And months talking about Hillary Clinton was going to turn out the vote. Matt walter is going to speak for a few minutes because we had historic wins down ballot. Thank you. I want to thank you and the rnc and chairman for the great work youve done. And you nailed it. There are too many inside the beltway conversations and youre missing what is happening out there. This is not something just happened this cycle. This has been building for a very, very long time. This is a culmination of something that weve seen happening. We went into this election at the state level in many respects as a counter balance to obamas failed policies here. And voters recognize that. Thats why republicans have been at or near alltime highs in offices all across the country in states, red, and purple and blud. Thats going to continue right now as we see it. Weve defeated the speaker of the house in kentucky and have picked up that chamber for the first time in 100 years. Defeated the Senate President in iowa and have all republican control of government there. So i think its critically important that people listen to what the voters said yesterday and recognize that those wins have been coming for a long time and its just now manifested with a new mezzf messenger in donald trump and the incredible leadership of the senate and the house and rob and the thing that is theyve done. The American People have listened and theyve been listening for a long time. And this is something thats been coming and will continue to move forward and renew americas greatnesses. Thank you all for joining us his morning. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions Copyright National able satellite corp. 2016] captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption contents and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org learn more about the influence of americas president ial spouses from cspans book first ladies. A book into the potential lives and influence of every president ial spouse in american history. Now, post election analysis with charlie cook, publisher of the cook political report. He talked about what motivated trump voters and the challenges facing republicans and democrats in future elections. This was hosted by the National Journal in washington, d. C. Its an hour and 15 minutes. Din many expected. Mr. Cook good afternoon, everyone. My name is i want to welcome everyone to be after election event. The guest of todays program will be charlie cook and he will be breaking down the who, the what, the why, on what happened on yesterdays election. To handle some housekeeping before we get started. On eitheree two mics side of me in the center aisles. There will be a question and answer portion of todays event. When it comes to that moment, we welcome anyone who has a question to line up behind the mics, and when you are preparing to ask question, state your name and organization. Getting to introducing charlie. Charlie is the founder, editor, as well as publisher of the cook political report. He also is a political and election analyst for nbc news. Cookie founded the political report in 1984 and never since then, it really has been what i would call the bible for election and political Trend Analysis in washington. One other housekeeping matter. Today. E we welcome you tweeting on social media. I would like to introduce charlie cook. [applause] sorry we have nothing to talk about. [applause] [laughter] mr. Cook i wanted to ask your indulgence of, i did not go to bed last night. I got back to my hotel room in new york about 5 00 a. M. And had an 8 00 train and thought, you know, what is the point . Am moderatelyi incoherent, i hope you will understand, but i am glad we have such a great crowd here. You know, i think, i do not think any of us will ever have to be reminded where we were last night or what we were thinking, and a lot of times, i can think back about elections and not quite remember, was that 1996 or was that. . I have seen a lot of people around politics for a long time who have seen a lot of things that we saw the reagan title wave election in 1980 and the 1994 andelection of all kinds of very interesting elections, but i have never experienced one that felt as much like a baseball bat to the side of the head at last night. As last night. Over the course of the day, it seemed kind of normal. Although i guess being in a cabin, i finally was in a cab that had a right in new york. I thought sooner or later, that had to happen. I guess that was an omen. I went to mbc, and we were doing nbs, and i was doing something with chuck todd on msnbc and the first wave of exit polls came in. When they give you the first wave, they do not hand you the top line of like, clinton, trump. They have mail, theme male, female, all of those demographics, but they do not deliberately give you the bottom line so you have to do the math in your head looking at gender. It looked like it was probably clinton ahead by about three, which was not far out of line of where a lot of the polling was, and it was not until we got a little deeper into the evening that it quickly started looking at specific states that we started seeing anomalies that, wait a minute, this is not heading where we all thought and i think historians and political scientists and pollsters and operatives, all kinds of political aficionados are going to be ported to the data for years to come to try to figure out exactly what happened, why we did not see it