Think he is going over 300 electoral votes, but i am not quite sure how much farther past that. It sort of depends on does he get six out of six or five out of six of the key six battlegrounds. And then there is the next 4 georgia, iowa, ohio, texas. I will go with north of 300. Host what do you see in those numbers that gets us to the point we are at in the prediction you are making . Electionssidential with no incumbent, those are choice elections, where people are waiting pros and cons. But that is not what these are. If you have an incumbent running, it is a referendum. It is up or down. Do you want to extend the present contract or not . If you have a president that has never been above 50 percent in gallupor national poll, or nbcwall street journal, any of those, and the president ial job rating is the best predictor of how president s go. For historic purposes, use gallup. We have had five president s in the postwar era that had the final gallup job Approval Rating of 50 . On. W you had two less than 40 . Both lost. And you had george w. Bush in the middle. 38 averaget trump, for your first year. 40 for your second, 42 for your third year, 41 for your whole presidency. With numbers like that, you do not get reelected. And this is before the coronavirus hit. Understand the betting markets. I do not understand people they not, thatthat do refused to, that look at this election through the lens of 2016 when there is virtually nothing in common. Host charlie cook will be here to take your calls. I want to get the lines on the bottom of the screen first. We are talking about campaign 2020. If you are supporting the Biden Harrison ticket, call this number, 202 7488000. If you support the trump president ial ticket, 202 7488001. If you are undecided, 202 7488002, and explain why you might be undecided. A couple more questions while we wait for those calls to come up. An cook, what do you see as early signed tomorrow night that would be a good one for biden or for trump in terms of states . Watchingat i will be unfortunately, the three political Tipping Point states, michigan, pennsylvania, wisconsin, they will be reporting so late that i think we will have a good idea of who the president is long before they are decided. I will be watching texas. Four years ago, that was called at 9 00 p. M. Eastern. If the president is winning by 5 more in taxes, that would be a hopeful sign for his supporters, but if he is only winning by 1 or 2 , that would worry me if i were a trump person. And if the president loses texas, then it is over. He has a series of about five states, hurdles he has to get over, before he can get to michigan, pennsylvania, wisconsin. Florida,xas, georgia, ohio. And he only has a lead of a point or two in any of these states if that. In terms of being able to see the writing on the wall, i do not think this will be a terribly late night. Host you are recently at the six. Com about faulty assumptions on which the Trump Campaign rested. What are you saying here . Guest there are a number of things that the trump folks thought would happen that didnt. And because of that, we are in a very different place. They thought the economy would just continue to be roaring along all the way through the reelection. Instead we had that little detour with the coronavirus. Second, that the coronavirus would not be bad or would be gone quickly so that the economy could come back. I am not saying that the economy is a headwind facing the president like you might normally if you had a downturn during an election, but it is a loss of a tailwind. The main reason to support him would have been, i think, the strong economy. You take that out from under him, you remove that tailwind, and it is kind of hard to offset some of his other problems. I think they thought they would that Vice President biden would mess up in the debates. I started hearing as far back as march Trump Supporters saying he is senile, he has dementia. I was thinking, gosh, the guy i watched campaigning in iowa did not. The guy i watched in the debates did not. You know. It is just a series of things. And money, that they would be able to continue to raise money at the pace and at the inclined that they were back in the late spring and over the summer. You know, you have an incumbent republican president of the United States getting outspent and outraised. Just as a metric, never in our lives have we had a republican president who is having problems raising money as this campaign has over the last couple months. Just using that as a nonpulling metric, something is amiss. Metric, something is amiss. Host we are speaking to charlie cook of the Cook Political Report. We are looking at electoral ratings. 290 electoral votes solid for the biden ticket. This point for the trumppentz ticket. We will see how this conversation plays itself out. The Cook Political Report also has an updated look at the house totals. First call. Pompano beach, south florida. You are a biden supporter. Good morning. Morning, mr. Cook. How are you, sir . My question is basically this. I am a strong biden supporter. Pertaining tohelp philadelphia and especially here in florida because we are looking to see if that would victory to claim especially on the economy and the corona . How would that help them to declare victory . Vice President Biden has all 20 of Hillary Clintons up, so literally all he needs is michigan, wisconsin, and pennsylvania, the state Hillary Clinton lost by. 8 or less. But since they will not decide in 2016, i would go by ap calls. Pennsylvania was not called until 135 time in the morning eastern. 