, 58 to 37 , while the 30 that were nonwhite voted for clinton by a 53 point margin, 74 to 21 . Then, you look at the race, education, gender split. They were kind of interesting. White, female, College Graduates, 20 of the electorate, clinton won them by six points, 51 to 45 . White, female, nonCollege Graduates, 17 of the electorate, but trump won them by 28 points. So, six points up for clinton among College Graduates, white women, and trump by 28 among the noncollege. Wow, what a difference. White, male, College Graduates, trump won by 15 points, white 15 points. White, male, nonCollege Graduates, trump won by 49 points. 72 to 23 . Nonwhites, 29 . Clinton won by 29 points. Wait, that doesnt make sense. 29. 7421. I was doing the subtraction on the train without a calculator and no sleep. [laughter] mr. Cook anyway, party, clinton won democrats by 80 points. By an 80point margin. It was 89 to 9 . Whats interesting is, president obama had 91 of the democratic vote in 2012. Now, mitt romney won 92 of the republican vote in 2012. Trump got 90 . So an 83point margin. Then, independents, romney won independents by five, trump won independents by six. The thing is, because there are republicans usually, you are looking at a five or six point spread. At least in the exit polls, it is looking more like a fourpoint spread, suggesting again, some turnout things that may have than a little surprising. Heres the one less thing on the exit polls that i felt was kind of interesting. 13 of the voters yesterday have served in the military. 13 . They voted for donald trump by a 27 point margin, 61 to 34 . And of the 87 that had never served in the military, they went for clinton by five points, 50 to 45 . Interesting. A couple of last things, made their mind up before last month, clinton won them thats 73 of the electorate, and clinton won them by five points, 5146. But people that made their mind up before last month im sorry, the 73 was before the last month. The people who made up their mind in the last month was 26 of the electorate, and trump won them by 10 points, 4939. You just sort of wonder, is that where, you know, did all the we dont know, we will never know. You know, but it is a plausible theory. Some of the little quirky things, like, one of the questions they asked is, should the next president and they gave three options continue Barack Obamas policies . A second option, change to more conservative policies . And the third was change to more liberal policies . 28 said continue obamas policies, and clinton won them 915. 48 said change to more conservative policies. Not surprising, donald trump won them by 8313. But 17 said change to more liberal policies than obama had, and trump won 23 of those people, 7023. So, you know, you sort of look at that and you say, what is going on . [laughter] mr. Cook i mean, and sort of similar to that, question do you think the 2010 health care law, also known as obamacare, went too far . 47 said went too far, and trump got 83 of that vote. Was about right was 18 , and trump got 10 of that. Not surprising. But what about the 30 that thought that obamacare did not go far enough . Trump got 18 of those. Almost one out of five of the people that thought that obamacare did not go far enough voted for trump. [groans] [laughter] mr. Cook you know, its times like this that i start to pull out my hair, which thankfully, i have got plenty. Trump got 18 of the vote of people who thought he was unqualified. [laughter] mr. Cook so, as i said, we are going to be unpacking this for a really long time. What is interesting and i did hear someone, and i cannot remember which network, at around 5 30 this morning talking about this as a wave election. I was thinking, ok, it was surprising seeing some of the things happening, but in a wave election, a party that is benefiting from a wave election does not lose a halfdozen house seats. My definition of a wave election, you know, is when you start picking up two or three dozen seats, you know, Something Like 37, like republicans got with reagan in 1980. Or 52 seats, like republicans got in 1994. That is a wave. Having a net loss of either one or two seats, depending on what happens in New Hampshire with kelly ayotte and maggie hassan, losing a seat or two, thats not a wave in any direction. This seems to be very trumpspecific, but some of the turnout things that i think were driven by trump also kept republicans from losing more seats than we thought. I mean, for me, i kind of thought the overunder was about 13 seats. Thats the number of seats that republicans gained in 2014 over what they won back in 2012 in the last president ial election. And, you know, you can argue 13, 15, Something Like that. Six seats, that is lower than we thought. Not shocking, but lower than we thought. It one point, i knew dont remember what our last range was, but at some point in the last week or two, we had a wide five to 20. It would have fit. The thing is, losing one or two seats, thats not so something, as i said, we are going to be unpacking this for a really long time. Ok, let me talk for like, five minutes. How much time do we have . 