>> charlie cook, editor and publish herb of "the cook political report" recapped the mid-term results at an event in washington hosted by the national journal. before this analysis, the -- they highlighted some of the new congressmens. this is just under two hours. and thank you for coming. it was another exciting late night. and every licks cycle is going o be that way for now one.

and what these results may tell us for 2019 and 0. you will see microphones. answer have question and after charlie's remarks. and he is going to walk us through a and that will be new to governor seats and what it

will bring to bear. uke. >> it is to hear about the new challenges and the great research we are doing. it is awkward to open for charlie cook. con an incredible i drep nonand trying to understand what is going on, the a.m. lift driven that charlie brings us to the table and my twitter feed. so let me tell you what we do and how we apompe this race. first of all, we did not approach this as a horse race or

day-to-day tracking of polls or anything like that. the way we apompede this was to think about the network newspapered. we mean network influence, the friends, and family and colleagues and major business interests and thinking about a senior policy maker how did they make decisions. nd we start about six months ago and picked some of the most political races. e covered seven senate races and with the montana race being called for jon tester and that was the one race, so we're good. we got all the new senators who won and boeing the capped in the

arizona race. four gubernatorial races, florida, california, illinois. and i think we went started to do this work. the first and most important our objecttive is to give you the insige to understand on a day lying today how you vote with relationships. that was the approach we took. and in terms of our annual litic, what. the biggest one is this election or all about a remp dumb ol trump? and this is a lot of of indications. but when you look at the networks and the most competitive races that it is much more complicated. a lot of look forward to talk through all of this.

i will walk through an abrief kuwaited slides. don't worry, all of these shied are available. if you have trouble come to talk to us and get the content that you need. let's start right out of the ate, the first person the most competitive, heidi heitkamp and kevin kramer. and but for us, this is going back to this how much this is about trump. he is a really trump loyalist. e supported trump. several of his staffers were involved in it. for our purposes ap look at the threat influence. he that is one of the energy

nors that supported trum >> went to kevin kramer and creffin said if you run in this race. a lot of other players were extremely close and came toll bit kramer and brought a of money. and kelsey warren, who is the head of the committee who is one of his donors and moving beyond the energy industry. he has strong ties. he and a couple of his friends were a major of his friend which

is a radio station that serves oil workers in the oil field of north darkt and they have pretty interesting ties including sean hanty and a lot of deep ties that you height spec. and kramer, he has some loyalty. some of the layers that have been with him, have been with him for an exrome lie long time. the chief of staff, has worked for cramer. and guys who have been with him since he was on the public service commission. he brings that expertise and loyalties. his family has cam under fire for taking compensation for serving on his campaigns, pu

religious. he lost his son earlier this eer and outpouring for his community. and we tried to outline the main community from which we see influence and presence around these new policy makers and give yep you some of the key points. the senate races, we have more idelity and more requirments for this closure. starting on the left, the expenditures moved across and i think one of the moist interesting things that comes up -statestate versus out of- funding. and we see 81% of his funding

coming from out of state. so let's move onto the next slide. i won't go through this in depth but how it plays out in action. we mapped out the network across kevin cramer and where you can focus your efforts. you have this family in the upper left and some of his colleague. and scott on the upper right and the bottom quanddrapt is focused on the deep ties in the energy space. t is bit of a chart. another one, not really a huge surprise, donnelly was the senator, mike prawn is a long

time indiana business map and has been successful. relatively newcomer. s biggest extent was the spending on the school board. he came into politics. he spent four years in the indiana house. he developed a lot of close relationships with a group of ndividuals who are very on government relations and invested in the jean. mike pence is involved in it. it is a major area of focus and work force development for the w governor for the new governor and his ability to impact. talking through the business

interests and some of this is a oint of kens with the donnelly campaign for outsourcing which is a hot button issue. if you hook at the some of the business interests, he had a business interest in meyer, primarilyly focused on auto parts. e was involved in the lumber industry. this is not the same kind of networks that you might see from someone in the indiana legislature. some of the business mega donors and indiana house colleagues at the national 9/11 this is a question mark. mike pence has raised money for him and their relationship has been rocket thed.

and by mike brawn is not close. mike prawn has clashed with then governor pence over logging rights. there has been a rocky relationships. one of mike brawn's is founder of pan emp r arch bread. nd if i got that name right of boip problem solvers. hooking at the expenditures. in the independent expenditures. he received money. get the path that was to n carson and support for republican candidates. there was a pretty notable gap from senator donnelly.

such and such is an african-american but still able to do this. and there is a juxtaposition in that case and when we look in those numbers and that will be a balancing. the funding comes with a caveat. at least through the germ. most of this campaign was financed. josh hawley. a lot of folks thought this was a an upset. hair mccaskill and only lost twice. pretty amazing record. he, the next great hope for an intellectual conservative leader or a man in a hurry.

he is really turned this into a big tent race. never trum percent from the business community. he received a tremendous amount of support mooping the main coalition. let's start from the top. supreme erked on the court for quhoif chief just physician roberts and met his wife who is a noted scholar. alums.deep ties to the hose firms came out in force during this campaign and are the people. he is cole author thor and threll intellectual. big tech challenges. one of the themes that i think a lot of the folks have been tracking is the real prominence

of attorneys germ in taking so roles in op owe owesing the climate change. e comes from a perspective and populous, to how he does his work. so he has been pretty adamant in going after facebook and google and some of these big tech groups and this could be somebody who is a leader of the big tech groups. one of the biggest donors, gave gave gavin new some. and timely, it goes back to the . ep ties in the religious t is anti-ever lgbt rights but

i will lay out a couple of. the former fund. was involved with the hobby lobby case. when we did our independent expenditure analysis, missouri s the most funded race among expenditure tus and who is opposing the capital since most of the funding actually undercutting the opponent. club for growth. and a major missouri conservative fund funding source and there is a a lot. it comes down with a massive of out of state mondaying. that number is for his campaign

d in the amount of interstaters. there is a huge depap. florida senate, talk about rick scott. maybe one of the real players that we would have expected to run last night. and he comes from a deep network of prominent networks in florida. he started as a hospital executive. he is also pulled in a lot of funding from america's cross roads and won interesting thing, he raised money in texas and raised money out of texas in support of his campaign. when we look out how he runs his campaign, he draws heavily on cruz's visers and ted

campaign, mitch mcconnell. and when you look out how he is balancing it and deep ties to gop.tional and inhirted the trump campaign. liking at his expenditures. far and away. n republic almost dedicated to proposing up his candidacy. $5 million. indicative to wealthy individuals he has in florida. march sharplurn. one of the great hopes.