and how it. So underestimated, but when you think about what this it was aneant, unprecedented rejection of so many people and things. It was a rejection of hillary and bill clinton, of the Republican Party establishment, of really the national establishment, when you think about it. We have had five living president s and none of them have endorsed donald trump. Bob dole was the only living former republican president ial nominee who endorsed him. Ceos, not one of them made a contribution to the trump campaign. The best i can tell, there were two major newspaper vegasements, one was las review journal and the other one was the national enquirer. I did not know they did endorsements until then. [laughter] mr. Cook and it is like, wow. We are going to be unpacking this for a really long time. As i am sure, all of you have been glued to various sites. You know that secretary clinton pulled ahead by it looks like about two tenths of a point right now on the popular vote, but that will get you a cup of five dollars coffee, and whats interesting is that during the 19th century, we had split in Electoral College popular vote outcomes three times during the 19th century, none during the 20th, and now, we have had in two the first 16 years of the 21st century. 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. And on one level, its not terribly surprising. I mean, we knew the history that whenever a party has had the whitehouse 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 did not do that in the postwar era was after president reagan when they elected his Vice President , hw bush, so there was a tendency there, but it seemed like there might be different factors this time. While Hillary Clinton certainly had incredibly ugly numbers , but so are donald trump loss. While the desire for change seemed to be so great, nbc wall street journal poll going in 31 felt the country was headed in the right direction. 62 , wrong track. The interesting thing about that number is the last time and peter hart, now fred yang on the democratic side and bill on the and long before him, 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, 2004. 12 years ago. So, we knew there had been sustained anger and heart had done a series of focus groups so seven far this year or this cycle i should say for the Annenberg Center in pennsylvania. 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 want to change, but that donald trump seem to, you know, listening to these people seemed to be a little too risque risky a change that they , wanted change. They wanted something different, but that he might have been a bridge too far, and maybe i read too much into it. There were two quotes in the analysis that heart to did that that stuck out to me. That i thought told me something. One was a woman named donna show saying, i so much wanted trump. 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 to stop 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 , 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 wanting change but was he on 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, 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 that think that our Economic System isnt working or at least not working for them. And then, you had people that, some people, that they seemed to feel like things are changing are not changing fast enough. And think about, you know, some of the Bernie Sanders reporters, for example and certainly sanders went out and campaigned awfully hard for clinton and Elizabeth Warren went out and did a lot, so this is not criticism of them, but they but that clearly some of the people 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. But i think, far more, there were people that felt like things were changing to quickly quickly and whether , they were looking onto 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 the 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 and clearly, they were afraid, angry, looking for something else, that clearly that was sort there. Ding up out then, we saw something and i have a lot of questions before the election, was sort of breaks brewitrelated brexitrelated, and i think we could talk about that a minute, but maybe thinking about brexit in a sense that, you know, all the experts in the United Kingdom and all the experts around europe and basically telling the people of the u. K. You dont want to do this you dont want to leave and by, you know, 52 to 48 the british people voted to leave and the thing is, but they did it despite the fact that the vast majority of the country leaders, economic leaders, experts all were saying dont do it, dont do it, and they did it anyway. I think it reflects something that this devaluing of this feeling that our leaders and let us down and our experts dont know what they are doing and that they see 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. What we have the lose . That sort of thing. They look at relationships with china and russia and think if things are going so badly, how can a Real Estate Developer do any worse than that . We are just a sort of seeing this thing where they were defying to sort of 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 in all that, but it really looked, i mean, it looks 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. Or if you want to lump in first debate, the billy bush tapes, where it look like that many real difference, that that was seminal point in the campaign. Clearly, it