10 minutes. Oh, get to talk for 10 minutes. What does this mean, and where are we going . This is just really uncharted territory. Lets start off with the house. How does this affect paul ryan . How does this affect well, first of all, what is paul ryan thinking these days . [laughter] mr. Cook does he want the job . If he wants it, is he allowed to keep it . Will house republicans, the freedom caucus, Tea Party Folks feel emboldened by all this and say, you know, lets get rid of ryan and get one of us in there, or do they say, we need somebody whos going to be a negotiator, someone whos going to run interference between us and President Trump since he is kind of new to town. [laughter] mr. Cook and the legislative process, the governing process, all this kind of stuff. I mean, we dont know. You know, i think, obviously, Mitch Mcconnell is in a different situation, because he is not in any jeopardy, and he certainly played things a little cagier than ryan did. So, he does not have that vulnerability. But i think, you know, some of us were talking last night about, you know, whats going to happen . You are going to have trump here, and, you know, are you going to have paul ryan here, and Mitch Mcconnell here, and mike pence has, you know, been around. Do they kind of surround trump and kind of try to move him in certain directions in constructive ways . Or does trump just start completely freelancing . How does all this work . We dont know. We have been so thinking about, well, ok, if republicans lose their majority in the senate, and they get the margin in the house cut in half, how many times could ryan violate the hastert rule without being kicked out . But that does not seem relevant anymore. We are just at a really new place here, and, you know, at this point, from this point forward, nobody is an expert. We are all novices in this situation, because nobody has ever seen anything quite like this before. And what happens in the Democratic Party . I mean, there had been an argument made back when it appeared Hillary Clinton was going to win i heard people argue that she actually would have been better off with 49 democrats in the senate than 51, than 51. That she would have as much or more problems on her left as on the right. And that there were already about 12 or 13 really, really, really, really liberal democrats in the senate, and it looks like it would probably get up to 15, and that would be it a real and they would be a real problem for her. That maybe she could tell them to chill out a little if they did not have a majority in the senate. So, there was that whole discussion going on, which obviously is not relevant right now. But where does the Democratic Party go . And i have to tell you, i have been saying this for a couple of months if you look at the Democratic Party now, i would argue that the center of Gravity Party nationally is closer to the Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren than it is to Hillary Clinton or joe biden. While everybody was fixating on how ideological and outsider and angry, and all that stuff on the republican side whenever you see some problem in one party, take a gander over at the other side and look, because you will see either the potential of or the reality of that same problem over there. The democrats, whether it is the outsider alienated, some of the stuff Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren saying the Democratic Party is owned and operated by wall street and the big banks. Which is obviously news to wall street and the big banks, because they were clearly not getting a lot of the value for their ownership. [laughter] mr. Cook but we were seeing so, where does the Democratic Party go over the next few years . And i think one thing a couple of thoughts just about how things changed, and then we will open it up for questions and comments and accusations. Again, im trying to sort of mentally make the turn from what we thought was going to happen to what obviously happened, but , in the context of clinton winning, i was thinking, well, a couple of things may be happening. Number one, she would likely have had a better working relationship, at least with the senate, than president obama did. Because he always i would not say they had to break his arms to sit down with members of congress, including those in his own party, but, you know, they probably did have to shove him around a little bit to get him to do that. That generally that does not work so well. I would venture to guess that the last time a president had as difficult a relationship with his own party on capitol hill was jimmy carter . Maybe . Back in the late 1970s. So, we thought that. I do think, though, that Chuck Schumer i think Chuck Schumer well,tch mcconnell mitchof all, thinking of mcconnell and harry reid was like watching two scorpions in a bottle. [laughter] mr. Cook terms like loathing and despising really understate the relationship. [laughter] mr. Cook and when, you know, the impression i have is that schumer will have had a far, far better relationship both with Mitch Mcconnell and other republican senators than harry did, because it had gotten so poisonous. Thats something that will be different. Know in all, i probably a couple of you are lobbyists. Wow. I do not think you will be getting your budgets cut in the next year. If this town is driven by fear, uncertainty, and change, we have all three food groups coming up in the next few years. [laughter] mr. Cook and so, let me just close on that. But i will tell you, just sitting around, talking with pollsters and other folks around nbc last