>> if enough effort was made, there was a collected effort made in 1986 called operation big vote and black voters turned out in - let me say significant numbers. that was record turn-out for black voters in a midterm collection. that is only 25 point 3 percent. so in midterm elections the highest turn-out african-american voters had was 45.4 percent. often times midterm elections have very low touch turn-out r. what happened in 1986, this is the most important thing. it's not black turn out in a solutionary sense but what the gap is between black and white turn out. when there's little or no gap it bodes well for the democratic party. when there's a large one it bodes well for republican party. 1986 the gap between black and white turn-out shrunk from 6.9 to 3 point 9 percent. most importantly in the south, the gap shrunk from 4 point 6 percent to one percent in the southern states. democrats have a great year in 1986. they retook the senate and won many other state and local elections for that year. great for the democrats. there was a president, i think he's in bosnia who african-americans liked very much. this was in the middle of the monica lieu in ski scannedle. and there was one group. if you have a competitive election in maine ormand the in the, there's no black people there. in this for black people to have an impact it has to be in a place where there's a large number of african-american voters to impact the election. 1998. gap between black and white voters from the previous midterm when the congress took control of the congress. the gap shrunk from 10 point 8 to 3 point 7 percent nationally and in the south it shrunk from 8 point 4 to 3/10 of a percent. essentially there was no gap in the south in 1998. 50 years of history was up ended and the democrats picked up seats in the sixth year of presidency bill clinton usually in the sixth year of presidency, members of his party lose seats in the house of representatives. the democrats also won a lot of other elections that year, including southern government ships and in large part it was good for democrats in large part pause of the black turn-out in 1998. new gingrich was gone shortly there after and the impeachment effort against president clinton collapsed. now fast forward 12 more years. 86, 89 and then 2010. black voters are again, situated in those stated where the competitive elections are and where the black vote make a difference between one outcome and another. there's 20 u.s. house districts that are competitive and where there's a significant black vote. black turn-out in those districts could make the difference between a high enough black turn-out between the democrats holding the seats or losing those seats. 15 of those seats are in the south which is of course, where most african-americans live and there also are two u.s. congressional seats with large black populations that present two very good pick up opportunities from the democrats of the two that they can take away from the governments. one is delaware which is 20% black and the other is new orleans which is a majority black congressional district. also there's 14 competitive senatorial races where the black vote could potentially make a difference. only four are in the south and four of those are open republican seats. there's 14 governor races where the black vote could make a difference and those seats are split early between the two parties and three are in the southern states. now comparing 2010 to 1998 you have a president who is more popular with african-americans than clinton was in 1998. i know from my own poling. 1998. bill clinton's job approval rating was 60 and his favorable rating was about 80. president barack obama job approval among african-americans is 80 and his favorable is 95. he's even more favorable looked upon by african-americans than president clinton, who, as you all know was very liked by african-americans. o bah many is considerably more popular. president that's popular with african-americans and african-americans are strategicically located and there is a republican congressional leadership that's been attacking prez obama almost from the moment he took office. so there are considerable number of similarities between 1998 and 2010. the question is whether or not black voters turn-out if they turn-out, the democratic prospects are going to be a lot better than if african-americans do not turn-out. finally a word about african-american candidates running for office. there's 12 black candidates running for statewide office. all of them democrats. three senate candidates. a gub in the to recall candidat 50% for the all-time high for republicans. two last thing about black candidates i especially wanted to mention. i do a lot of racially voting analysis. there's only one member of the congressional cacusus that's runs this year. on average 16 members of the black cob aggression the caucus were running. this years there one. there's two other black candidates running unopposed. fredericka and tim scott who's going to be elected in south carolina. i forgot what district it is. but he's the - going to be the new black republican member of congress. but all of the current members of the congressional black caucus except for bobby rush have opponents. there's not near a number of black candidates running for federal office. so, that opposition had to come from some place else and that came from white candidates. there's a record number of white/black match-ups for federal office this year. there's 48. previous record was 35 in 2002. 20 percent increase. so it's very, very unusual for there only to be one member of the congressional black caucus to run unopposed. thank you. >> thank you very much. let's hear from doctor scherer now and we'll take questions after he concludes his remarks. >> thanks. well, delighted to be here at the joint center commenting on david's excellent report. i urge you to read if not memorize the whole thing. it has an enormous amount of pertinent information. let me offer remarks in a way of exand theing on what david said. as he points out the current situation at this point for the democrats looks pretty bleak. they don't look like they're having a november election. support by democrat or demographics is - there's two different ways to look at this. one way is sort of the good news is support by african-americans is high. hispanics as well. there's been tail off among young voters which is a key part of obama's coalition in 202008 but still a large gap in favor of the democrats. now white voters are kind of different. especially white working voters. there's