either was not, or it got undone by subsequent events, and i dont know what the affect all of the james 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 seems like it was moderately polite to just bareknuckle brawling, and i highly recommend how many of you saw 60 minutes . Fair number. You can go on the 60 minutes website. Frank once did a focus group, 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 like all of them were, and i was a little suspicious that, you know, maybe there had been some aggressive recruiting of people [laughter] mr. Cook that were particularly, you know, lets call up three or 400 people in the area and takeouts the 25 most ticked off people that you find, and lets put them in a room with some Network Cameras and see what happens. But i mean, i have to tell you it was compelling television. , the wasnt sure it was a straight up, but in retrospect, you know, i sure cant say it was fixed, but it really gave you a sense of how debates and people interactions had changed and 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 is between quote between a dishonest washington politician and an unqualified hothead. In 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 sleaze ball. I mean, thats how voters were seeing this choice. I mean, well. The fact that we could see this in the exit polls. We had, for example, and this as oft of the 24,000, about 2 30 this morning, when i printed out the cross tabs 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 city president would have a fair chance of the sitting president would have a fair chance of holding on and actually did win the popular vote, but looking at the Favorable Unfavorable of just the two candidates where Hillary Clinton had a 44 favorable, 54 unfavorable, so minus 10, but trumps was 38 favorable, 60 unfavorable and that was the one that one up. That won. Wow, wow. [laughter] mr. Cook like i said, we will be unpacking this for a really, really, long time. Washington post poll sent out an analysis this morning and one line that kind of hits me was a revolution against politics shook the country tuesday, with workingclass whites venting their economic and cultural frustration by lifting 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 looking at it, but part of it was this urban 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 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, but, and i know, i mean i was personally aware of sort of this Cultural Divide between smalltown Rural America and i might say Middle America , geographically compared to the coast on each side, but it was much, much, much, much hotter than we expected, and so, theres 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 Journalism from atlantic magazine, Ron Brownstein has a great turn that weve seen the subversion, political inversion. If you think back to the Franklin Roosevelt new Deal Coalition, you know, one a central 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 noncollege educated 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 and 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. That me 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 a 56 of the electorate, and we knew that people particularly 65 and older turnout at a higher level, but trump won them by nine points. 53 to 44. Gender, women made up 52 of the electric and clinton won by 12 according to the exit poll and , men made up 48 of the won theme, and trump by 12 points. Seems to me, given that women are usually 52 , 53 of the electorate, my Louisiana Public School Arithmetic suggest that 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 toby , george. Bush h. W. Bush 87 of the electorate , was white and in 2012, it dropped 15 points to 72 . This electorate was 70 and the thing is, there were some folks saying this could drop down to 59 to 68 , Something Like that , and ended up being 70 , but of the whites that voted, they voted for trumpet by a 21point margin, 58 to 37 , while the 30 that were nonwhite voted for margin,by a 53 point 74 to 21 . And then you look at the race , education, gender split. They were interesting. White female College Graduates, 20 of the electorate, clinton won them by six point, 51 to 45 . White female nonCollege Graduates, 17 of the trump won them by 28 points, so six points up 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 male nonCollege Graduates, trump won by 49 points. 72 to 23 . Nonwhites, 29 . Wait, that doesnt make sense. I was doing the subtraction on the train without a calculator and no sleep. [laughter] anyway, party, clinton won democrats by 80 points. By an 80point margin. It was 89 to 9 . Whats interesting is obama president obama had 91 of the democratic vote in 2012. Now, mitt romney won 92 of the republican vote in 2012. Tom cotton 90 83point margin. , trump got 90 83point , margin. In the exit polls, it is looking more like a fourpoint spread. Turnout may have been a little surprising. Heres the one less thing on the exit poll that i felt was kind of interesting. Yesterday havers served in the military. 