Next, a look at the 2020 Election Results with atlantic Senior EditorRon Brownstein and editor andcal report etiquett publisher charlie cook. They talked about how the election outcome impact future policymaking. This is just under an hour. Leah good afternoon, everyone. Thank you all so much for joining us today. I am with charlie cook and Ron Brownstein. Leah askarinam, the editor of the hotline. Excuse for me to ask some questions, and hopefully we will all leave this discussion with a better of what may be a chaotic four years. Before we get started, if you would like to submit a question during the session, please do so in the q and a section on the righthand side of your screen. We will try to get to as many of your questions as possible during the hour. Lets start off with what everybody has been thinking of for the past two weeks. There has been a lot of handwringing among democrats about the direction of their party and a lot of republicans taking a victory lap. Republicans may pick up close to 10 seats in the house, but they will not flip it. They will likely lose one senate seat and are still at risk of losing the majority, and they lost the white house. On the other hand, democrats lost the expectations game. They did not flinch the senate majority, leaving a slim window to do so if they win both runoffs in georgia in january. Not ae president was definitive win or landslide. If there were a winner in the 2020 election, who was it . Charlie i will refer to ron, my elder and better. Ron thanks, charlie. Im not sure if either of those are true. Thecribe this in atlantic as the antietam election, in that it bloodied both sides without providing a clear winner or clear resolution of the conflict. In fact, it points toward extended conflict between the two sides where neither, i think, can decisively pull away from the other. In some ways, the election unfolded pretty much the way we expected. Saw an enormous trench between metro and nonMetro America. The democrats consolidated Metro America to a pretty remarkable extent. If you look at the margins and how much they increased in places like the philadelphia suburbs, denver and its three surrounding counties, Northern Virginia, atlanta and its suburbs, houston, dallas, austin, san antonio, all of those places, enormously expanded on the margins. We can talk about that more later. The 100 he won 91 of largest counties in america by our count, even more than obama or clinton did four ears ago. Years ago. All of that unfolded pretty much as expected. We saw a big movement in the white collar suburbs. We saw small gains from trump in the actual Metro Centers themselves, but overall Metro America moved largely toward biden. NonMetro America consolidated solidly behind trump. He turned out more people than pollsters expected, and thats why the margin ended up being four points instead of six or seven or eight. Biden made a few games in midsized bluecollar places outside of the metros e , green bay. N by and large, that side of the world turned out very heavily for trump and reinforced the divide. The thing that surprised me the most and im guessing surprised charlie the most was that when you went down ballot, the red side voted republican up and down the ballot and Metro America did not vote democratic up and down the ballot. I was not surprised the democrats lost some of the house seats they won in 2018 in the far frontiers of Trump Country. With him on the ballot, you would not be surprised that those go back. But what is surprising as they did not offset that by winning more of the suburban seats within their reach, and where biden actually improved. Biden won better in Orange County, california, than clinton did and they still lost two house seats. Did not win seats that they were expected to win, like in texas, missouri, or indiana. What did biden win pennsylvania 1 by . And yet they did not when the house seat there. When you look at all of that, it says to me the following. Trump had some success at branding the democrats as dangerous and kind of extreme, even as voters were clearly tiring of the trump show. He is going to lose by close to 6 million votes. And when you go forward, we had the same dynamic that we have had for a while, which is as the metros move toward democrats, they are becoming more dominant in the popular vote, but if they cant compete beyond the metros, they have a tough time in the senate because there are so many states that are rural, white, christian, and even in the house it gets narrow you cant expand beyond the metro tour. Republicans have drawn these districts in kind of a power shaped and kind of a pieshaped fashion to draw suburban boats into their rural constituency. Hadink both sides problems. It probably sets us up for a very difficult decade of a widening difference between two coalitions that are increasingly antagonistic towards the other, that reject the legitimacy of the other, but which may find it difficult to score a decisive victory nonetheless. The way i look at it, first, the president ial race was really more of a continuation of what happened in the midterm elections, in a lot of ways. You look at what happened in the house of representatives, echoing what ron said, where did democrats pick up seats in the house in 2018 . Atlanta,s of dallas, houston, kansas city, richmond, virginia. Those are just ones in the south. If i were to characterize the overall election, it would be a defeat for President Trump but not a defeat for the Republican Party at all. At this point, they still have not lost a single incumbent in the house of representatives. Thats amazing. Our house editor never that republicans have not lost a single one of their tossup seats. They have not lost any yet. In that sense it was not a repudiation of the Republican Party at all, but it was a very personal repudiation of President Trump, even though it was not by a really wide margin. , though im going to differ. I guess we will talk about georgia. I was fascinated listening to lukes presentation before. I learned a lot and a good way to look at things. What i disagreed on is i am totally agnostic on the Georgia Senate race. I would say georgia right now is the most closely divided state in the country that, when you , just theell republican percentage, 49 , perdue 49. 