1 35 in the morning eastern. So i am looking at these earlier states on the way and these are big states. It could bee the one that will tell us who the next president of the United States is because florida reports really quickly. They have cleaned up their act a lot since 2000. If the president comes up short in florida, then, you know, the night is over and the same thing as and ohio and i would kind of say that in georgia. Because biden is going to start off with the 232. Big three, michigan, wisconsin, and pennsylvania, i think michigan and wisconsin, biden is in really good shape. Think, you know, i do not people keep talking about a contested election. I think the contested elections will be in the senate, where there will be legal handtohand combat over a bunch of these senate seats when we get past november 3. Host lets get alan in on the conversation. He is in fulton, mississippi. Hello. Caller thank you for taking my call. I would like to make a comment, if i may. Host please do. Caller i am a supporter of President Trump. And i am totally against biden for this reason. Smoking gun hanging over his taking 3his son and 1 of a contract million a year salary. Thisbi has not acted on for some unknown reason. If this proves to be true and the people who have got all the evidence is putin, the other oil company where his board,ked, or sat on the and also china. If this man, biden, is elected, compromised by three of the biggest countries in the world. Host thank you, alan. Charlie cook, one of the viewpoints there a trump supporter. My job is not to take sides. I suggest the caller look from some more objective sources and not sources that are slanted one way or the other where a publication has a clear preference because i counted numerous factual errors in what he said. My job is not to play fact checker, but i think a lot of times people, both on the left and the right, live in ideological silos and get their news from very ideological sources that sometimes play fast and loose with the truth and it is a problem on the left and on the right. And people have gotten away from having sort of the common way we get information. That is kind of one of the problems with massive social distancing. A good chunk of the American People have just severed their relationship with what i would call normal media, nonliberal, nonconservative, just sort of they dont listen. And as a result, it may be them do not take some things as seriously as they should, like coronavirus and masks and social distancing because they stopped watching cbs. They do not get time or newsweek. They go for a confirmation of views they already have. A trusted news source used to be walter concha right walter conkrite. Ht host what about the reliability of polls . One viewer, mickey from los writes onlyhts two organizations correctly predicted trumps victory. What is your opinion of those two polls methodology . And more broadly, the National Polls were wrong last time. I know that usc poll. I do not know the other poll, but the usc poll was the most off poll in 2016. They had donald trump winning the popular vote by 5 or 6 , which is about as often as you could possibly get. The fact is, the average, the poll average, if you went on real clear politics on the morning of the election, you would have seen Hillary Clinton at 47 and donald trump at 44 . And when all the votes were counted, she went to 48 and he went to 46 . That is at. A two point spread. That is not very one point off is not very wrong. Now, people conflated the popular vote with the Electoral College and they just assumed that if somebody was going to win the popular vote that they would win the Electoral College, which often times, usually, is right, but these things have become kind of unhinged a little , not as insync as they used to be, where we have a lot of close elections. 1948, 1960, 1968, 1976, 1992 they were all close, but they went in the same direction. Even in 2000, when al gore did when the popular vote, but only did whennd george bush the Electoral College by votes in florida. People just looked at that and thought this is a once in the century statistical fluke. We knew it happened in 1876 and but we only went 112 years before it happened, but it was the closest thing to a tie election as you could get. 2004 was close, but the popular and electoral went the same way. Not quite as close in 2000 and 2012, but what we have now is, in the case of Hillary Clinton, when you are winning california by a 4. 3 million vote margin, that means that 4. 3 million are wastedotes because they do not get you electoral votes. In in new york state and illinois. Theersely, republicans, states they went by big margins buy big margins are smaller and mediumsized states. The fact is that a democrat needs to win the National Popular vote by 3 or 4 before they can be comfortable. But the National Polls were not off much at all. I do not consider one point off. And 47 states went pretty much the way we thought. If you had gotten up on election day and looked at cook political. Com, we had 40 states solidly went for clinton or trump. We had two states that were tossups. We were wrong on three. Those were where the polls were wrong. And with the professional group, the society of pollsters, looked at it and rain that by the files. Underid find a systemic sampling of whites with less than a Fouryear College degree and oversampling of whites with. And most of the time, that would not have made a whole lot of difference, but this time it did. Ofald trump got the support all kinds of people, but his Strongest Group absolutely was whites with less than a Fouryear College degree, particularly white men. Anything that under samples them at all would affect. ,o they started weighting adjusting, by educational status, and the polls in 2018 are fine. One last thing. I know i have talked to long. Too long. There is this assumption that if there is a polling error, it will going trump go in trumps favor. It could go either way. Turnout is high. I think every Demographic Group will go up. But if you have white, suburban, College Educated women turnout in higher numbers than they might