a huge gap. maybe support from democrats among white working class voters are hit in the 30's and maybe lower than that. some what better among the white educated but different among the white working class. that's favorable thing for a country that's still majority white in terms of the electorate of the that's bad enough. but one thing that makes ate appear to be worse than it really is and it may end up this way, the issue of, when you look at the polls. likely voters verses registered voters. now you see some very scary figures for the democrats coming out of some of the more recent poles in particular the gallop likely voter model. republican as head by roughly a zillioning points. what's of what's happening if you look at the registered voter pool and this is polled by many. the democrats typically have a disadvantage but it's not that big. i mean they're sort of much more competitive. thought might be down by a few points but once you look at the likely voter pool. some of the leads are enormous. particularly for gallop. what the pollsters do is they take the registered voters in the pole and ask questions and add their secret sauce and come up with, what they believe to be an approximation of voters that will show up on election day. the science mind likely voters is based top fact that if you ask typical set of likely voter type questions three days before the election and you compare to the actual election they're actually pretty close generally. that's three days before the election. likely voter three weeks or three months before doesn't show you is who's going to show up on election day. they're basically asking people what if the election was today. how would you vote. so really what these - i mean i think nieve readers that look, think they must not or must know what they're doing. these people are going to show up. these for people that would vote if the vote was held today. currently enthusiastic voters, but that's not the people that show up. we know for example a lot of poles tend to really tighten up toward election day because what happens is a lot of the particularly relatively low turn-out constituencies. minorities and so on, they tend to tune in late to the election. are much more likely to get picked up by the lighter voter screens but they don't get picked up right now. not only is an off year election where the electorate will be older and more conservative if you look at a likely voter pole, that exentuates everything. making it more older, whiter and more conservative. it's not clear if people will show up on alex day. it just says those are the people most enthusiastic and there's considerable potential there for the electorate to look pretty different on election day does on a gallop likely poll today. we'll see what that amounts to closer to election day but it's a rule of thumb, well, i'd say if the democrats are down by two points on the eve of election. their chances are petty good of retaining the house. somewhere above that it's looking grim for them. but that's when polls have a predictive value. right now their kind of another way to look at poll results. we look at those most enthusiastic. what's this mean for the out competitive outcome and the stuff david was talking about. going back to what i said. jobs of democrats is to try and narrow the gap between registered voters and likely voters. make the,lv's like the,rvs. before this would be minority, younger. less conservative and in turn that means turn-out efforts are pretty critical. that's what allow you to narrow the gap between registered voters and so-called likely voters. you want to push that pool closer to the,rv's and what the electorate that showed up in 202008. that's quite doable. if you look at the likely voter poles right now, they're thinking black turn-out will be relatively low. hispanic turn-out low and young turn-out would be really low. these things not set in stone. that gap doesn't have to be as big as poles are show together day. if in fact the appropriate mobilization efforts can be pushed and particularly as david pointed out this can be effective. it is not at all clear for the outcome to be grim as at least some poles suggest today. that's the nature of sort of trying figure out is there anything different from the outcome of what the poles si guest today. i think the democrats could possibly get out of the election and still hold the house. i think it's going to be very difficult but not as impossible and as it might appear. the republicans are ahead by at least a zillioning points. what's it going to mean when the smoke clears and dust settles and democrats will have a poor election day? is this a rejection of the whole democratic or progressive approach to government? i don't think so. i think this is primarily maybe not exclusively but primarily performed based assessment of what's happened since obama and his administration took office. you don't k need to know more than the slow growth in jobs and the economic anxiety out there to understand why people feel like, hey, i thought he was doing good things. i'm sure a lot of the things they were trying do in washington kind of need to be done. but the fact is, looks like they spent using proximate terms about a zillioning dollars and not much has happened to make my life all that different. the economy is worse in some ways than when obama took office. i think there's a lot of data particularly when you get out of the realm of what the likely voters are. jesus, is that me? i thought i turned this thing off. sorry. so much for using silent mode. so what does this mean about the role of government? i think there's a lot of data that suggests in fact, people have not changed their tunes that much and have not addressed is ideological of the tea party. a few examples the, "new york times" said did they believe obama expanding the government too much. only 32% said he had. 22% said not enough. that doesn't sound like an overwhelming rejection roll for government in trying deal two economy with problems. poll was released by national journal asking people about the view of the proper role of government. 35 percent believe government is not the solution but the problem. o to is the classic. 