put forward and resounding victory. one thing that is noted howl close she shoshte the ever associated herself with president trump. and emshe has a better. and close to mike pence than president trump's knelt work. you look at some of the individuals, saddam hussein supported freddie mac caucus and jeb hensarling and other members of the study committee. r industry ties, it is astonishing and broadcast in space. she has a number of key staffers ho have been consultants and more recent addition and a lot of ties to the f. crmptcrfrlt and ties to fox, and some of

those. when you look at her personal networks and personal ties in the health space. health her kids run a care company. she started in sales and marketing. again, pretty broad range for her, coming down to the middle. 56%. one thing i would watch with march sharplurn and she has the the broadcasting she and josh awley might go after big tax that might be supportive of the telecom. representative rosen. and i'll leave it to charlie. her networks compared to some of

the other profiles, fairly modest. she was -- she came to politics pretty late in life. d she was a software consultant and harry reid drafted her. and she inherited harry reid's network. she has affiliated with harry reid's with mass toe, so that is where sure start comes from. she does have highs in in evidence and jewish national community. she was a president. she was the rabbi of that synagogue and the interfaith dialogue. you hook at the other major

layer, who comes policy issues and own percent perfecttive and the kind of credit detentionals. her personal connections, her husband is a roolings gift with the v.a. and she worked for southwest gas corporation. if i look at her, most interesting thing for her in terms of funding the out of state funding. f anybody is from the west and southwest, it is not something people take kindly to. $2 stire dedicated close to million to support candidates like rosen. tremendous amount of support for her across the board. i mentioned, we wanted to

cover. arizona senate is so close to call. and the other one you can keep. maybe next week, martha mcsally, she, like so many of the candidates had to walk a line between her support for a president who is popular in her tate as well as the g.o.p. coalition. one of the things that comes out is just how much money she has received from never trump republicans. randy kendrick behind the gold water institute. karl rove has been pretty fervent in his anti-trump. and paul singer among other

things that is a major player. when you look at her networks, she does not have this well developed long stand arizona network thaw might see from the other candidates that might have run from this position. she got her start in politics and inherit the from jon kyl. and worked with john mccain and her campaign manager worked for john mccain. again, this is a little bit of a nacent network. r dedicated history as a combat pile on the. interesting and because of the role she had in bracing

barriers. and her policy positions. she was famous for beyond actually serving in combat and suing the department of defense over a requirement to wear a head scaffer. d brought her in contact for disagrees. and big advocate for mental health. between that, she served at the george marshall center in germany, because you can see her fitting in the mold not only as a veteran but someone who brings that higher level thinking to washington. not much to say about her funding network. representative sinema. she started as a really pretty

far left progressive. and if you look the house early on, she was in the green party and got 70% of the vote and came back with a more moderated position and in large part because she has been profe business. she has actually received the endorsement of the chamber of the commerce and spirit of award nd prominent of the plus dog coalition. sitting in lining, and real champion, both of her brothers seshed in the military. she has staff she has hired. but she also is a really staunch . and three xual

ormer staffers and prominent advocate. and aligned herself with various players in that debate. when you look in the broading. she has been a beneficiary for the funding. and shadoove groups and they have hidden their hands quite a bit. and they brought a lot of money into her race. i think i'm going to end in desantis and not standing between you and charlie cook. we have covered some other races but i'll step with him. all the races we have covered.

when you look at the networks, florida was truly a refer dumb on donald trump. when you look at it, it looks like that is what was happening. t if you hook at his funding and george sorrows, strong ties to the civil rights community, isn you hook at ron desantis weight.al also hasawyer aver and a finance ki. so tapping in to those networks. nd usually when we profile members of congress, we see them

quite a few ties. not so much with desantis. in terms of the staff he hires come from cat omp and the republican study committee. but running in florida and understanding the challenges and few republicans. his running mate is a close rubio. t ant of marco but we have a lot of other times and rick scott's network and done pretty well with the conservative conservative community. more stuff here. if you would like to chat with me. i thank you for being here. i know you have a tough job and r and getting here.

we are happy to help you out and be here today. [applause] >> thank you, luke. i ails find luke's analysis to be interesting and you say, what do i do this and hey to be there as well. i will not stand between this crowd and charlie. i know you came to see. but the one thing i will say congratulations. is is his 20th year with "national jourm." and so charlie

>> that was really good. i'm extremely impressed. this is kevin, and he mentioned that this is my 20th year at national journal but what that really means is that this is the tent by annual charlie cook sleep deprivation tests. we were several members of our team where on the decision desk at nbc which is kind of interesting because think about nasa mission control. it was great fun. i did get to sleep from 5:00 to 6:00. my wife is in the back. she thinks i am crazy. thee going from here to

birchmere to see petunia clark. n!wntow i am not sleep deprived at all. coming on the heels of the most surprising a presidential elections this one had relatively few surprises. it flowed more or less. there were very few upsets. a lot of people characterized it as if it was like they were having two different elections. and when america was the senate contest and everything else purplee over in a america as well.

that is how things panned out. one race had a strong component of suburbs and urbanized areas. out a lot like what we thought. our friends at nbc at first to read this morning made a really good point that if you look at the state exit polls and the result, they matchup really closely with where president trump's job approval rating was over 50%, republicans did pretty well. really well. and to the extent that they were below 50. not so well.