otherwise, you could have a polling error go in the other way and these may be understating joe biden. Solid, bestw, the methodological polls are showing biden ahead by 8, 9, 10 points, and they fixed the problem in 2016. People need to be more cognizant of the Electoral College and how that works in individual states and not rely solely on the popular vote. Host we have carol on the line from norwich, new york. A biden supporter. Hello. Caller good morning. I would like to switch the focus from the president ial race to the 22nd congressional district, two candidatesen there. You have consistently rated that is a tossup, and i would like to ask you just a comment in general about that race and mentionke a minute and the libertarian that is also in that race. Andi have a second question that relates to about two years ago, i called in when you are on and you were reading senator mccains book. I ask you about the then new book about political alignment. You said it was the next book you are going to read that was on your bedstand to read. I would like to ask you what you thought about that book and kind of his what i considered to be pretty rigorous analysis of the electoral the electorate. One thing i took away from it was the number of partisans who do not so much love their own candidate but hate the opponent in the other party, and i think that was pretty well demonstrated the last hour, the number of democrats who, when asked about how they voted, why they are for biden, talked about how much they despised trump. Host carol, think you for calling. Charlie cook. Guest i know david wasserman, our house editor, was on the show, a week or so ago. We have the 22nd district of new tossup. Ed as a it is a state that has got a six percentage point tilt towards republicans in president ial it, but the catch is means it votes six points more republican than the average district around the country. The thing is, we are seeing a about 6, 7,2016 of 8 points, where you just sort of subtract from a republican where fromwere in 2016 or President Trump where he was in 2016 in these places and you will get basically where things were in 2018 and where things look like they may be headed right now. We have that as a tossup race because the district has a natural tilt towards republicans, but, given the environment, it kind of evens it back up. It is one of the few democratic tossups we have. I do not think, in the year like unlikely to see Democratic House incumbents lose this year, just as in 2010 and in 2014 you did not see republican incumbents losing, where voters were sort of punishing democrats in those two midterm elections. This has the feel of a midterm election, but it is in a president ial year, and more importantly, a year that ends in zero, which means the census is this year. They recut the lines for the next decade. House members on the ballot this year, they are the ones that will be involved in drying the maps drawing the maps. This is a huge race. Abramowitzs book, and he is a friend of mine, and we are in the same emailed chain multiple times a day, i think his idea of negative partisanship is dead on. The sort of vitriolic hatred of leaders of the other party. If you just think of the last few president s, the anger and the hate that a lot of republicans had for bill clinton inmed unprecedented at least our lifetimes. Among democrats, then, towards gorge george w. Bush. Fromit went the other way, republicans towards obama, and now it has gone the other way, from democrats towards trump. Just kind of wonder escalating levels of hostility toward the other party and it is not healthy for the process. I think alan is right. Host is ruth for charlie cook. Good morning to you, ruth. Caller good morning. I have two statements before i talk about the polls. Donald trump in charlottesville. He did say there are good people , but i disavow the kkk and white supremacists. Bidens, as good as he is he the kkkle, in the 70s right up until the day he walked into the white house as Vice President , when he said, oh my, i couldnt believe it. Smart ands actually he is clean. That is what he thought about black people. In the polls, i think trump will win. Wins because trump i do not want to be a socialist country. Host all right, ruth. Charlie cook, any reaction . Guest some of the facts, i am not familiar with those and cannot really comment. I was not really following as closely as i would like to have been able to. Again, my job is not defending either candidate were side. Or side candidate or side. Each party has factions or wings. Hadhe republican side, you the tea party over here and the establishment over here. The tea party evolved into the trump base over time. In the democratic side, you have two factions. You have 40 or so who are extremely progressive. Sanders, Bernie Elizabeth warren, aoc and the squad, all of that, and they want big, major, systemic change, Something Like what the caller was describing. You have the other 60 that is not so much that way. And that is where biden came from, you know, spent his career in, and the reason he is the democratic nominee is the party chose not to go the other way. Remember, Bernie Sanders was on the cusp of winning the democratic nomination on super tuesday, and that is when the more establishment wing of the Democratic Party said, oh my gosh, we will nominate bernie and he will lose. And thats not a good thing and out they shut ,loombergs and klobuchars basically push them out to clear the deck for joe biden. Maybeiked him but they thought he was old and accidentprone and were disinclined to nominate him, but they were doing that because he is not in the wing i think the caller was describing just as a lot of other republicans are not necessarily in the trump wing. But there are factions in each party. But, you know, i would know more put biden in the farleft faction of the Democratic