Analytical adrenaline going . I certainly hope so. Seriously, of all the times weve hosted this conference over the years, this has got to be one of the more fraught election cycles in our lifetime. Certainly a roller coaster counting process and still clarifying picture of what is happening down ballot for several weeks. So we have assembled a stellar team to help us navigate a couple of key questions what happened and why . Was there an expected gap between expectations and eventual results, and if so, what was the cause of that . And how are the two parties, democrats and republicans, now going to move forward in terms their programs and policies but how they position themselves electorally over the next couple of years. With that, let me turn the microphone to my coconspirator in this endeavor, ellen tess cano. Ellen im the cofounder of the inside american politics experience. Last year and this year at nyu. 2008 following the historic election of barack obama as president. , we come together to discuss the election of joe biden with an equally historic Vice President , Kamala Harris based upon the count of state and local voting officials, however contested, that there was a historic turnout, still being counted. High,rnout hit a 60 year which accounts for 62 of the eligible voting population. We are grateful to participants of these panels over the next two days. Each panelist is expert and experienced in american politics, and very busy with the ongoing drama of this historically messy transfer of power. Before we begin, let me thank my coorganizer steve mcmahon, with whom i have had the pleasure of working all of these years in the presentations of these conferences. And the bradman center, liz brown, Deputy Director of programming and outreach tom mcintyre. I would also like to thank our cosponsors in programming, its own series. The Brennan Center for justice and nyu vote. Some logistical notes, we will leave time at the end to take questions from members of the audience. We will not read bios in the interest of making more time for the panels. A link is in the chat. With that, i will introduce the moderator of the first panel, steve mcmahon. Longtime democratic strategists and cofounder of purple strategies, llc. Thank you. We have got a great panel today. People who have worked in politics on both the democratic and republican side. Others who have been Television Producers and, in the case of betsy who is now the executive director of the women in Politics Institute at american university. We are excited to have this conversation. We are talking in this panel about what just happened. Were going to dig deep, but jonathan martin, one of our journalist panelist today, wrote a great piece in the New York Times the other day that looked at how joe biden won, with the key moments were. Maybe a good way to start this would be to go to jonathan to give us a quick summary of how you think biden won this thing, what were the pivotal moments and how the campaign took advantage of those. Thank you. Thank you guys for doing this again. Though this is a different environment than we are used to. We will make the best of 2020. I think the wisdom of the democrats nominating joe biden has come into focus the last week. This was a personal repudiation of Donald Trumps conduct. This was not a political statement on the Republican Party. Look no further than the difference between the republicans who were afraid to lose seats in the house, but gained seats. While President Trump loses convincingly. I think this was a decision that was critiqued by the conduct for teat by the conduct of the president , wanted somebody to bring some measure of normalcy back. At the same time, they were not calling for an expansive progressive government. We are now in a place where the democratic majority in the house has been reduced significantly. The senate will probably be 5050, or 5149 republican. That depends on what happens in january. The question now is, was joe biden the only democrat who could have beaten trump . Given how the race was in swing states, would a different democrat have been able to put together that coalition of keeping the parties base of racial minorities in big cities, growing to the hillary advantage in the suburbs . Would anybody else besides biden have done that . We will never know the answer, but biden did do it. That is a credit to him and his party. How did he do it . By being joe biden. Hes a centrist oriented centerleft democrat whose instinct was to heal the country, cool divisions instead of inflaming them. He caught hell for it last year in the primary. Every debate night, they were coming after him, saying he was naive. How could you think you could work with republicans . He never wavered. You guys know this, campaigns that win have message consistency. If you look at his opening video in april 2019 and take it through the speech he gave saturday claiming victory, youll will see a through line of joe biden running on restoring the soul of america, america is better than donald trump, and i am going to restore us to a more congenial, less polarized place. It worked. Along the way, there were challenges. But, i think consistency was essential. There is an argument to be made, and i could make it because i wrote the story, effectively this election came to an end in march. Biden effectively ended the primary by beating Bernie Sanders soundly in michigan. The next day, we all got hit in the head by covid. It was clear that next day that covid was real, the president gave a speech, tom hanks was diagnosed, nba canceled its season. That week in march was really the turning point because it became clear that the whole trump theory of the case which was, you dont like me but the economy is great and the other guys are crazy, that case came crashing down. The democrats did not nominate Bernie Sanders, and he couldnt run on the economy anymore because the pandemic crash the