let's take a break to the magic wall to show why we're predicting why walker will keep his job as governor of wisconsin. number one, it's obvious. red is republican. you see a lot of red. dane county here, this is the key county for democrat, 8% of the population. democrats say their turnout operation worked well there. but tom barrett the democrat getting 60% and scott walker getting 40% right there. barrett needs to be up around 70% in this key county right there. let's come back to the map here a little bit. this is waukesha county. the key county for republicans in this state. 75%, scott walker got just over 70% last time. he's overperforming. as we go from county to county, come up here, brown county, where green bay is, walker getting 60% with 75% of the vote in. that's an improvement from two years ago. you can pick your key county across the state. everything we see so far. the republican incumbent, scott walker overperforming and barrett is underperforming. we'll break it down what it means for the state, for the governor in november. dana bash is joining us and also the former white house press secretary for george w. bush, ari fleischer and also, paul begala, also an adviser for the pro obama super pac priorities usa. senior political analyst david gergen also with us. dana, you're at walker headquarters, this was a hot fight. they got nervous, the democrats thought they might beat them on the ground. scott walker now projected to be the winner. what's the reaction right there? >> oh, it is absolutely intense. the minute that the local station here called the race for scott walker, this place erupted like i haven't heard or seen any election night. really even during the presidential primaries. the republican primaries that i was covering earlier this year. this is a fired up crowd and it really speaks to the intensity, john, the real intensity that has been going on on the ground here in wisconsin for months and months and months. as it mentioned earlier i think to you, the fact of the matter is that people here -- i'm told by one republican strategist very true, people here would walk across coals for scott walker, but then the same intensity is on the other side. at the end of the day, the people for scott walker won. he had unbelievable money coming in here, but it really was the intensity and the ground game at the end of the day that helped the governor stay in office and fight this recall. >> dana, stay with us. we'll continue the conversation. i want to bring ari fleischer in. i can already hear it, democrats are going to say, well, we were outspent seven to one, it wasn't a fair fight, outside interests bought this election. what do you say? >> both sides had more than enough money and resources in wisconsin. i think when you count all the organized labor can do with the number of people they can do into the state, the number of resource, phone banks, et cetera. both sides have nothing to complain about. the republicans i'm talking to, john, it's euphoria. the republican national committee people are pointing out to me how much coordination they did, the number of offices that were open, the aggressive absentee ballot they had. 4 million voters they say, which is more than the republicans had in 2008. they look at this as a crucial test run for wisconsin in november and i think that's right. the real issue at least for the presidency, the land cape is more like 2010 or more like 2008? at least in the snapshot of wisconsin, it looks like 2010. >> you're seeing scott walker headquarters. he has withstood the challenge tonight. cnn has projected he'll continue in office. paul, you heard ari make the case this is a key benchmark as to what will happen from 154 days from now and yet, before i bring you into conversation i want to -- not to contest, but to show the wisconsin voters were asked today and even as they kept their republican governor in office, 53% of wisconsin voters today said they would vote for president obama in november. 42% said they'd vote for governor romney. that's a margin roughly equal to the mccain/obama margin. ari, are you nervous when you see the results? >> first off, let me show some good manners. scott walker and his crew are to be congratulated. they have done a remarkable thing. this is the most powerful anti-incumbent tide all around the world that we have seen in decades, maybe in my lifetime. you know, dominant party turned out in france, in greece, in britain at the local level. eve eve every incumbent should be running scared. governor walker is the incumbent. does what have anything to do with the election in five months? no. five months ago, newt gingrich was surging to the lead. and five months ago kim jong-il was still in control. this is an important election for the people who live there and it's important for the two parties. but it has no predictive capacity for november. come on, the last republican to carry wisconsin, presidential election was ronald reagan. if anybody thinks mitt romney is another ronald reagan i want a case of what you're drinking. >> david gergen -- ari, i'll let you back in a moment. as paul makes that case, he can make that case. five months is an eternity. the last republican was ronald reagan and yet, we do know in key demographic groups especially white blue collar workers that the midwest in particular, older voters also, a key constituency in wisconsin. they are trending to republicans in national elections, so the question is is it trending fast enough for mitt romney come november? i think that's an open question tonight. but i would challenge paul's analysis just a tad. even though i know he's quite smart. >> i agree with you, john. i think there are two implications tonight. one is what it does for november. and i think that any serious observer would have to say that a state that looked like it was leaning toward obama now must be counted as undecided. anything can happen in wisconsin and perhaps even in michigan. but there's a second part of this we haven't talked about at all. this election was centrally about the power of public employee unions. scott walker tried to cut -- curtail those unions, and in the name of trying to balance a budget. that's when this huge eruption occurred against him. he's one of the republican governors who has been out on the point on this issue about whether there are excesses in employee unions in their health care plans and so forth. this is a hot issue from new york to california to new jersey to indiana to ohio to wisconsin. and this election tonight was well regarded long before by both sides as the second most important election of the year. and here scott walker i must say to a surprise -- given a year ago it looked like he'd lose this. tonight, to win is a essential defeat for labor, and a substantial victory for those who have been trying to curb them. >> david, you make a key point. i want to show our exit poll data on this question. the defining question that started the whole recall debate. ethics, debates about jobs and about unemployment. what started this was governor walker's successful efforts to restrict collective bargaining rights and to make public employees pay more for their health care and pensions. this is fascinating. 