night, you have 140 years of experience there and nobody had ever seen anything like this. Why dont we stop . There is a microphone here, and one over here. And they ask that you identify yourself. Ok, here we go. Hi. In the states of pennsylvania, michigan, wisconsin, is that a shift for just this election or a trend that you see Going Forward . Mr. Cook i think its a trend. I really do. I think it is that michigan may be well, um, democrats had been banking so much on this rise of latino vote, asianamericans, the rising latino vote, the states with booming numbers of young, highly educated people that were moving towards the Democratic Party, but the thing about it is thats not happening evenly across all 50 states. And there are some that that has happened a lot, and as a result, she did fine in virginia, she did fine clinton did fine in colorado, but in the states where it skews somewhat less minority and a little less on the educational side, a little more on the rural side, the democrats have been so excited about the glass being half full that they were ignoring that the glass was half empty. That they were losing ground with certain groups. They have been so excited about the groups that they have been gaining with. I would say, just as we all have spent a lot of time talking about the 2013 republican autopsy, and how republicans needed to do better with minority voters and Younger Voters, yada yada, that maybe democrats should have done a study like, ok, we won, but there are some warning signs out there. There are signs where democrats are underperforming, and they are troubling. And i think that democrats would be very well advised to maybe do their own autopsy this time and take a look at what happened, and what some trends are that they ought to be worried about. I mean, clearly, the country is changing. It is changing a lot. It is changing in a way that generally benefits democrats, but it is not changing as fast as they think it is. And it is exposing some real you know, i guess for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. It is opening up real problem areas for them in other areas that they have to figure out a way to square. I wanted to ask you, is some of this trumps new approach to technology . Did the Clinton Campaign fight the old election of obama, datadriven, turnout operation, were they fighting the old war, and is he in the new twitterland that is direct communication and more nimble allocation of resources . We all know how much less he spent on his campaign. Or was it just the cult of personality . Mr. Cook i am trying to think. My colleague amy walter wrote a piece this morning. She was ambitious and wrote something. I was too brainaddled. What was that phrase she used . She quoted glen bolger from Public Opinion strategies talking about 2004, that a good field cant make up for bad messaging, i think. And the thing about it is, i think the power of trumps messages trumped the thing is, clearly the Clinton Campaign clearly, some things goofed up. I mean, first of all, the fact that they did not send her into wisconsin. That minnesota and wisconsin were left sort of exposed, and even though she did carry minnesota, it was not by much. Clearly, something went wrong somewhere along the way, and im sure we will read a lot about it. No, i dont think that trump has found some new way. I think he just had, in retrospect, a very powerful message that resonated with certain types of voters really well. The right message, the right year. And i think it was that. My guess is, if i were a republican consultant, i would not tell future republican president ial candidates, dont worry about field, do it the way trump did. I mean, this is like, whats in those car commercials . Professional drivers on a closed course. Kids, dont try this at home. [laughter] mr. Cook just because it works for him does not mean it will work for you. The thing is, and i remember, and im not saying that this is the same, but the romney folks, romney had some pretty awfully bright people working for him, and they had done a lot on analytics. It was a pretty sophisticated campaign. They thought they were pretty good. They felt good going in, but and they thought they were measuring up reasonably well to the obama operation. As it turned out, it was not or did not seem to be nearly as sophisticated as the obama operation. But i think romney did not have that powerful message to make up for whatever gap in the Technology Level that was there. So, no, i dont think this is something new, but i think it is more the power of trumps message. I will stick with that until we learn more. Which im sure we will all read lots more. Rachelle darnay. What impact does this election have on the role of the media in politics . Because it seems like all of the, what i would call, the legitimate media, the Fact Checking and documentable information had no impact whatsoever. Instead, what we got was the entertainment side of media, and there does not seem to be a real political filter anymore. So, what is in the future for medias role in politics . Mr. Cook thats a great question. Part of it is, particularly with Younger Voters and i dont but leave all on them i think the distinction between traditional journalism and , that wall has broken down. Internet, somee of those walls that used to be there, that you knew what was an