economy. You can trace the election back to that week in march. Thank you. I want to call on todd. Todd is one of the best republican strategists out there. The candidates who outperformed donald trump, i remember when we were talking after the election you said you were not sure that your candidates could actually outperformed donald trump and win. But, that is what happened. They outperformed donald trump and won. Do you think jonathans analysis is right that it was over in march . Or, given the results and how close it was, it seems like it was never over until the ballots were counted. What do you think . It did not feel like it was over in march. I think jonathan was exactly right to be calling this a split decision election. We talked for ages about trumps problems in the suburbs. The problem republicans had in 2018 was that there was no way for suburban voters to express their disapproval of donald trump specifically, and so they voted against republicans generally as a way to show their disapproval. This time around, they could vote against trump. You have, in all types of swing districts and statewide races, you have all of these suburban voters who did not like trump personally, although they did like his economic policies. At the same time, they were not ready to embrace, though it may not have been bidens agenda, there was a sense among suburban voters that these kinds of cultural changes that the left had been talking about were to them. One of the things i think republicans did a particularly good job in terms of messaging on was keeping that conversation alive about cancel culture, defunding the police, the riots and all of that. What you ended up with was a situation where, in 2020, voters could go vote against trump, but in state after state, they could turn around and vote republican. Whether it is look at maine for starters the minnesota house, the state legislature there. Wisconsin, pennsylvania, ryan fitzpatrick, one of the swingiest of all swing districts. I think biden is going to outperformed the president by 14 or 15 points. Don bacon in nebraska too. Same sort of dynamics. The final point i will make is one of the reasons why that dynamic worked both for biden and down ballot republican candidates is because the Biden Campaign did a good job of every election is about a choice. The most famous one from 1984, are you better off today than you were four years ago . The Biden Campaign debate did a really good job of making sure that the choice that the voters were thinking about was an up or down vote on donald trump. This was a referendum on donald trump, not a binary choice between two candidates. Compare that to 2016 where you truly did have a choice. The entire last 10 days of the race were all about Hillary Clinton. From january onward of this year, the entire thing has been about donald trump. Up or down vote. In that up or down vote, as a democrat i am excited about mr. Joe biden, the history making that occurred with Kamala Harris. I want to talk about a couple of important subgroups the Democratic Party constituency, women and minority voters. I want to go to joel the pollster. Lets talk about some of the voters that made this possible, joel, and doug. Joel is a democratic pollster, one of the best in the world. Doug for nell was involved in many races as a partner at sk dk, heavily involved at the Biden Campaign. Many Congressional Senate races as well. I would like to get from the two of you a little bit on the turnout and which demographic groups made the biggest impact, and what that portends for both parties Going Forward . Doug . It is great to be a part of this group. It is always fun to break down the election with so many smart folks. I appreciate you having me. I agree with almost everything folks have said so far. I think that a lot of the gains we saw in 2018 that the Democratic Party made in the suburbs and actually, started with Hillary Clinton in 2016, but increased in 2018. We have seen adding bang was able to build on those gains. Second, when we look at turnout, numbers are still coming in. But when you look at milwaukee and philadelphia, detroit and flint, we are seeing the numbers of black voters definitely increased. There is about the percentage of those that went for trump, but the overall numbers have increased. That was in part due to an emphasis by the Biden Campaign to reach those voters. We also saw that among asianamerican voters. And outside groups. I work closely with the naacp with turning out black voters. They had a concentrated effort on pennsylvania, michigan, wisconsin and georgia. They spent early, mobilizing volunteers to transition that program to communicate an actual persuasion program, and then a turnout program. That started at the end of september. I think those are some particularly in the suburbs a place where biden in particular needs to feel good about the campaign he ran. We can have a conversation about polls being off and whatever, but i think the strategy of the Biden Campaign should be looked at and applauded in the sense that they had a strategy to focus on three states. They did five or 10 other places, but michigan, pennsylvania and wisconsin, arizona, those were four components of the campaign. Look at where biden was the last 24 hours of the campaign, pennsylvania. There were polls that showed democrats up soundly in pennsylvania, but the Biden Campaign was not taking anything for granted. They were all over pennsylvania. While there may have been indications from other polls that there were other states in play, i think there are many things i would give credit but, they did not get distracted by shiny objects. Yes, they did invest in texas and ohio, but the overall strategy of their focus on those three blue states that was critical to biden winning remained from the start. They also knew they needed another one just in case one of the blue states didnt work out, so they focused on arizona and