It was at the dull institute of politics at the university of kansas this is one hour 15 minutes. After the program, we will have time for the audience to ask questions. If you have a question, please raise your hand and ask a student worker for the microphone and a student will come to you. For virtual viewers we send your questions to joel questions at ku. Edu. Please just as one brief question. The institutes mission is to foster respectful discussion around difficult but important topics. Please raise your questions with this in mind and ask is one brief russian. I would like to remind you to turn off your cell phones and these join me in welcoming the director of the dull institute joel dole institute. Think you for your introduction. I am grateful for students like will and the Advisory Board work helping set the tone for our conversations here. This is the 20th anniversary of the institute and we are fortunate. And for that education is washington editor of the wall street journal capital journal columnist and 45 year veteran journalist and kansas native. And the best political journalism has to offer. Midterm election cycles have been relatively sleepy affairs and we know that this year, that is not the case. Jerry will help us navigate the changing waters of the Campaign Season as it develops as a route 2022 Midterm Election big class consist eight a let big consequences. Big consequences. Todays conversation features the top two political pollsters one from each side of the aisle. Our conversation will be followed by q a from the audience. Thank you for joining us and engaging with us. It is my pleasure and please join me in welcoming our fellow jerry sites. [applause] thank it turns out that you can come back home again. It is really nice to be here. Thank you. Beside me, i will entry introduce you to them in a second. But this is an important election. All the people have the control of the house, the senate, and the shape of the rest of the biden term and it is happening against the backdrop of the narrowly divided country and one that is kind of angry about it all. So it is an important Midterm Election. I am here and glad to be here with these two guys. I will give you a brief introduction both have done so much in the political world that it is hard to summarize but john was on president bynums full of the 2020 campaign. Somebody won that race if i recall. You are trying to date me, know you got 12. But he has worked on other democratic president ial candidates. And he has is working on a bunch of active current campaigns in this midterm cycle. And tony i met in 1996 of the Republican Convention in san diego where tony was the chief pollster or goals pleasure vigil campaign. Hes done a lot of republican campaigns including president trumps successful 2016 president ial campaign and the 2020 president ial campaign. Thank you guys for being with us here. It is not a coincidence after the 2020 campaign we have lost we hired these two guys to do polling for us because they are very good and bipartisan by nature as a team they do very good survey work. They are here today because they are not just stores. But the they understand the country and can analyze where the country is. And that is what politics is all about even more than a horse race. So let me start of the 10,000 foot level. If i could. We are in the midst of the campaign that almost feels like to campaign. Theres a traditional Midterm Campaign where the metrics on the table a middling president ial rating the history that says a new president ial party uses a lot of seed in the first midterm after he takes office. And a very weary country on the economic front. A lot of economic anxiety due to inflation. You have these wildcards that are showing up in the last few months. You have an abortion issue that has worked to the benefit of democrats. Gas prices are dropping and you have continuing trump drama i will ask each of you let me start with you. How did those competing forces play out now and how do you think they will play out between now and election day . Thinking jerry thank you are having as it is great to be here in see all the history about senator dole. If we go back a few months we was a the prospects for republicans were risky. And it was not only talk about us taking a big majority in the house but we would take it easy majority in the senate. Everything was coming up roses for us. But i think those projections were probably too rosy at that time. I think that the Economic Issues that were driving voters to the republicans also affected democrats and softened support among key democratic constituencies whether they be hispanics, africanamerican, asiapacific Asian AmericanPacific Islander voters. But what happened is, along the path comes the rope roe v. Wade ruling, gun violence, some relief if you will when it comes to gas prices. And truth my party never misses an opportunity to snatch a victory when it can. And what happened is we saw a reversal out only in a number of key craft should going back to democrats that we saw a significant increase in their vote likelihood which was something that was lacking. They did not have the same energy that we did. And now, we are back to a 5050 proposition funding for mail and in virtually every race we can think of acrosstheboard. One of the things is that weve all been in politics collectively. A long time collectively. We think we know what is going on but sometimes we dont know what is going on meeting they we have these historical trends. Republicans do really well if you have a republican president in midterms the democrats have done well. It has held steady in that way in almost all the modern presidencies. And youre sitting in mainline and it looks that way. It look like republicans would take 35 or 45 seats. And little over the historical ones and redistricting has made sweet districts fewer. But like tony said, all these things happened. And usually, if you get to the summer, things just are steady and he will have that historical trend. I will say a couple things that i think are really important. They won, the democrats were defensive and they did not have a positive. They were supporting people who democrats felt could not get things done. We spent over a year trying to build this thing asheville back better with the biden agenda. And outside forces came to the roe v. Wade ruling, you have you all day, texas you have, uvalde, texas, you have the election Inflation Reduction Act that makes corporations pay their fair share with minimum tax and lowering Prescription Drug costs of point is we did not have a positive or negative message in may but now, we not only have a positive message but we have these two kind of contrasting messages line on abortion and social issues and other on the fact that republicans voted against all this stuff that the American People actually like. So, in traditional years you have a doubledigit advantage of what we call the generic ballot. Are you more likely to vote democrat or republican . Given the fact that you have terrible job rating for the economy you should have doubledigit advantages for the republicans. As tony said, they have not taken advantage of that. Here is what i believe you with. May what democrats are on the defensive may 4 is where the coders got leaked. You keep voting you get the decision on abortion and june and becomes a rally and june 26 that january 6 hearing started etc. Etc. What is that during . That is during the