38% strongly approve of what the governor did, eliminating those benefits. watch what what happened. 96% of those voters voted for -- to keep their republican governor. 37% strongly disapprove. you see the polarized electorate here. watch this, 97% of those voters voted for the democratic challenger. it was decided in the middle. i will say in the polarized climate it's a small middle. somewhat approve, 12%. watch what happens here, governor walker won by a big margin there. you get to somewhat disapprove, 12% here. you have mayor barrett winning there. you have the sharply polarized electorate. dana bash, as we await to hear the governor himself speak, i assume they will read this as a mandate. even though we expect the final result to be relatively close, as a mandate to continue what they're doing. >> oh, there's no question about it. i think to be honest with you, no matter how this turned out, they would consider this a mandate to continue doing what they're doing. that's just the way things are on the ground here. people who are so emphatic against scott walker, they're going to keep being that way. but the interesting point that you were talking about with david gergen, john, is that yes, this whole issue started all -- all the problems for scott walker politically perhaps, maybe the benefits for him as well, back when he -- about union issues and about collective bargaining rights about 16 months ago. but in recent days and weeks, that has not been the conversation between these candidates. it has not been the conversation on the ground, it's been more specific information about general issues. >> stand by for a second as we prepare to make another projection. cnn can now project rebecca kleefisch, she was also on the recall ballot. she will keep her job as well. you have the republican governor and the republican lieutenant governor surviving. we'll watch the results. is gloria borger ready to join the conversation? >> yes, i am. >> so, gloria, you have hear all this money spent. you have the democrats especially labor saying this was a test run, this was a key test of labor's credibility and the chairwoman of the democratic party debbie wasserman schultz, saying it was a test run for november. safe to say they flunked? >> yes, sure. this is a measure of intensity and enthusiasm among the democrats and a measure of the strength of the labor party movement. and i would have to say when you look at this and you can say, okay, what are the concrete results that this is going to tell us about november? this is a psychological boost for the republican party. they're going to say it's a lot more, but at the very least it's a psychological boost. i mean, you were talking earlier about president obama's numbers. and in these exit polls that you were talking about, he is up 11 points over mitt romney in this state of wisconsin. who's better able to manage the economy? barack obama is up over mitt romney by eight points in wisconsin and by about a dozen points these voters said that president obama cares more about the middle class. but what this tells you is that republicans organized at the grass roots level in the state of wisconsin. they outspent democrats by more than two to one. and when they do that, and when they organize and they have a lot of money behind them, they can win. >> gloria, thanks. dana, ari, paul, gloria, everyone stick around. we're waiting -- you see the picture on your screen, scott walker will remain the governor of wisconsin. he'll speak any moment. we'll discuss what that might mean looking ahead. we'll look at the electoral map ahead to november. the republican governor and his lieutenant governor surviving a recall election. back in a moment. all energy development comes with some risk, but proven technologies allow natural gas producers to supply affordable, cleaner energy, while protecting our environment. across america, these technologies protect air - by monitoring air quality and reducing emissions... ...protect water - through conservation and self-contained recycling systems... ... and protect land - by reducing our footprint and respecting wildlife. america's natural gas... domestic, abundant, clean energy to power our lives... that's smarter power today. what ? 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[ rodger riney ] at scottrade, we give you commission-free etfs, no-fee iras and more. come see why more investors are saying... i'm with scottrade. back to the breaking news we're following in wisconsin now. cnn is projecting that scott walk her win the recall vote. that means he's going to keep his job. we expect him to speak at any moment. and rebecca kleefisch will win her recall election. tom barrett is the mayor of milwaukee. this is being watched closely for what it might mean for the presidential election in november. we'll play out some scenarios. you see with 41% of the vote counted, scott walker winning by 19 points right now. the exit polls showed a narrow win. but if you look state again, mostly red that tells you one thing right there. the republican is winning. here's another reason. in the main democratic areas, dane county, right, that's about 8% of the state population. gorm f let's go back to the governor's election, same race, he's up at 68%. he's underperforming where he was two years ago. come back to 2012 we'll show you some republican counties. this is the biggest one for republicans. this is the milwaukee suburbs. waukesha county, governor walker overperforming with what he did two years ago. republicans on the ground