in the senate, and i know luke has already gone through this. we should probably skip to really quickly. republicans knocked off three incumbents and we are still waiting to hear about arizona, florida and montana. i was really interested in luke's analysis. i thought it was really good. he sort of touched on this. what i thought was so interesting there, was that martha mcsally did really start off as a moderate. and then she went hard to the right. i thought it was to win her primary. and then she kind of kept going. i thought it kind of interesting.

another started off really liberal and then moved to the middle. i thought, this is interesting. think martha mcsally is going to be a u.s. senator. will she win this race or is she going to get appointed to replace john kyle when he is expected to step down? that is likely to happen. florida, it looks really likely that rick scott is going to win. it is heading into recount territory and you never know with that. it was extremely close in montana. the scenario that was either nightmarish or delicious. it depended upon your point of view.

that is what happened if democrats had picked up one seat. and it would have gone to 50-50 with an overtime game in mississippi. that is not the case. depending upon what happens in the states, you could see republicans go all the way up to the net gain of four. that would be just incredible win for them. or the other direction to know that -- no net change. we will see how it pans out. expecting,ome we are this was a good one in the senate for republicans. and one, yes, they were blessed with the best map that either party have but they took full advantage of it and you have to give them that.

it was certainly a challenging environment. in the house, some of us have a little bit of shock early in the evening because in the earlier hours when we started getting returns in, it looked like democrats would probably clear the 23 seats they needed to get the majority. but not by much. they seem to be on a much lower trajectory than we thought. i thought, this will be interesting. it seems to be headed towards 35 or 36, something like that. since california takes their time in counting votes it will be a while before we know a whole lot more about that. i think the shocker, and i was not here for all of luke's presentation, but did you go

into oklahoma five? no? ok, where'ss ask, the surprise? there always is one but i will confess that the fifth district of oklahoma wasn't really where we were looking. this is where steve russell, who was first elected in 2014 and was a career officer before that. it's basically oklahoma city and the suburbs immediately around oklahoma city. and yes, it is oklahoma, but it has a 41% minority or mixed race population there and it is the state capital.

it is not just your typical southern kind of district. but, wow. i do not expect this. , this was a eating -- beating. she was an attorney. and this is a district that mitt romney beat president obama by 18 points. trump beat hillary by 13 points there. if you are going to say, tell me a race that surprises you, i would confess this is not where i would have picked. the underperforming early in the evening was something that had us scratching our heads. the governors, it was a good night for democrats. and there are three races that are uncalled. the open seat in alaska where

the independent was running but he dropped out. but that's very close. the others other is the open seat in connecticut. and then finally, the georgia in -- georgia, and the question is, does it go for a runoff run off on december 4? it is a close call. , we wererams campaign on a conference call with them over the weekend and they were to win without a runoff. they thought was plausible. the libertarian was not getting anything. they thought it would be narrow. i don't think it was think part of, i it was that they have considerable doubt about what would be like in a really short runoff.

against brianod kemp, the state elections officer. and you have some really quirky things there, like monday is a holiday and all of the court houses in the state are going to be closed, and early voting would be abbreviated. there were all kinds of wrinkles in there. they were having a hard time getting information out of the county courthouses. this is something where winning the runoff would be pretty tough. not a possible, but -- not impossible, but it was tough. this would apply both to the georgia governor's race in the florida governor's race. a lot of people in the africa can american community and the democratic party -- african-american community and

the democratic party are disappointed. you could throw in better or 'rourke as a white liberal national. yeah, the left came up short. compared to what we kind of thought three or four or five , inhs ago, i am not sure gillum's case made into were run -- into the general election or run as well as they did. georgia has changed a lot. it has to have, otherwise you would not see the race this close. it is changing. it will continue to change. but maybe not quite fast enough. it is becoming a less red republican state. more purple and this punctuated

that. same thing with texas. one thing that's interesting about texas is that better or rourke came up' short. this was the first serious influx of money into voter registration to get out the vote for democrats in texas. this will move democrats forward in their goal to turn texas purple. this was a lot better than i expected. senator cruz should be congratulated, that was a very hard-fought win. you are republican income in texas, you can have a expectation that you will outspend your competitor by a pretty wide margin. was did not happen so that

an impressive win for him. underperformed, we knew the senate would be to health for them. toughestion -- tops -- for them. where they had mixed to slightly disappointed in the state legislatures. i had been emphasizing this for a month or two. if you think about this from a policy standpoint, if democrats were going to get the majority in the house, which they now have, it would not be a huge majority. it would be small almost certainly. it will be smaller than the republican majority they have in the house right now. they have had a hard time getting things through. it will be a really small majority. what were really talking about has been able to control the senate floor schedule.

being able to call hearings, things like that. not really moving a lot of serious policy along the way. it is now certain that republicans will have majority in the u.s. senate. from a policy perspective there wasn't really much of a prospect for a change. for me it was out in the states. there was and still is a potential for real change. as everybody in this room knows, over the last 20 or 30 years washington has been increasingly unable or unwilling to deal with a lot of problems facing the country. and as a result it has created a vacuum. the states have stepped into that vacuum. you throw in the big gains in

the 2010 election when they -- when republicans picked up six governorships. and then they picked up another 300 plus legislative seats. and where you saw conservatives embark on a very aggressive conservatives agenda over the last eight years. a lot of the more controversial measures have been passing on the constitutionality of statutes and regulations and policies enacted by the states that now have had republican majorities in the legislature. and republican governors. that has sort of been what is driving a lot of the controversy in the supreme court, whether

you are talking about medicaid, suppression depending on your point of view. very aggressive and now with democrats picking up seven or something governorships in the state legislatures, republicans dropped a net loss of five chambers either statehouse or state senate chambers. democrats picked up six. republicans went from total control. you have the governorship, the house and the senate republicans have before the election they had 25 states where they had complete control versus only eight for democrats. now it is closer.