13 . By avoted for donald trump 27 point margin, 61 to 34 . And of the 87 that had never served in the military, they went for clinton by five points, 5045. Interesting. Things, madeast their mind up before last month, thats 73 em of the electorate, and clinton , 5146. By five points but people who made their windup 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 wonder, is that where did all the comey stuff we dont know, we will never know. But it is a plausible theory. Things the little quirky , 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 . The third was changed to more liberal policies. Those who said continue obamas policies, clinton won them 915. Those who said change to more conservative policies, not surprising, donald trump won 8313. But 17 said change to a more liberal policy change to more liberal policies than obama had, and trump won 23 of those people, 7023. You sort of look at that and you say, what is going on . An sort of similar to that, question do you think the 2010 Health Care Law went too far . Care and trumpith too far, got 83 of that vote. Right was 18 , and trump got 10 of that. Not surprising. 30 thatabout the thought obamacare do not go far enough . Trump got 18 of those. Of theone out of five people that thought that obamacare do not go far enough voted for trump. [laughter] know, its times like this that you start i start to let my hair. Start to pull out my hair. Thankfully of got plenty. Trump got 18 of the vote of people who thought he was unqualified. [laughter] said, we are going to be unpacking this for a really long time. But what is interesting, and i around 5 30eone at this morning talking about this as a wave election. I was thinking, ok, it was surprising things happening, but in a wave election, a party that is benefiting does not lose a halfdozen house seats. My definition of a wave election is when you start picking up two or three dozen seats, something republicans got with reagan in 1980. 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 ,elly ayotte and Maggie Hassan losing a corridor two, thats not a wave losing a seat or two, thats not a wave in any direction. This seems trumpspecific, but some of the turnout things that i think were driven by trump also kept republicans from losing more seats than we thought. 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. Argue 13, 15, Something Like that. Six seats, theres lower than we thought. Not shocking, but lower than we thought. What our laster 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, those losing one or two seats, thats not arething, as i said, we going to be unpacking this for a really long time. When he talked for like, five minutes. How much time do we have . For like, five minutes. How much time do we have . 10 minutes. What does this mean, and where we going . This is uncharted territory. House. Tart off with the how does this affect paul ryan . Does he want the job . If he wants it, how does he have to keep it . Will house republicans, the freedom caucus, Tea Party Folks feel emboldened by all this and rid ofu know, lets get 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] the legislative process, the governing process, this kind of stuff. We dont know. I think obviously Mitch Mcconnell was in a different situation, because he is not in any jeopardy, and he certainly played things a little cagey than ryan did. He does not have that vulnerability. Some of us were talking last night about, whats going to happen . Trump hereng to have , and are you going to have paul ryan here, and Mitch Mcconnell here, and mike pence has been around. Do that kind of surround trump im inind of try to move h certain directions, and constructive ways . Or is trump completely freelancing . How does all this work . We dont know. We have been so thinking about, if republicans lose their majority in the senate, and they get the margin in the house cut in half, how many could ryan finally the has to of World Without ruleg kicked out hastert without being kicked out, but that does not seem relevant anymore. We are in a new place. At this point, from this point. Orward, 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 . Made had been an argument when it appeared in was going to people argue that she actually would have been better off with 49 democrats in the senate than 51, that she would have as much or more problems on her left as on the right, and there were already about 12 or 13 really, really, really liberal democrats in the senate, and it looks like it , and probably get up to 15 that would 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. There was that whole discussion going on, which obviously is not relevant right now, but where does the democratic vertigo . Democratic party go . I have been saying this for a couple of months, that to me if you look at the Democratic Party , i would argue that the center of gravity and the party nationally is closer to the Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren than it is to Hillary Clinton or joe biden, and that while everybody was fixating on how ideological and cider and goingat all the stuff was on on the republican side, but iowas thought that whenever you see some problem in one party, other getter over at the side and look, because you will see either the potential of or the reality of that same problem democrats, and that and whether it is the outsider alienated, some of the stuff Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warner say, the Democratic Party is owned and operated by wall street, which is obviously news to wall street because they were clearly not getting enough value for their ownership. [laughter] where does the Democratic Party go over the next few years . , a couplee thing thoughts about how things changed, and then we will open it up for questions and comments beenccusations, but i had and 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 made the happening. Number one, might be happening. Number one, she would likely better working relationship, at least with the senate, then president obama did. 