7 . The combined republican vote in the state was 49. 3 , and Stacey Abrams was 50. 2 . All of the democratic numbers were 49 , 48 , like that. This is a very evenly divided state, and quite prickly, i think what happened in 1992 and 2008 has no relevance whatsoever. It is a different state that it was 12 years ago, let alone back in 1992. List i mentioned to my column this last night that the least likely outcome in be a split. Oing to weve got a parliamentary situation here. There is no ticket splitting. Candidates do not matter one iota. It is just going to be a party vote. Will republicans and the trump base feel outraged, or will they be disillusioned, despondent over there guys loss . Will democrats be concerned that they killed her nemesis, or will they have a search for going ahead and getting the senate . I think it is a 5050 race. Thatll, i honestly believe there was a way. I think it was a very real way. You dont get the kind of reports we were getting from all the different places we were getting them. Ron and leah, i am sure you were hearing the same thing. I think something happened that diverted the wave. I think it was a realization that President Trump was probably going to lose, which threw most of the year, most people did not think that was the case, and a feeling that they were ok with giving joe biden the keys to the car, but they were not going to give him a credit card and a full tank of gas. They did not trust democrats. Police,m, defund the fear of single medicare for all as a trojan horse for singlepayer. I think they just decided they wanted President Trump out, but they were not really sure about giving all the power to democrats. Thathere is some evidence backs that up. If you look at the polling, for the most part, biden and democrats, in most cases, they got exactly the percentage they were getting. Its just that the undecideds went virtually all republican. This is not a matter of pauls beingwrong of polls wrong, it is undecided voters being undecided voters, and a lot of them decide and vote after all. It is not the first time that has happened. Leah i want to follow up on that polling point. It does seem that, at least on Election Night, i they get has waned a little bit since then in just the reaction that the polls are wrong. But i have noticed some nuance. You are paying attention to the biden margin in places like pennsylvania, michigan. It does seem like that ended up pretty much where it needed to be. People point to sarah gedeon following so far behind, the democrat in the main senate race, but that it is not take into account rates choice voting. That does not take into account rankedchoice voting. Was the polling as wrong as people are saying it is . Charlie i think the polling is not nearly as bad as peoples interpretation of polling. Why did they think it was bad in 2016 . Because the polls said Hillary Clinton would be elected president . No, they said she was leading in the popular vote, which she did. It is not the pollsters fault that people confuse the Electoral College with the popular vote. And undecided, pollsters are not mind readers, and polls are not crystal balls. They cannot tell you where the undecided voters are going to go. Just like you saw with 1980, carterreagan, where the undecideds picked up in the last five days and just moved entirely to the reagan column. I think that is a lot. I think there are problems facing polls, absolutely, but for the most part, Election Night was weird because it was affected a lot by florida and texas being the first two meaningful states coming in, and they were two states that w orked out very well for the president and republicans, and that set the tone for the evening, but we knew it was going to be a weird type reporting weird night reporting. Ron i am more negative about the polling, more uncertain about what we know and do not know. I thought it was clear the undecideds moved toward trump, but there was no reason in the polling to expect such a decisive outcome. Those voters, when they were measuring their undecided, they were unfavorable toward trump. We saw isrt of what that trump turned out more of his voters again then pollsters expected, even after adjusting for the possibility following 2016. It seemed to be a bigger problem in the rust belt states than in the sun belt. Even most of the polls in texas had it at like four or five. A couple headed closer. Within one a finish point in wisconsin is not i dont think we can explain that solely by the undecided. In aolling was giving mind much safer leave their was giving biden a much safer lead there. I think there is a problem when pollsters say there may be kind of a cultural refusal in Trump Country voters to participate in polls, along with believing the Mainstream Media and really participating anything outside their experience. There is a soft form of secession going on, i think, in the country. To a genuineted problem. 