21-14. republicans picked up six. republicans pick up six. i am going to cheat off of steve story. the colorado the colorado and maine state senates. and the minnesota house, chambers in new hampshire, the connecticut senate went from tied to democrat control. this is where it gets complicated. there was a group of democrats that aligned with republicans and effectively gave republicans control of the senate. the reverse happened in alaska. around the flipped opposite way.

normally in midterm elections since the beginning of the 20th century, this was the average loss for chambers for a president's party was 12. and this looks like it's gonna -- going to be about six. it is been disappointing, where had some pretty good gains, but we were saying five to eight or ten. it looks like this will be on the lower end of that. what does this mean? i think right after that cavanaugh supreme court fight. i was referring to as a color enhancement event. it made the red redder and the blame -- and the blue bluer.

it did a lot of motivating. and given that the democrats were already incredibly motivated going in and it didn't benefit democrats so much in the suburbs. where republicans gained enormously in the states where they, in the red states and i think the president's his focus, on the wall and the caravan. on cavanaugh. i think it made a real difference in a couple of the u.s. senate races and it didn't do anything to help them or did very little to help them if it did anything at all. -- at all in the suburbs and congressional and other things but it really helped on the u.s. senate level. turnout, be really careful about

what you say and write about turnout. because we know it is big and it went up. winner that. but the thing is, there are whole lot of votes that have not been counted yet. california and some other states are notoriously slow at counting votes. we do not know anything. anybody that writes off of election night about turn out , they are just making stuff up. you can't really know anything so soon about it. we could look at the exit polls. exit polls in 2016 had some issues. it does not look like an people relative to the electorate went up much. said before the election that we would set a midterm record

number of young people voting, but if only 100 of them voted, that would be a record. it was a really low bar. what does this mean going forward and thinking about 2020? democrats had some disappointments. the senate was a disappointment. there had been points where they thought it would go north of 40. north of 45. there was a chance of that. i don't think it was ever likely. in my last column i said if you let me get away with a ridiculously wide range, 20 to 45, it almost looks like this will be right in the middle of that.

democrats had high hopes. pre-cavanaugh, it was never better than one in three that they could get a majority in the senate. the thing about it is, democrats are not really big on introspection or have not been in recent years. loss about 2016 after the they suffered. it is easy for democrats to blame hillary clinton. she had accumulated a lot of baggage and made some mistakes. going along with the private email server, nobody could ever prove me wrong, but i am convinced the word deplorable cost her a lot of votes.

you could blame her campaign for making mistakes and they certainly made some. comeyats could blame jim and the fbi. they could blame the russians. but all of that is so easy, so convenient to blame these things that rather than may be the parties got some problems and yes, america is changing. it is changing. it will continue to change. absolutely. but maybe it hadn't changed at quite the pace they thought it was and maybe triggered a little bit of a backlash out there . where democrats have to think the economic consequences of things that they push. whether you look at the clinton administration and trade and think okay, maybe you folks

believe free trade is the right way to go and nafta was a good thing to do, that is all fine and good. you would have a really hard time making the case that democrats did enough to mitigate the job losses to a lot of people that were hurt economically by trade. granted, a lot of job losses out there that are being blamed on trade, a lot of it is actually technology robotics, that sort of thing. but there were people generally hurt in manufacturing areas by trade and i heard a statistic last week that there's only like 100,000 people currently in trade adjustment job retraining programs. 100,000 for the whole country. that's like a drop in the bucket. conversely for the obama administration, maybe their environmental agenda is very

well have been the right thing to do, but did they do anything to mitigate the people that were going to be economically hurt? like if you were in the coal sector or whatever, did they do that? democrats are having enormous problems with working class white voters who were the new deal coalition and now that is called part of the republican base. i think democrats ought to look in the mirror and say what did we do to lose these people are -- or what can we do to keep from losing more of them? they ought to really be thinking about that. there are some things that i know, and it's important to remember that midterm elections have no predictive value whatsoever in terms of what's going to happen two years later.

just think about the thumping democrats got 1994 bill clinton and then he was it two years later or president obama's problems with 2010 and he got it with mitt romney two years later. there just isn't predictive value. but what is worth looking at is to think, what were the states that caused democrats so much -- so many problems in 2016 and is there anything you could look at what happened here? so michigan, republicans gained -- excuse me, democrats gained the governorship and they want won senate seat with debbie sabado very, very easily. whatever problem democrats may

have had in michigan in 2016 and maybe it was more of a clinton specific problem anyway. whatever it was, it clearly didn't work against democrats as much this time as it did last time. or ohio, where you had sherrod brown winning easily in the u.s. senate and democrats coming ever so close to winning the governorship. wisconsin winning a senate seat, tammy baldwin in wisconsin and being scott walker. with walker, i have a theory that god didn't intend governors to serve more than two terms. [laughter] and there's a reason why a lot of states don't allow it, because it is unnatural. andrew cuomo was able to do it and got away with it, but hey it's new york state. hard for a democrat to lose there. but whatever was the problem in

wisconsin that led to republicans winning wisconsin by 7/10 of one point, same thing. or pennsylvania winning the governorship, holding onto the governorship easily in a senate seat very, very easily. and then you think of florida , coming up short in both the senate and governors races, but very competitively. obama carried it by one point. trump carried it by 1.2 percentage points in both these races were really close. i mentioned ohio. normally it's a purple state in presidential elections, the democrats just aren't even close. six, seven points something like that. democrats lost in 2016, but here they ran pretty well here.