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, and that generally does not work so well. I would venture to guess that ae last time a president had difficult relationship with his own party on capitol hill was jimmy carter, maybe, back in the late 1970s. We thought that. I do think, though, that Chuck Schumer i think touch i think touch schumer and Mitch Mcconnell i think Chuck Schumer and Mitch Mcconnell, first of all, think about harry reid. It was like watching two scorpions in a bottle. Terms like loading and despising really understate the relationship. Had was thatn i will have a far better relationship both with Mitch Mcconnell and other republican did, van harry reid then harry reid did. That will being different. All, i know that probably a couple of you are lobbyists. Wow. I dont think he will be getting your budgets cut until next year. , if this town is driven by fear, uncertainty, and change, we have all three food groups coming up in the next two years. Let me just close on that. Just will tell you, sitting around, talking with pollsters and other folks around have onenight, you hundred 40 years of experience there and nobody had ever seen anything like this. There years of experience ever seen had anything like this. We have microphones, and they ask that you identify yourself. Here we go. Height. Hi. Pennsylvania, michigan, wisconsin, is that a trend that you see Going Forward . Trend. i think its a i really do. Well,an may be 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 result, she did fine in virginia, colorado, but skews states where it somewhat less minority and a little less on the educational side, a little more on the rural ide, the democrats democrats have been so excited about the glass being half full that a were ignoring that the glass was half empty. They were losing ground with certain groups. They have been so excited about the groups that they have been gaining with. We all have spent a lot of time talking about the 2013 and haven autopsy republicans needed to do better with minority voters and younger maybe, yada yada, that democrats should have done a study like, ok, we won, but there are some warning signs out there. Where democrats are underperforming, and they are troubling. I think that democrats would be very well advised to maybe do their own autopsy this time and ,ake a look at what happened and what some trends are that they are to be worried about. Changing,e country is and it is changing a lot, and 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 i guessme real for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. It is opening up real problem areas for them that they have to figure out a way to square. You, is someo ask of this trumps new approach to technology . Did the Clinton Campaign fight the old election of obama, datadriven, turnout operation, were they fighting the cold war, and his the old war, and is twitterland . We all know how much less he spent on his campaign. Or was it just the cult of personality . Charlie my colleague amy walter wrote a piece this morning. She was ambitious and wrote something. I was too brain addled. What was the phrase she used . Fromuoted glen bolger 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 the thingped is, clearly the Clinton Campaign , clearly some things goofed up. First of all, the fact that they did not send her into wisconsin, that minnesota and wisconsin were left sure left sort of exposed. And even though she did carry minnesota, but not by much. Clearly something went wrong somewhere along the way, and im sure we will read a lot about it. Trump hast think that found some new way. I think he just had, in retrospect, a very powerful withge that resonated certain types of voters really well. The right message, the right year. I think it was that. Is, if i were a republican consultant, i would not tell future republican residential candidates, dont field, do it the way trump did. Whats in those car commercials, professional drivers on a closed course. Kids, dont try this at home. Just because it works for him does not mean it will work for you. The thing is, and im not saying that this is the same, but the had somelks, romney awfully brave people working for him, and they had done a lot on prettycs, and it was a sophisticated campaign. They thought they were pretty good. They felt good going in, but they were measuring up reasonably well to the obama operation. Were measuring up reasonably well to the obama operation. It was not as sophisticated as the obama operation. T i think that i think did not haveomney that powerful message to make up for whatever gap in the Technology Level that was there. No, i dont think this is something new, but i think it is the power of trumps message. I will stick with that until we learn more, which im sure we will all three plots more. Is there nobody here . What impact does this election have on the role of the media and politics . It seems to me that what i would call the legitimate media, the Fact Checking and document of all information, had no impact whatsoever, and instead what we got was the entertainment side of media, and there does not seem to be a real political filter anymore. For thein the future medias