editorial, what was an oped piece, and what was a news piece, its murkier. And i have to also add though, that the media how much trouble do i want to get in . [laughter] mr. Cook i think theres going to have to be a lot of on the one hand, i think with a lot of cable networks, up until this year, if you wanted to watch a whole speech from a politician, you had to go to our friends at cspan, and thats where you went. And the idea of other cable and networks, National Ones basically doing entire speeches, that never really happened with any kind of frequency before, and they started doing it very aggressively with trump, and eventually they would throw in some Bernie Sanders. We saw a couple billion dollars worth of coverage, not that donald trump any name recognition problems before, but in terms of allowing him to get his message directly to voters, mainlining it to them in a way that was unprecedented. You and then we kind of segue to a place where, every time we put this guy on, our ratings would go sky high, which helps my bonus. And that wall between profitmaking and journalism got a little more permeable. And to be honest, i think in a lot of the early debates, and in interviews, they would ask the him obligatory question about, when are you going to release your income tax returns, and he would say, oh, after the audit is gone, and there may or may not be one followup, but in terms of somebody grilling him and sort of really going after him, they did not do that. And i dont want to impugn anybodys motives, but you kind of wonder whether, wow, if i give him a hard time, maybe you wont come back on, and we will take a ratings hit. Remember the interview that Chris Matthews did with trump on abortion, where he asked, what would you do chris was like a dog with a bone. He just kept going after trump in a very aggressive way. And i know chris is not from the traditional journalistic background, but chris went after him far more aggressively than i saw any other journalists do in terms of that kind of thing. You did not see much of that. But then we went into the last six weeks or so. I think some newspapers i love and respect enormously, they kind of went a little far the other way and got really, really aggressive. When you call you know, its one thing to say, mr. Trump said this. However, the record shows this and this and this. Thats the way to teach you in journalism school. But to call something a lie in a news story, wow. I think i would have gotten an f in High School Journalism if i had tried that. Thats a new place. And even though i have no set no sympathy for donald trump i tell you what, i got , uncomfortable watching the finest newspapers in the country really it was like watching a badlyrefereed basketball game where you are getting a lot of makeup calls at the end. You have watched games, you have seen these makeup calls. You kind of go, wow, you kind of wince. Quite frankly, im not sure that print journalism had a lot to make up for. To me it was more on the Television Side where some of the transgressions early on had been. I think all political analysts and pollsters and operatives, theres a lot of that of us going to be looking back at how we did things. To lose, i wondered if he would when we sort of assumed that trump was going to lose, i wondered if he would get the genie back in the bottle, if any kind of journalism, if you did this to donald trump, would you be able to get your standards back up, down the road, for somebody else . Maybe you should have just left all the standards where they were. I think that there are a lot of us that have a lot to be thinking about. Naval gazing, not that i have seen my navel in a long time. [laughter] mr. Cook any questions . Im going to have you prognosticate more about 2018. A whip position might have been part of the conversation with ted cruz last week. But you get to 2018, the senate autopsy, maybe they get to how they mapped the genome of the Republican Party in ohio, what kind of candidate would you have against Sherrod Brown in 2018 . How conservative would head of would candidates be that cruz could use in 2018 . Charlie we certainly are making the turn. In my mind, you had all the circumstances that were working against republicans this time. We know that in president ial election years, the turnout is big and broad and relatively diverse and looks less like the country, and it midterms the turnout is 40 lower, older, whiter, more conservative, more republican. Republicans had seven senate seats up in states that president obama carried. There are no democrats in states that mitt romney carried, but for 2018, it was like everything was on the other foot. Ok, its a bit term election, so it favors republicans. We thought that it was going to be a Midterm Election with a democratic president. Using the house as a yardstick, the party has gained seats in precisely three Midterm Elections in the last century. Were 25 there democratic seats and only eight republican seats up in 2018. Workingall the factors against public and this year would be working against democrats in 2018. Well, now, its kind of topsyturvy. That part of your question would be, is this a group of people, Party Leaders room andwould get in a commissioned a lot of polling on focus groups and research Sherrod Brown, lets say, and on their various potential candidates and take a vote