those are some things that are worth looking at here. i do think the presidential election, the campaign starts today. there will be people jumping in immediately and i think it's going to be a field that will be roughly the same size as the republican field was back in 2016. but it will have some interesting dynamics to it that what we are going to see, we will see things we've never had before. for example, we have african-americans run for democratic nomination before. barack obama won successfully twice. but to have two, three, four well-funded, well-organized very prominent african-americans -- running,, harris harris, corey

booker, possibly eric holder, duval patrick. that is a new and different dynamic here. i think it is a mistake to think of the democratic nomination fight like ncaa basketball brackets, because it is not that simple and that's not the way it is. but it's a way to structure thinking and we've had women run for democratic nominations before, but we are going to have two, three, four in addition to elizabeth warren almost certainly going to run and possibly amy klobuchar and kissed in gillibrand -- kirsten sheila brand and kemal harris who i mentioned two, three, and four women running. i don't think we've had a strong latino candidate for democratic nomination before but we are going to have the mayor of los angeles as well as the former hud secretary.

that would be an interesting dynamic. democrats have actually done pretty well in the past with current and former governors. we'll have a ton of mayors running besides garcetti, besides castro, john hicken looper. we are going to have big group of those and sort of the normal folks that will be getting in. does joe biden jump in or not? does john kerry, i saw him in something a month ago and he was certainly not closing the door. what about bernie sanders? sure, why not? being an effective member of congress has never been a priority. [laughter] if i had remembered that c-span

was doing this, i probably would not have said that. [laughter] sleep deprivation. mike bloomberg, who spent what ,- who spent $100 million everything that bloomberg has done on environmental issues that the democratic base likes, would that undo the connection to wall street and maybe some of the criminal justice practices that have fallen out of favor that he pursued, the nypd pursued when he was mayor? he at one point was republican. can it undo all that? we'll have to wait and see. we are going to have a big, complex, boisterous democratic primary. people are talking about, well, democrats did not have a message in 2018. yeah, they did.

they were running against president trump. that was the message. why get in the way of something like that? in 2020, democrats need to have a message coming together. that will be really, really important. so take all that together and you know, this is going to be like a barrel of monkeys. it's going to be a lot of fun to watch. things like income tax returns and subpoenas in all interesting -- and all kinds of interesting things. president trump i think he can brag that he did make a positive difference for republicans in the senate. but i think there's some former republican members of the house who might not be former republican members have the -- been a little

tamer, a little more subdued in some of his rhetoric. so why don't i stop at this point. we have microphones here and here. i don't know if there is a third one over there. does anyone have a question? i do not have the latest figures on any percentages were numbers on individual races. you guys have your phones and ipads and things next to you can take care of that. yes, sir. >> thank you for doing this , charlie, as always. you talked about the prospect of gridlock in washington looking to states for policy action. it looks like from the conversations nancy pelosi has been having a signals from the white house there might be a few areas where at least the white house would have an incentive to cooperate on infrastructure, prescription drug pricing could the senate seems to be the place

where mcconnell wants to confirm judges and not too much else. if the white house and the house and senate to get together and cooperate on big issues, could they jam it through the senate and get something done? charlie: you're making a great point. on paper it seems possible what you're describing may happen. president trump has some fine attributes, but sticking to a script, staying on message, staying focused and negotiating policy they are not among his , strongest suits. every time he rolls a grenade down the aisle, it undoes potential for some of these where there are opportunities. to be perfectly honest, if i

were him, the first thing i would done last year would have been infrastructure. do some things that are unifying. bring people together. you know, so can he say this a -- can he stay disciplined on that? history suggests that as a challenge, but maybe. thata little skeptical this will happen. thinking about president george w. bush, you don't become president under circumstances much worse than he did. you lose the popular vote. it isn in florida, contested and it goes all the way up to a 5-4 supreme court decision. and there was so much bitterness

coming out of florida. but at the same time, he was able to do something with that and work with senator kennedy on education and able to do some things. people forget that his first job approval rating after taking office was 56%. clearly people didn't vote for him were willing to give them -- to give him initially the benefit of the doubt. it's been so perplexing to watch president trump do is doubling down strategy to the extent that he has and not try to expand 46% -- the 46% that voted for him, not to push that number up because there are no guarantees there is going to be a jill stein type green party candidate polling in the kind of support

she did. not all that came out of hillary clinton, but probably a pretty fair share of it. 46% may not be able to get 302 or whatever number of electoral votes that he got. do what to be able to you're suggesting that i'm going to be from missouri on this one. he's going to have to show me that he's willing to stay harnessed. yes, sir. right here. >> you mentioned midterms are not a predictor of what happens and it sounded like that was for the u.s. as a whole. other signals would see at the county or congressional or state level comparing to the previous presidential performance that

has any meaning going forward to the next one? we see reversals in counties that trump flipped, for example if they start moving the other way does not have any meaning or that's just how it is? charlie: that's a really, really good question and i suspect before you get home tonight there will be some national journal presentations people will be working on tracking that data down and building slides on it. that is kind of what i was getting at. i have not looked at that specific thing, but when i was getting mad talking about wisconsin and michigan and pennsylvania and some of these places that send this presidential election into a very, very different place than we expected. normally, you know, 2.1% popular vote win is not enough to get 270 electoral votes.

you know, to have the biggest diversions between the popular vote and electoral college in 140 years since 1876. we'll remember fondly when samuel tilden won the popular vote by three percentage points and rutherford b. hayes won the electoral college by a vote , although i think there were some contested things in there. i think looking on the individual state or county level is a legit way of looking at it. particularly with this been a split decision, do you make that based on the house or the senate? the president's approval ratings , going into last week, there were some 40s and 41, but 46es and 47s is --

. that is actually a fairly wide span. usually if you're down below 46%, the average is in the house and senate seat in the senate that normally don't have the map to deal with. but i think your point is well taken and i'm fairly confident the presentation center people will be working on that and then i can steal from them. any more questions, comments, accusations? you guys have never been shy before. here we go. >> a quick question. what are your thoughts on house leadership? pelosi, i just saw challenging clyburn for with. any thoughts? [laughter] charlie: yeah, i know. i know specifically who is watching. [laughter] the conventional wisdom was that

the lower the number, assuming democrats got a majority that the lower the majority the tougher it would be for her that -- for her. that she would just not have a lot of cushion in terms of getting 218 votes. but that if she won, you know, if they won 45, 50, 55, 60. 60 was never going to happen, but a big number, the conventional wisdom is that would give a cushion that she could drop some people and still be in a position to get 218 on the floor vote given the numbers -- members that have said publicly or privately that they won't support her. there is a contra argument there and this is overly simplistic.