role in politics . Charlie thats a great question. Part of it is, particularly with Younger Voters, i dont want to lay it all off on them, that the distinction between traditional , thatlism and opinion wall has broken down. Whether you go on the internet, some of those walls that used to be there, what was an editorial, what was an oped piece, and what was a new space a news piece, its murkier. Mediad also add that the how much trouble do i want to get in . [laughter] i think theres going to have to be a lot of soulsearching within the media on this. , i think with a , up untille networks tos year, if you wanted watch a whole speech from a politician, you had to go to our friends at cspan, and thats where you went. Of other cable networks, National Ones speeches,doing entire 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 to gets of allowing him his message directly to voters, mainlining it to them in a way that was unprecedented. And then we kind of segway to a segue to a place where, every time we put this guy on, our ratings would go sky high, which helps my bonus. Wall between profitmaking and journalism got a little more permeable. And to be honest, i think in a , and inhe early debates interviews, they would ask the 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 w, ifnder whether, wo i give him a hard time, maybe you wont come back on, and we will take a ratings hit. Thatber the interview Chris Matthews did with trump on abortion, where he asked, what was like ao chris dog with a bone. Trumpt kept going after in a very aggressive way. And i know chris is not from the traditional journalistic background, but chris went after than i more aggressively 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. Ix weeks or so i think some newspapers i love , theyspect enormously 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 new story, wow. F think i would have gotten an f in High School Journalism if i had tried that. Thats a new place. Though i have no set the paper 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 where some ofe the transgressions early on had been. All political analysts and pollsters and operatives, of us lot of that going to be looking back at how we did things. Same thatrt of the trump was going when we sort that trump was going to lose, i wondered if he would get the genie back in the bottle , if any kind of journalism, if trump, this to donald would you be able to get your , down theback up road, for somebody else . Maybe you should have just left all the standards where they were. A lot ofre are us that have a lot to be thinking about. Naval gazing, not that i have seen my navel in a long time. [laughter] charlie any questions . Im going to have you permit cost to kate 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 its the that would candidates cruz could use in 2018 . Charlie we certainly are making the turn. Had all theyou 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. Yardstick,ouse as a the party has gained seats in precisely there were 25 democratic seats up and only a republican seats eight republican seats up in 2018. All the factors working against republicans this year would be working against democrats in 2018. Topsyturvy, iof guess part of your question would be is this a group of ,eople, Party Leaders in ohio who get in a room and commission a lot of polling and research Sherrod Brown and their potential candidates and take a vote and decide who would be the optimum candidate . That would be the way it should work, but not the way it does anymore. You would have quite a few republicans running for that seat and they may or may not get the optimum person. Optimal person. Myo not know off the top of head who would be the optimal person. Courts the supreme istice who said i do not cannot define pornography, but i know it if i see it . You will get someone and you know they would be a good challenger. For example, but sometimes that does not work. For example, democrats were really excited when they recruited Patrick Murphy out of florida. However, the republicans dismantled the guy. We dont know yet. You provided a lot of interesting exit polling data, obviously it tracts tracks differently with what we saw the for the preelection polling. Can you give us an excellent nation for why the preelection polling was so off, particularly from the campaign standpoint . Nationalfirst lets do and then take the state part. National, what we say the average was going in . 4 . Nton by 3, clinton by abeing half, or a third of a point. It is off but not orders of magnitude off. , i think the best holsters in the business p the business are not as good as the predecessors were 30 or 40 years ago. Use liveones interviews and use cell phone. The problem is caller id. All these teleprompters telemarketers burned people out. If my parents got a call 30 or 40 years ago, they would be flattered that someone was wondering about their opinion. Is if the question is who interacting my dinner . You check the caller id and you dont know who that is, you dont want to talk to them. Before they used to be able to get near completion and now it is down to 9 . Getting a representative sample is really, really hard. Their bestst doing work, it is not as reliable as it used to be. I do not see that as much of a failure. On some of the states where you had stayed polling state polling. First of all, not a lot had stayed polling going on. State polling going on. Is anyone here