and decide who would be the optimal candidates. Maybe just the way it ought to work, but thats not the way it works anymore. Is you willguess probably quite a few republicans running for that seat, and they may or may not get the optimal person. I do not know off the top of my head who would be the optimal person. Who was the Supreme Court justice who said i cannot define pornography, but i know it if i see it . You think you know who would be a good challenger. Sometimes that does not work. For example, democrats were really excited when they recruited Patrick Murphy to run for senate down in florida. Republicans were really, really worried. Then they did their research. They said well, there is a lot here to work with, so they dismantled the guy. I may punt on that it is a good one. Question, we do not know yet. You provided a lot of interesting exit polling data, and obviously it tracks differently with what we saw the for the preelection polling. Can you give us a little explanation for why the preelection polling was so off, particularly from the campaign standpoint . Mr. Cook lets look at it two ways. First, lets do national. Then, take the state park. National, what we say the average was going in . Clinton by 3, 4 . And it ended up being clinton by a half, or a third of a point. Something like that. That is how the west coast votes are. It is off but not orders of magnitude off. The fact is that polling, i think the best pollsters in the business, doing the best work they possibly can, they are not as good as their predecessors were 30 or 40 years ago. While a lot of people think that is about cell phones, it is not. The good pollsters use live interviews and call cell phones. The problem is caller id. The problem is, telemarketers burned people out. If my mom or dad got a call 30 years ago, they would be flattered that somebody asked their opinion about politics. Now, it is, who is interrupting my dinner . You check the caller id and you dont know who that is, you do not answer. The response rate, they could get to completion. Now it is down to about 9 . Getting a representative sample is really, really hard. Even the best pollsters doing their best work, it is not as reliable as it used to be. I do not see that as as much of a failure. On some of the states where you had state polling first of all, not a lot had state polling going on. Is anyone here from minnesota . Did you see any . I do not remember seeing a whole lot of polls out in minnesota. You did not think there were any . I could not remember any. Michigan had a few, it was not exactly overpolled. There were some states where we had polls coming out two to three times a week. Some places were not polled well. And the quality of polling in individual states varies a lot. Where the polling was off the most was in some of the states. Where we thought the fight would be in the fight ended up being were two different places. What the campaigns may have been seeing, i dont know. That is a question you have to ask pollsters for each side, give them some sodium penethol and see what they say. A poll that had clinton up by 3 or 4 and she won by less than 1 . That is troubling. To me, we knew that the bluecollar, noncollegeeducated white, we knew that was there. But to me, the smalltown rural, to me that is the group i suspect they have been real underrepresented. One of the things that happens, when you do focus groups, there are cities that have really good focus group facilities, where they all go to columbus, ohio or charlotte where there are good facilities. But they do not go 20 miles, 30 miles, 40 miles south. They do not go out there. Maybe tapping into that smalltown, rural thing, that is a suspicion that i have, where we missed tapping into some of that anger. You can see it, even in upstate new york. Upstate new york, that might be a completely different state than the city and the suburbs. A quick followup to that. Is your assumption that the Clinton Campaign, they probably modeled that the vote would be similar to the obama vote and it blew her out of the water. Is that your take . Mr. Cook it sure looks like it. My transom is open if anyone wants to wikileaks a bunch of internal clinton documents. I am kidding. Thats not even funny. [laughter] mr. Cook inquiring minds would like to know, what did they see, and when did they see it . Im not inclined to throw a lots of rocks at the technical people in that campaign, because some of the groups i have dealt with, they are some really bright, talented people who were, a lot of them were on the Obama Campaign in 2008 and 2012 and they were damn good then. I do not think that they woke up in competent one day. I think there were new and different things. I think that having some of the challenges that secretary clinton had, image challenges. Lets face it, where the Democratic Party is going. President obama, nancy pelosi, that image of where the Democrat Party is, it is a happening place for certain kinds of voters. But it is on a different planet than with the voters in south arkansas, where my parents grew up, for example. I dont know, good question. Nice hotels, though. I like the regency. Anybody else before i go . Jeff brown with Pew Charitable trusts. I am curious as to the impact of the hispanic latino turnout. Can you talk a little in general about what trends the you see, what happened in florida and nevada, maybe in the future of arizona and texas. Or was this a story that was more hyped than anything . Mr. Cook i want to see what the benefit of sleep, a lot more data. Some it there were have the impression that in certain areas, the latino vote without an robust and all that. In florida, there was a little bit of a cuban vote back and forth there may have complicated things a little bit. Of it is, i was talking to a political scientist that does some stuff with the Democratic Party if you years ago. I was asking him, when will taxes go purple texas go purple . 