25 republican seats were in districts that clinton carried. roughly speaking, the first first 25ns -- the -- gains democrats would have would be mostly in hillary clinton districts were nancy pelosi would probably not be terribly problematic in a lot of those folks might not have been backed into making a promise are anxious to make a promise that they would never support her. but that anything north of that, bigger than that would mean new incoming democrats coming in in districts that president trump won in 2016, where nancy pelosi would be somewhat more problematic. i think i'm going to go with the conventional wisdom of the lower number. since we ended up with 35, 36, 37, something like that, that is kind of in the middle. i guess if i had to put a number

on it, and i realize this a fools errand, but i've been accused of being a fool before. 60% chance, maybe a touch above that she wins. but you know, when democrats meet, and i went to a catholic university, but i'm not catholic, but where you're waiting waiting for the pope to be named in the puffs of smoke coming out of the chimney. there are all kinds of names of people that are mentioned that , if push comes to shove, democrats may turn to. when i ask people around, you know, you hear adam schiff , all kinds of people.

here and clyburn over you have a big mix of people. i tend to think if nancy pelosi gets pushed out but it will be generational change and whoever they get will be on the younger side of 60, 65, maybe even 55. you know, i think that there is still some doubt they are. -- doubt there. i noticed last night, i couldn't hear it, because i was in front of the computer but they have a monitor up and i saw nancy pelosi and steny hoyer and jim clyburn up on the stage at the dccc victory party and she was positively euphoric in steny hoyer, who i like a lot looked like he was at a funeral.

not that he wasn't really happy about democrats picking up a bunch of seats he had been in a , lot of those districts and worked very hard, but you know, i'm not sure he enjoyed her taking a victory lap like that. we'll have to kind of wait and see. yes, sir, did you have one? >> thank you for taking my question. one of the cornerstones of our democracy is the faith and trust we have in the process. use the words that boil down to access security or suppression. wondering if you have any thoughts about the short-term and long-term effects that things like secretary of state . it all began in florida were an election official was really cast in the spotlight. now we see it in kansas. we see it in georgia. we see it in new hampshire on both sides of the aisle in which money is starting to work its way into those in the managing process that i was hoping you could share some thoughts about the affect he thought that has.

those are some good questions and let me attack it from a different way, or several different ways i should say. we've had secretaries of state running for governor, for senate. i don't ever remember it being as contentious as georgia and kansas were this time. maybe that just says something about the hyper partisanship and increased acrimony in our process, that a fairly previously innocuous position suddenly becomes so highly charged. that is new. one thing republicans did over the last decade that was very smart is the republican party invested a boatload of money in state elections over the last decade and win both state legislative, but attorney

general, secretary of state races, they invested a heckuva lot and they've done extremely well in those races. on the train on the way to new york, we've been going back and forth the last few days, yesterday afternoon i was looking and i couldn't quickly find a partisan break down a -- breakdown of secretaries of state. you can find attorney general very easily. it has never been really considered whether partisanship was that important. i personally would prefer that we have some careerist or nonpartisan, nonpolitical people administering elections. the other thing, to your broader point, we spend very, very

little money. we spend a lot of money on campaigns. we don't spend a lot of money on elections. my guess is most counties spend a heckuva lot more money on food in the county jail than they do on elections. we are not paying for precision. we are not spending enough money on the election administration for precision. we are just spending enough to get kind of close. if you want precision, you've got to pay a heckuva lot more than we do and it would probably help not to be using temporary , often time elderly people using technology. that is a recipe for disaster.

but who am i to talk? i worry some about the security of our elections and the process, but i worry even more about the lack of confidence people have. we saw some articles the last few days about people who think my vote doesn't matter. people say i don't even know if it's going to get counted. you go wow, that's pretty self-defeating. that's a terrible, terrible attitude. i do think we need to take elections administration more seriously.

and i do think, i personally, now granted, you need to consider the source. i'm from louisiana, the original good government state. i think there's very little little voter fraud in this country. very, very little. at the same time, i know a lot of conservatives and republicans that are absolutely convinced voter fraud is rampant. i'm a little more skeptical about that, but that's okay. there isn't a lot of confidence in our system on either side. that is a real problem we need to address. anybody else? right here. >> thank you for doing this. my question with ohio, usually when you have a statewide election like florida, governor and senate, you see it trend the way it looks likes it is trending.

ohio you had sherrod brown who clearly ran away with it, do you have any insight or anything given as you mentioned being a purple state, swing state, is there anything more you can share with us on that? charlie: you can sort of state rules and start finding exceptions to the rule. we are seeing less ticket splitting than we've ever seen before. we are seeing more people that are just going straight down the line. either republican, democrat or just staying home than we ever saw before. there was a great statistic the pew research people came up with . since 23rd team there's been something like 73 u.s. senate elections before yesterday and 69 out of 73 were won by the same party that carried that state in the most recent presidential and in 2016 every

single u.s. senate race went exactly the same way it was going that night in the presidential. so we are seeing a lot less ticket splitting, but we are still seeing some. brown'sbetween sherrod victory and richard cordray's loss, that was a gap. texas, governor abbott, i don't know what his margin ended up being, 15, 18. it was a big, big margin. and then ted cruz's was very close. you had all kinds of strange things going on in texas. other than the ted cruz race. republican attorney general under indictment since "moby

dick" was a guppy. then you've got a state agriculture commissioner that somehow offended all the barbecue joint owners with some kind of omissions thing. it perplexed the hell out of me, because that smells good. why would you want to restrict that? apparently the land commissioner , bush offended the daughters of the alamo or something. it was a sacred site in texas on something i do not understand. you had all kinds of things going on that caused a big gap. the general rule is still there that there is plus ticket splitting than we've seen in a long, long time. but there absolutely are examples of it.

brown's race just never was close. it just never was. ohio and pennsylvania senate races, and sherrod brown in bob -- and bob casey, those republican challengers are kind of the dogs that didn't bark. they just sort of never got completely engaged. but i think the general trend towards less ticket splitting is absolutely there. yes. im -- charlie: i saw you at something the other day, did an eye? -- didn't i? >> yes. i am stalking you.