2018 was a lot better. This may be unique to when trump is on the ballot. Not like. More likely to pick up a pole when it is about the senate race than the president ial, its just that not many people turn out. If you consider how badly he did in the metros, even allowing for ,ome improvement counterintuitively, in heavily africanamerican and hispanic precincts, even in a place like philadelphia or chicago, where he did a little better. The only way trump stays in this is by really showing the power of his ability to turn out supporters. I dont think polling fully captured that. Charlie i think one thing that happened, though, i think the Trump Campaign early on spent a lot of money on identifying unregistered people who looked, talked, acted, it would vote like the people who elected him in 2016. I think they identified him, registered him, and got him out, but they did the spade work before the pandemic hit. At awere well into that point when joe biden was just getting his nomination and his campaign did not have two quarters to rub together, and then the pandemic hit. Maybe democrats got punished a little bit for adhering to the pandemic. Basically, democrats said, our voters dont want anybody knocking on their doors. Our voters dont want rallies. And they honored that. That hustling may have made a difference as well. That is something hard for polls to pick up from a superior organization. Right, also has the potential to backfire, because of democrats did go out there and did not endorse, that would theoretically undermine joe biden. It just seemed like it was kind of tough. Luckily our job is not deciding how things could have gone differently. I want to go into a couple of specific counties, like orange texas. And lets start with Orange County. Chairmanear ago, the of the nrcc told me republicans were poised not only to flip the house, but the path to get there was there easily. He pointed out how republicans could recapture the suburban districts that Hillary Clinton carried in 2016. It looks like republicans will recapture at least two Orange County seats in the house. It seems unthinkable the republicans could lose all of Orange County just a few years ago. Now it looks like they have won a few back. Was 2018 a fluke in Orange County, where democrats got lucky, or was 2020 a fluke . On orangect the rap county districts by democrats to be further in 2022 . Republicanshink running asian ethnic candidates in Orange County made a big difference. I think republicans started doing something differently than they have done before. It raises an interesting question about ethnic voting. You did see President Trump and republicans making some incursions with latino voters, particularly in florida. I think it is a couple different things. Males, for workingclass there are economic concerns and frustrations about not having the opportunities that they thought they would get or should got,or that their parents and they are voting like bluecollar people, whether they are white, black, or brown. They share the same concerns. Democrats tend to look at them as more on ethnicity and less on, what is their life experience, what is going on there . I was talking yesterday with a friend from texas about what was going on along the border. A lot of these voters in south texas, they work for the border patrol. They worked at the checkpoints. To go back tot where things were because they are fairly poor areas and a lot the jobs there are based on whats going on along the border. It is not exactly what people think. I dont know. Ron this is interesting for a lot of reasons, but if you look at what happened in 2018, the biggest thing, as charlie said and i mentioned, the bigger thing that happened in 2018 is that democrats consolidated control of house seats inside the major metros, not only in metros that have previously been drifting toward them and where a few republicans have been holding out, like chicago and minneapolis and denver, but also in new terrain that had not previously shown much interest in democrats richmond, a suburban seat there, atlanta, houston, dallas, oklahoma city, South Carolina, charleston as well. If you look at 2020, by and with thee democrats exception of what happened in miami, which is very specific and a very significant problem for democrats, but kind of in its own class, by and large, the democrats have kind of cleaned out the last republicans in. Hese bluetrending metros they did not lose. Jason crow did not have a serious race in denver. The Northern Virginia seed, virginia 10, that was not contested. Large, they held those. It was when you got into the next tier of places that had more republican dna that they saw some erosion. I think that was voters in those places still dont like trump, but that doesnt mean they want to get the democrats free reign. What i think was even more important in those losses were the lack of gains. They could not follow up already and fletcher in texas by winning the open seats in fort bend and outside of dallas, dallasfort worth, or beating chip roy or even why not just even winning will heard or even winning hurds seat. There are other places where democrats had a shot, indiana 5, missouri 2. They could not push further into places with more republican dna than the places they won in 2018. I think that is releasing up and. That is really significant. They have to push a little further into those places to be comfortable, because the rural thing is going to keep happening. They are not Many Democrats left in those kinds of districts, but the few that are, new mexico 2 and some of the upstate new york districts, there are even less of them. If joe biden, a 77yearold White Catholic career politician who does not scream revolution, much less cultural revolution, if he could not recover more of that ground style of trumpian appeal, racial solidarity and antielitism, it may not be recoverable for democrats. Theyd is hard to see House Democrats do better in semi rural it is hard to see House Democrats do better in semi rural and exurban areas with a kamala or Pete Buttigieg ticket then with a biden ticket. They have to win suburban seats in places like texas, arizona, places like georgia and N