from minnesota . Did you see any . I could not remember any. Michigan had a few, it was not exactly over polled. Outad some that were coming two to three times a week. The quality of polls in an individual states vary a lot. Where the polling was off the most was in some of the states. Where we thought the fight would be and the fight ended up being were two different places. What the campaigns may have been , i dont know. You have to ask pollsters for each side, give them some sodium allus all sodium pen us thol and ask them. What a poll that had clinton up 4 and she won by less than 1 . The noncollegeeducated whites, but the smalltown numeral, i suspect they have realreally did underrepresented. When you do focus groups you have cities that have good focus groups facilities where they all go to columbus, ohio, they go to with good facilities. But they do not go with good fa. 20 miles, 30 miles, 40 miles south. They do not go out there. Tapping into that smalltown, rural thing, that they suspicion that i have as far as where we missed tapping in on some of that anger. York. Pstate new , that might bek a completely different state than the city and the suburbs. A quick followup to that. 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 . It sure looks like it charlie it sure looks like it. My transcript is open if anyone wants to wikileaks a bunch of internal documents on tv. Thats not even funny. [laughter] minds woulduiring like to know what that 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 i have dealt with, they have bright, talented people who were, a lot of them were on the Obama Campaign in 08 competent they were then. I do not think they woke up in competent, they were just doing Different Things and having some of the challenges that secretary clinton had, image challenges. Lets face it, where the Democratic Party is going. President obama, nancy pelosi, the democrat where party is is a happening place for some kinds of voters but it is a different planet than with the voters in south arkansas, where my parents grew up, for example. I dont know, good question. Anybody else before i go . Jeff brown with Pew Charitable trusts. Curious as to the impact of the been a has panic hispanic latino turnout. Future give us some views and what will happen in arizona and texas and so on . Charlie i will say with the benefit of sleep, a lot more data. And in somesion certain areas the latino vote was out and robust. I was hearing a little bit of it in florida. There was a bit of the cuban vote that may have complicated things a little bit. Part of it is, i was talking to a political scientist that does some stuff with Democratic Party. I asked when texas will go purple . What i was told is, 2020 earliest, 2024 is more plausible. This person made a comparison with california. Have a large, you growing latino population that typically tends to be in urban areas. Then you have really, really employeeepublican unions that are more than happy to spend money on voter registration, localization mobilization, all of that. In texas the latino vote is much more spread out and in rural, small towns. You do not have the financial infrastructure that California Democrats had in texas. As a result it is going to lag the curve. It will be on a completely different trajectory in nalifornia was tha california was. Arizona might be in the middle, so it is foolish to expect them to behave exactly like california. He, 187 . H where was it really alienated latino , it got generation ago worse and worse and worse. Look at what mitt romney did it to rick perry, where he tried to take a moderate position on immigration and romney just killed him with it. Republicans have not paid in the way keep wilson had in california in 80s behaved in had in pete wilson california in the 80s. I think there will be a lot written. I think we expect Charitable Trust to write a lot of it. But it is too soon. We have to wait until all the votes are in and all the exit polls have been weighted and massaged and are ready to do it. Anybody else before i get the hook . Twopart question. How do you see [indiscernible] issues playing out the Republican Party . And the second part is [indiscernible] [laughter] charlie there is a rule of thumb. Never take the last question. Those are good questions, though. 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 at advancing the cause that the Republican Party needs to make changes to go after Younger Voters in the future. A lesson that needed to be learned, i think, probably did not get learned this year. It kicked it down the sidewalk a little longer and allows, i problem demographic further public and on cultural issues to get worse rather for them to start figuring out that 40 looknder 50, under at these cultural issues very, very, very differently than where the historic Republican Base has. I were a moderate republican hoping that the party would change its direction on cultural issues, i would be really, becauseepressed today, while the Republican Party run the presidency won the presidency, that fight kind of got prolonged. For the first hundred days . Your guests is as good as mine guess is as good as mine. Were going to facile our seat fasten our seat belts and buckle up for a wild ride. I dont even know if he knows what hes going to do yet. Your membership and National Journal will help you understand that. [laughter] signed myrare ready new, but that is a little extra newellready signed myra