georgia. There is a lot to unpack overall, but i think the message discipline that jonathan mentioned was right on. I also think that one of the biggest strategic errors the Trump Campaign made was undermining vote by mail. The Biden Campaign ran a major vote by Mail Campaign and it made a huge difference. There was a time when republicans used to vote by mail, that is why florida in many ways runs such a sophisticated system. They have older voters and voting by mail is not something that is strange to them. That was a tactical mistake by the Trump Campaign, one that biden took advantage of and potentially is the reason why he won. Joel, looking at michigan, wisconsin and pennsylvania. How does it look different to you since 2016 . I think let me take that, but first say overall, i often say to people we forget we are a 5050 country. We are probably 4040, with 20 to consider themselves moderate and independent. To win elections, you have to win the middle. That is true when you look at those states. On a national level, joe biden improved his performance over Hillary Clinton with independent voters by 12 points. From 42 to 54. Similarly, among self identified moderate voters, biden at 64 . I think when you look at those three states, those were the blue wall. You have to win the states if you are a democrat. As i said years ago, it was a monumental blunder by the Clinton Campaign thinking we had those states locked up. You have to win the middle. In this election, even though joe biden is not from the left wing of the party, donald trump is so far to the right it his extreme behavior, he is not ideological, but in his behavior he acts in a way that is alienating to voters in the middle. I have been talking about suburban voters early on. He plummeted in the early days of coronavirus. The aftermath of george floyd, donald trump plummeted with suburban voters, falling behind in a group he had won by four points and they make up half the electorate. He had plummeted in most polls, including fox news. Which i think is the best media pulling out there. He was down 16 or 18 points. The margin was not anywhere near that big on election day. If you look at the gains biden made with suburban voters half of that margin is coming from the suburbs. To todds point about smart republican campaigns, i agree totally, but i would also say when i say we are a 5050 country, americans do not love it when one party has all three branches of government. If the system is supposedly built on checks and balances, voters often make sure those checks and balances are there. I think that is a lot of what happened. I also think in terms of congressional seats, and the senate. 2018 was a big win for democrats. They picked up a huge number of seats. I think this was, again, a check, a governor, if you will. To make sure that this does not run away too much in one direction. Those dynamics were at play. We are probably going to talk more about this being a referendum on the president. Any campaign were an incumbent is running, it is a referendum on the president s performance. The course of history, we have had few landslides. Only seven president s elected and reelected with more than 50 of the vote both times. We have a history going back to 1900, before trump, only seven president s who sought reelection sorry five out of 19 lost. There are a lot of dynamics here structurally that could have been in play for trump, but more importantly with the events we had come of pandemic, the economy which is trumps strength falling apart. More households with somebody out of work than at any time since the great depression. He is out there saying he built the greatest economy. It was tone deaf and out of touch. I want to take a peek underneath the hood for a second on female voters. Here the executive director of the mayor women in politics troop, before that executive producer of meet the press. You know politics, subgroups, you watch this closely. How would you characterize both the turnout and performance of female voters in the suburbs and elsewhere . In particular, what role did they have in georgia . Anybody who has done Democratic Politics knows the most reliably dependable democratic voters are black women. Women in general usually make up a majority of any electorate. Could you talk to us about the role of women in turnout and what you saw . Happy to be with you guys. As you mentioned, women are the most steadfast of voters. Outnumbering men in both registration and turnout. That was certainly true this election cycle, women making up about 55 of the electorate. But, there was a lot of discussion earlier this year not only about the blue wave, but the female tsunami. Coming into the biden column. We saw these polls showing biden up between 15 to 26 points among women. They will do a postmortem on other panels. For comparison sake, in 2016 Hillary Clinton 13 points. A lot of polls were saying it is much higher than that. What we ended up seeing from these preliminary exit polls, the caveat being it is early, trying to make sense of it all is not necessarily scientific. But biden winning women by 11 or 13 points staying the same since 2016, or shrinking slightly. Interestingly, in terms of gender, the movement away from trump came from the male vote, which trump one i 11 points in 2016 and polls showing now him a much that vote by smaller margin. We as you mentioned, when look one step further and examine race, we know black in particular supported biden at the highest rate and trump appeared to win among white women maybe even doing , better than he did in 2016. But the black women definitely coming into play in terms of organization and support in some of the key urban areas. You mentioned georgia, but also philadelphia, organizing, adding the vote out. We also mentioned Kamala Harris earlier. That was also specific in terms of motivating black women to turn out and we certainly saw over the last couple of days, with celebr