28 percent said the government must play an active role spreading benefits to people as a whole. another one said they'd like to see government play an active role but they're not sure they can trust the government to do so. that feed suppose the idea. performance paceed a assessment of how well the obama administration has solved problems. doesn't appear to present a real fundamental shift. what the potential and appropriate role. there's a new poll out by caser that has a lot of other information along these lines. it's also interesting to note. independents the new hit group of this election. they are definitely leaning toward the republicans but if you look, for example there was a pew research poll that showed a lot of this swing towards the republicans but if you look at the data closely it showed some interesting things that are the not consistent. more independents favor the democratic party more than republican party. more have a positive more than negative view of contributions imdrafts make to this country. prefer democrats over republican for the need to change the country and prefer democrats over republicans for the need of people like me and democrats support gay marriage. so there's a lot of evidence that says while independences have swung towards republicans, it doesn't present the swing of the mainstream of the approach toward government and the conservative idea that government has a very little role to play. 2012, i think it means yeah the democrats will be whacked. we'll see a degree of that on election day. there's some range of possible outcomes there. looking toward 2012, i'm not so sure if i was republicans i would be measured drapes yet in the white house. as i was pointing out at the beginning and david is also, this election outcome will be very much driven by the preferential in this election. they probably will win that battle but that doesn't mean the views of people have changed that dramatically. once you look at the electorate likely to show it it'll be different than 2010. relative to four more years of demographic change that has been increasing the size of democratic groups and reducing sizes of like the white working class. and you know there's a couple more years in which the economy can and i think probably will recover. you know? i mean anything is possible. we could go in november of 2012 and the economy could look just the way it does today. in which case it'll be difficult for the democrats. if there's significant improvement between now and then. i think based both on the fact that we haven't seen - in a sense a fundamental shift toward the kinds of thicks the democratic party faces and how different it'll look in terms of competition in 2012, i think in some ways the democrats maybe in the relatively fable position. much depends on how the economy evolves in the next two years. stay tuned for that but in the meantime stay tuned for 2010. as david eloquently pointed out, it ain't over until it's over. blacks and other democratic leaning group cans turn-out in higher numbers than the polls imply. i'll leave it there and we'll have questions. >> okay. thank you very much. now we'll open it up for questions. just please an identify yourself. >> chicago tribune. you see any parallels as far as enthusiasm goes for black voters this year compared to 1986? >> actually, the democratic parties relationship with black voters is an interesting one. i followed black voters for many, many years now. and - there are so many places where race is still an issue for people. there still is contrary to what some people said after president barack obama was elected. racism is stale problem in the united states. it hasn't gone away simply because barack obama was elected president. he got fewer white votes in alabama and mississippi and louisiana than mr. spandex john kerry got in 2004 and that's when the circumstances were less favorable for a democrat. race still matters. the democrats given that they have people in the congress from these states. the democrats walk a fine line. so often times the effort to turn-out black voters is in to the larger white society. in 1986 and 1998, it's not like this is an air war where you're watching primetime television and bill clinton comes on and says, african-americans, come busbafrican-americans,come out and vote. that's not happening it's happening in organizations and black churches. i know in past elections the naacp has had an active effort to turn-out black voters. national coalition of black civic participation in 1986 did the same. the - there's the urban league. lots of organizations and much of this, plus of course remember, obama's organizeing for the america organization that's working on believe it or not. most all of you probably did not know this. but in 1980, i did my dissertation and it was a field experiment and many years later some other people did similar ones looking how to mobilize people on election day in terms of message in terms of personal contacting. verses telephone and a variety of ways to do it. there's a science to contacting people from elections when i say a science. to me that has to have formal experiment asian whation to ach right is a tis i call analysis. there's a lot of people that will be. there's much about trying give black voters or black influentials to work on mobilizing black voters. so it's not like you're going to see - this isn't something you'll watch in real time on the web or on television. this is something that often occurs below the radar. so how do you know - this could all be going on in tremendous effort right now. we are not necessarily going to know about it. but if it is going on, it does have - you know - how you contact people. how often you contact people if you show up at their house and handcuff them, they will show up. there's a science to it. but i personally don't know the degree those efforts are being made. in any year, in a year where enthusiasm is sky high that's what produces differential. not when democrats move down from what you expect they're normal energy shuz as m to be. so that's part of the reason why it's so, in the sense difficult for democrats to close the enthusiasm rate. they need to not just pump people up in normal levels but greater than normal levels and perhaps as david points out among a group like african-americans that might be more feasible. there is a sort of science. the voter mobilization where one wonders is fully understood and implemented by party organizations. there's a lot of documented evidence to show if you do certain things the likelihood is made significantly and substantially higher. i don't know what they're investing in those types of activities. >> if the mother shows up on election day and demand this go and vote, that almost guarantees they will turn-out. >> personal contact is good even if it's not mom. >> african-americans have been one of the worse effect. they're potentially one of the drop off voter was a they're depressed ab