[laughter] charlie: careful. my wife is sitting right back there. [laughter] >> some people have mentioned the changing nature of the republican party be more and more trump the end. do you think romney has any impact at all in the senate? charlie: well, i think senator elect romney is a very, very bright talented, mature and i think he'll be very much a worthy addition to the u.s. senate. i wouldn't expect him to become a thorn in the side of president trump because number one, that is kind of not his personal style. but number two, you know, think about senator flake in his book. you know, his book that was so critical of president trump ended up being the political equivalent of 1626 page suicide note.

[laughter] i think the world of senator flake but i do not think he could have one -- won the republican primary when all was said and done. bob corker didn't even write a book, but his criticism of president trump made him where he would have had a difficult time beating marshall bought her -- marsha blackburn had he doubled back and run for his seat again. they're just very little tolerance for dissent within the republican party right now. there would have to have been, you know, if republicans had lost 50 seats in the house and lost two senate seats and control of the senate, that might've changed things, but that didn't happen. so i wouldn't count on that. i do think we are seeing signs of a realignment taking place in this country. it is going both directions and we are seeing a lot of high

income, well-educated people that are moving from within the republican party more towards democrats because of their pro-choice, pro environment, anti-gun, they don't like president trump. you know, it's pushing them over this direction towards democrats. at the same time, you've got these working-class whites, once a reliable part of the democratic coalition that are moving equally fast over towards the republican party and they tend to like president trump. there is a liberal element there and a swing element, but a lot of pretty conservative, particularly socially, culturally moving over that way , so that we are seeing -- i

don't know what the republican party is going to look like in 2021 or 2025, once president trump is gone. i don't think it will go back and look the way it used to look, but it is clearly, you know, we are seeing some changes their -- there. do democrats present a face and open arms and a nominee who would be a good receiver for some of these people were not -- or not? most democrats and liberals, to them the most horrible thing in the entire planet that could have been in 2020 would be

president trump gets reelected. think about when you go to an investment advisor. they ask, what's your plan, but also, what's your risk tolerance ? and that's something democrats should examine, what's the risk tolerance for having something they really, really don't want to happen. electability is not a major concern of people when they decide who to support for the party's presidential nomination. i have to credit democratic pollster jeff garan who i was asking about this last summer hsm esaid that's right but what about unelectability. in other words if you're a democrat and you say well, i really like so and so. but i'm not sure he or she can

win. and they'd be willing to look at their second or third choice because it might be someone that would be less unelectable if you will. does that happen? but at the same time obviously someone coming from the left can fire up the enthusiasm and we saw, you know, enthusiasm where, i mean, democrats, yes they came up short in florida and georgia and texas, statewide. but you know what? they sure as heck beat the point spread. they beat what one might have expected, what was expected of them several months earlier. so it's not as obviously as it first sounds. >> hi, i'm not stalking you but we did visit earlier this week.

we talked about how polling and survey work took a beating in 2016. 24, 3 hours later, how do you feel based on the jut come about the performance of your trade and your peers? do you feel as though maybe some of the integrity or credibility of the work has been restored based on the jut come of the last 24 hours? charlie: i think that's a great question. i think the polls held up reasonably well this year. but for the folks who haven't had this -- who i haven't had this conversation with. if we were talking five years ago, what i would have said, and i'm not a pollster now but i've -- i was a pollster earlier in my life and i'm sort of a professional consumer of polls now. the finest pollsters in the country, bright, rigorous people

in both party, they are not as accurate as they were 10, 20, 30 years ago. telemarketers have basically messed it up for everybody. probably hear if the direct marketing association now. actually i think they changed their name. t anyway, caller i.d., voice mail, all these things have made a very, very hard to get representative sample. snow telephone interviewing, t's not perfected yet. i think we're not there yet completely with online. so the old way isn't as good as it used to be, but the new way isn't quite ready yetism got into the business during a transition, a previous transition point point when they were transitioning from personal interviews in the late 1970's,

they'd knock on your door and interview on the doorstep. that's how it was back in the 1960's and late 1970's even and very early 1980's. to telephone after that. there are systemic problems in the business but i have to say that the pollsters and the professional pollsters on both sides, most of them are really pretty good. very good, actually. if you look at the track records in special election this is year, their yurms were pretty much spot on. they do ational polls, a -- they did in 2016 they weren't off that much. some of you heard me say this before, the real clear politics average had clinton up by three.

nbc-"wall street journal" poll ad it at four. the average was off .9 a point. the others off by two points. but that's about as accurate as you're going to get in polling. when you see an abc "washington post," or fox, or cnn, these are high quality surveys that are generally pretty good and fared well this year, i might add. these are pretty good sur veas. what's spotty is the state polling. but even in 2016, vast majority of states went exactly the way they were expected and the way he poll indicated. the epic poll failure was wisconsin, michigan, and pennsylvania. that's where they were just sort of off. this year the polls -- the pollsters did a little better. but i think we have to be more

discerning particularly on the state level about polling and being, you know a little more discriminating in what we look at and maybe those polls of -- and the fact is most polls, a lot of people will say, cell phones. good pollsters, they're calling cell phones. they're a big part, roughly half of their samples are going to cell phones. that's actually not as big a problem as the -- the problem problem really caller i.d. and voice mail. >> i wonder if i can keep you on the topic of polls for a minute, exit polls in particular. whaurp you think twheng information came out around 6:00 last night, i was looking at things, g.o.p. approval numbers seemed under water, you know, country on the wrong track, think, this might bode well for democrats tonight. do you think that played out? just your views on the exit polls.