turn out their voters and overperforming while the democrats are underperforming. here's the map that cnn projects it right now. president obama at 247 electoral votes. those are the solid blue and light blue states. solid democrat or leaning democrat. governor romney at 206 the dark red solid. we have wisconsin as leaning obama. in the exit polls tonight, ari fleischer, the voters say they are inclined at least if the election today, president obama would have won by a decent margin. do we keep this light blue or do you say move it? >> wisconsin always was going to be about -- a battleground state. but in 2000, george bush lost it by only 5,000 votes. it was really a tie. and in 2004, he lost it by 11,000 votes. almost 3 million votes cast. so wisconsin is an extraordinarily close battleground state. i have a hard time seeing big labor returning in fall to put in a lot of effort since he didn't show up for them. >> forgive me for interrupting. go ahead. >> one other issue. i think we have to throw out the exit polls about obama/romney because this exit poll doesn't seem to be right about walker/barrett. we have to see what the final result is of course in the actual tally. looks like the top line numbers are way off. >> the exit poll numbers are way off. sometimes things change. but ari raises a key point. i'm going to make wisconsin the toss-up. that makes it a closer race. ari makes a fascinating point about whether labor will do unto president obama you might say as he just did unto them. did the president make a mistake? he's the leader of the party maybe he was worried this would damage him in november. maybe he was worried he'd have his finger prints on an embarrassing loss, but as the leader of the democratic party, did he owe it to the voters of wisconsin to go out there and try to turn out the vote? >> certainly. of course. and he owed it to tom barrett. barrett was a mayor of milwaukee. he came out in the primaries and endorsed then senator obama against senator clinton. he owes it to himself and to everybody else he has to deal with. this was a mistake. i have to say. the president should have been out there. i don't think it would have made the difference, okay? let me be clear about that. but it's kind of like thanksgiving at your in laws. if you go, it doesn't guarantee it will be fun, but if you don't go this will be hell to pay. i know he loves his mother-in-law and she lives in the white house. but you know what i mean. >> keep them close. david gergen, if you look at the map, i don't think we're quite ready to do this yet, but for a hypothetical tonight move wisconsin to the toss-up column. we'll study it more. then you have a narrow gap here. my question is if wisconsin is in play what we're seeing in the rust belt republicans proving they can get the key constituencies and does that mean we should rethink michigan and pennsylvania or is it just wisconsin? >> a very good question, john. i think at the very minimum you have to rethink michigan. and, you know, president obama's strength has been in the east, on the west coast and then the upper midwest. tonight's results do put into play the question of whether the upper midwest is actually more vulnerable than it looks. to go back to both paul and ari's points, i would assume if they're sitting there in obama's chair and you're running his campaign, you have to believe now that you have to spend some money in wisconsin. to protect yourself. that i think paul begala was right. if the president had gone in and been loyal to labor, i think labor would be more loyal to him. whether he can count on them under these circumstances i'm not sure. >> as we await for governor walker at the event, reince priebus who at the moment is the charge of the republican committee, he has to be very happy tonight. does he believe what happened tonight translates into november? i'm sure it's personal to him, that he would love to be the republican chairman who put his state back in the republican column for first time since 1984. >> i asked him that -- excuse me, that very question just a few minutes ago when he was here. of course the answer was yes. he does believe that this is -- this puts republicans back in play in his home state of wisconsin. if nothing else, as we talked about earlier, because of infrastructure. the fact of the matter is that republicans because of this recall have built a pretty impressive infrastructure here. they have had 25 so-called victory centers across the state. they generally have something along those lines by the time you get to the fall. but now it's in place in the early summer. that really, really helps the republicans and also with just voter i.d. we talked about the money spent and there wasn't a lot of money focussed on undecideds, but there wasn't that many. that will help them. again, whether that is going to translate into passion for mitt romney or against barack obama the way the passion has been really, really fiery here for and against scott walker that's another question. >> passion behind you in the room as they await governor walker. gloria, the democrats will say they were outspent seven to one, but paul said look around the world. this is a tough time to be an incumbent when you have a tough economy. governor walker survives this. we can debate about what happens 154 days from now in the presidential election, but what happens in the next days and weeks when politicians start to deal with the tough budget issues? do they get a lesson out of this? >> well, you know, if you're someone like governor john kasich of ohio you might be breathing easier tonight, because he dealt with a collective bargaining issue in his state. i think all governors are going to have to take a look at this and say how dangerous is this for me as i take a look at paring down my state budget. you're also in an election year. while labor was defeated in the state of wisconsin, it doesn't mean they're going to be defeated everywhere. but i do think this is a lesson in ground organizing and money. two things that are so important to win campaigns and i think what you saw the republicans in the state of wisconsin do is raise a lot of money, take a huge amount of outside money. i mean, there was $62 million spent in this state. most of it came from outside the state because people were looking at this as a test case. but when you have money and when you have organiz