2020 at i was told is the earliest, 2024 may be more plausible. This person made a comparison with california. You havealifornia, this very large growing latino population that is more in urban areas. And then you have really wellfinanced Public Employee unions that were more than happy to spend a heck of a lot of ,oney on Voter Registration mobilization, all of that. , the latino vote is much more spread out, and a lot of it is more moral, small towns. And you dont have that financial infrastructure that California Democrats had in texas. And as a result, it was just curve,o be lagging the just on a completely different trajectory then say california was. I would guess that arizona might be somewhere in the middle. But to expect them all to behave like california, but also, where california ever since he wilson and what was that prop 187 . It reallyabout it is alienated latino voters like a generation ago just got worse and worse and worse and worse. As, remember inex 2012, look at what mitt romney did rick perry. Rick perry tried to take sort of a fairly moderate position on immigration and romney just killed him with it. Republicans had not behaved in the way say pete wilson had in california in the 80s. Be a lothere will expect, i think i would Pew Charitable trusts to write a lot of it. I will be reading it very carefully. Its too soon. Weve got to wait until all the votes are in and all the exit polls have been weighted and massaged and ready to do it. Anybody else, before i get the hook . [inaudible] how do you see social issues playing out for the Republican Party . [indiscernible] [laughter] of cook theres an old rule thumb, never take the last question. They are good questions. Well, what i wonder where the country is going on social and cultural issues, where the Republican Party needs to be in the future, i dont think this year will have done a lot of good advancing the cause that the Republican Party needs to make changes in order to go after Younger Voters in the future. That a lesson that needed to be learned, i think, probably didnt get learned this year. And so it kind of kicked it down the sidewalk and little longer and allows a demographic problem for the Republican Party on cultural issues to just get worse, rather than them start to under 50t that voters years old or 40 years old look at a lot of these cultural thans very differently where the historic Republican Base has. Were a moderate republican, hoping that the party would change direction on cultural issues, i would be really, really depressed today. Because i dont think that while the Republican Party won the that fight kind of got prolonged. Days, your guess is as good as mine. I think we are all just going to fastener seatbelts and get ready for a wild ride. I dont think even he knows what he is going to do. For he knows who he is going to hire to help determine what theyre going to do. Membership in National Journal will help you understand that. I already signed myra kevin, but im doing that. Its a little extra here. Thank you all very much for coming out. I will turn it over to kevin. [laughter] [applause] kevin thank you for sharing your thoughts with us today. A couple of things to mention before leaving. You all will receive an email from us and will have a survey, we take feedback very seriously here at National Journal and we take serving our members very seriously. We would love to hear what you thought. Another thing to mention, there are decks that are recent haitian underprepared Presentation Center prepared. Pollingreakdown of the and a lot of you will be giving presentations here soon. We are hoping to be helpful there. Thank you for coming out today and we look forward to serving you in the next 100 days. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] on newsmakers, luke messer, chair of the Republican Policy Committee talks about the new congress, gop leadership elections, the lame duck session and working with the trump administration. Newsmakers, sunday at 10 00 a. M. And 6 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan. Republican donald trump is elected as the next president of the united states. And the nation elects a republican controlled u. S. House and senate. Follow the transition of government on cspan. We will take you to key events as they happen without interruption. Mrs. Clinton watch live on onpan, watch live on demand on theorg, or watch cspan radio app. Every weekend, but tv brings you 48 hours of nontv nonfiction authors. Economistiversity examines the Historical Impact of immigration on the u. S. Economy in his book, we wanted workers. He is interviewed by edward alden. When immigrants come in, they do all kinds of things. They affect wages. Reducing the wage of people. And that Wage Reduction itself createin