charlie: to me, the most important value of exit polls is for speech material after the lections are over. but there's considerable research that the exit polls were off a fair amount back in 016. the thing about it is, people forget. exit polls, they've been abused a little bit. exit poll were never designed to predict what was going to happen in a state. exit polls were designed to kind of give you a flavor that men are doing this, women are doing this, and african-americans are ding this and latinos are doing this. people with four-year college degrees are doing this and that. to give you texture, some flavor, and explain what's going

on and it is an element that go into projections but only in races that aren't even close are they the integral part of the projections that the networks o. i will confess, i kind of deliberately didn't show up until about 6:00 last night at nbc. because i'm not a big -- first of all, we've gone with the sequestering of the numbers during the day. but the thing is, i don't think they're very -- if a race is so close, if a state, a senate race or governor's race is so close that you can't figure out from last week's "time" magazine who is going to win, an exit poll is not going to be a whole lot of value in telling you what it is. they're not that accurate.

two war stories you may find interesting. 1992, i was a consultant to cbs. they had a handful of pollsters and other and political scientists consulting various teams. but at lunch time, we were in a conference room having lunch with the anchor then, dan rather. it was a little after 1:00 and the first round of exit polls had come in. all of us expected it was governor clinton was challenging president george h.w. bush. i think all of us expected that clinton would win but that it would be, it was a competitive race but that it sure seems like clinton had an advantage and the early exit polls started coming in that showed clinton with this massive lead over president trump. xcuse me, over president bush.

and that just didn't reflect at all the race that we had been watching so closely. so we were busy scrambling around trying to concoct in our mind a rather than neal, an for why this election seemed to be taking this completely unexpected turn. over the course of the election seemed to be taking this completely afternoon, as more data came in, it started closing down to the point where it ended up being about where we expected it to be to begin with but where the first rounds of exit polls were incredibly misleading. then you remember the experience with john kerry and president eorge h.w. bush in 2004. where people -- and based on the 1992 experience, i had made arrangements to have lunch with a friend that worked in connecticut. to stay away.

because i didn't want to get consumed by exit polls i didn't have an enormous amount of respect for in this one context. everybody got worked up that kerry would be beating president bush by a decent margin and all that and they were flat wrong. i think they've been abused a good bit but there's research that shows that some subsequent research using other methods that have shown that maybe they're not capturing the very best, most accurate picture of what happened on election day. i think for the purposes of saying what did various demographic groups do, it's ok. it's not bad. it's not the be all and end all which is why we have other research out there. but i think they've been overused or misused, abused, whatever, in a way they shouldn't have been and that --

so i think they should be taken with a little bit of a grain of alt. i have cross tabs to use for speech material, but you have to be careful. anybody else before we get the hook? i want to thank you all for being national journal members and your support has helped us do what we're doing and i'm proud of being associated with national journal for 12 years. for any of you who are not national journal members, i'm sure someone can help you get there. thank you all for coming out. kevin? >> thank you all for joining us this afternoon. you will receive an event email

recap in a couple of days. it also will have an assessment in it. we'd love to hear feedback on how we can improve in the future and be more valuable to you. i would like to invide you to join us at a reception we're having this afternoon. thank you and have a good afternoon. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2018] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> as your primary source for campaign 2018, we brought you candidate debates in the most

competitive races. only on c-span. over 160 races from across the country. voters have now decided on a new congress with new leaders. watch the process unfold on -span. >> c-span's "washington journal" live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. coming up thursday morning, former "cq roll call" senior editor david hawkings and francine keever discuss potential leadership changes in congress. be sure to watch c-span's "washington journal" live at 7:00 eastern thursday morning. join the discussion. >> coming up this weekend on book tv. saturday at noon eastern, the southern festival of books from nashville with author adam parker and his book "outsideage stator" the civil rights

struggle of cleveland sellers jr. followed by a discussion with jennifer kavanaugh and michael rich, authors of "truth decay." our coverage continues at 1:00 p.m. eastern with elliot g rombings n with his book "let the people see," his book on emmitt till. at 8:05 p.m. ian, jean marie laskis talked about her book "to obama: with love, joy, anger, and hope." >> the woman with the gold tooth was at a rally for obama in 2007. the rally was a bust. no one there but a gathering of local folks needing something to do. obama was looking out at the emptiness. fired up, ready to go, the woman with the gold tooth abruptly shouted. and as if on cue, the people around her repeated her words, began to chant, and in an instant the rally went from

dismal to glorious. it shows you what one voice can do. that one voice can change a room, obama said at a campaign rally over a year later, recounting the story. and if a voice can change a room, it can change a city. >> then at 9:00 p.m. eastern on afterwords, republican senator ben sasse of nebraska talks about his book "them: why we hate each other and how to heal." he's interviewed by arthur brooks, president of the american enterprise institute. >> i don't think political tribalcism the story of the moment. i think it's filling the vacuum of declining local tribe the kinds of tribes that make people happy, family, deep friendship, long-term shared vocations or meaningful work, local worship in communities. all those things are being undermined by the moment we're at in technological history. >> watch this weekend on c-span2's book tv. >> today attorney general jeff sessions resigned at the request

of president trump. sessions will be replaced on an acting basis by his chief of staff, matthew whittaker. after the resignation , he departed the justice department to applause from d.o.j. staff. [applause] [applause]

>> in tuesday's elections, democrats won 16 of the 36 governors' races. washington governor and democratic governor association chair jay inslee talked about the races and newly elected democrats at a meet, this is 15 minutes. >> ready? good morning. i think it is fair to say that last night was a historic night. historic in the sense that the democrats had the largest number of electoral pickups in 36 -- of gubernatorial pickups in 36 years. the last time we had anything approaching it was 1982. we started the night with 15 gnchor, we have ended with