prime public primary season. All of these republicans in the primaries are trying to outdo themselves in the most extreme position on abortion and guns defending january 6 rioters and trump. They became part of the mainstream. You get masters in arizona and it gives us the opportunity that we never thought we would have. Again, circumstances change the political environment changed a little bit. Gas prices. But man, do we love would republicans give us and assist that get nominees that voters feel are outside the mainstream area as we sit here today they are eight weeks left before the election and in modern politics it is still a lifetime. But the imperative for your the narrative for your site would be to turn to the economic issue of that overall can you make that happen . Is it happening to mark to show you how long the is it happening . To show you how long eight weeks is, while inflation rate went up and while the stock markets take a big hit. You know, i was debating but my point being is that the same time when that is going on on a day where we should be laser focused on the economy and inflation and what is going on in the stock market Lindsey Graham goes and drops the bill on 15 week abortion bands which by the way, not only brings it back to the front of the conversation, but it is different from a lot of the candidates positions on abortion. So it makes them defend their position against his bill. So it is never missing an opportunity. I get what he is saying about some of our nominees but even in the races he is talking about, you do not have to win by 10 points. All you have to do is get one more vote than the other person. In every one of the state you are talking about whether it be georgia or ohio. We did not mention audit all. There are still places that are highly competitive and still have the ability to take see. This is a good time to say by no means is what i am talking about optimism. What i am talking about is democrats are in a competitive space that they never thought they would be in. Ok . The fact is, at some point they will show this chart. You can bring it up now. 47 of against 40 in the Senate Battleground states. This is not like me trying to be cheery. This is that we were about to get our lets kicked in may, and now we have tools in a toolkit to be competitive. Biden did that and they do not give him credit for that. Let me tell you, weve done this a long time. In 2014 august democrats were feeling pretty good about being competitive. I dont think it will happen but you will see a Straight Line in almost every ground state that we hold and we do National Polling for aarp and National States as well it is a tossup is a 5050 proposition. This is april 4 2022 this is 7269 the jayhawks at unc. It is true, that is let election nights i do you would bring that up. I do you work the jayhawks references. We dont know whether democrats are jayhawks for the wiccans jayhawks. X i know what they are. But, the one thing that is very true is that yes, if you look at this as the top of her. Youve got red stream for months, our team was just pulling to the other side on the other side of the box and redline. When this happened now both sides are struggling. The thing we do not know and we got a glimpse of it yesterday is what happens with you economy and what happens we saw even in the wall street journal whole while the base measures of economic wellbeing did not change the fact they got slightly worse what happened is the focus went away from that and went to issues like abortion and nonviolence. When that happened that change the dynamics and that Energize Voters that were not before and brought them out where than they were before in the wall street journal survey one of the things is interesting is almost exclusively all the movement that was made in the generic ballot made statements of biden in 2020 truck did not change. What is important is the narrative in d. C. Where joe bidens number started moving up and historically it is the Biggest Movement in our credit presidency im taking credit for that. And second, i forgot i was going to say. The democrats the narrative we see is the democrats are coming home. But no, independents were some of the biggest verse. The fact is whether we took the house back in 18 6r you guys took the house back in 2010 and 2014 it is more about independence moves. There is a myth that there is no swing voter but there really is. The fact is, democrats win in 2018 and republicans win in 2010 and they go back and forth. And they had 14 as well, but what you have right now is very interesting with independence. Because you have independent men who are focused on Economic Issues and indicated independent women who are focused more on abortion than economics by a doubledigit margin. And they vote for democrats and they are part of a margin group that flipped from our previous survey. Let me both ask you both to quantify this. How many are there in the election today . Yes how many are true independent . I was going to let you make another comment. But, i think, in registrations, you know how many independents there are, but, in states like alabama or states like illinois, there is no Party Registration. Like in missouri there is no Party Registration so you get a lot large number of people in surveys that will call themselves independent. What happens is, we take those people and we push them and say ok you say you are an independent but do you lean more towards the republican or democrat mark. When you push them you get a third they say they are independent and you usually wind up with about 15 that appear to be independent and do not been to one party or the other. It cap depends statebystate for people who leave one way or the other it used to be that they were soft in their support now, more and more refined they behave like the people who call themselves democrats for call themselves republican. Let me add a couple things that are important of independent. That independents in our polls do you consider yourself a democrat, republican, or independent. That changes. Think about this we take a look right now at the independents and there is a universe of disgruntled republicans nontrappers who do not anything to do with truck so it may do . They identify in our as an independent. So the universe of dependent right now ask a little more republican. I have states right now review democratic candidate is getting 57 of self identified republicans. That is high. I can tell you, it is because the candidate is a trump candidate and they are for, therefore, that is good for democrats. My point is universal independent changes. The second thing is, new registration is becoming more independent. And young people like young people 30 and under are registering as independent state do not want to commit to one house. That is true. One of the things and one of the ways that we do our surveys is we try to talk to these in a state like kansas, we call you on the phone we know who you are. Yes you know [laughter] i didnt mean to say it that way it is unsettling. But we know who the person is. But it used to be you say you are registered republican 90 would say that you are registered republican what we are noticing this year is that people who say they are dinner democrats for independence independents a lot of them this identify themselves some of them call themselves republicans and when you get that disparity it is because those people are most likely to be among the people dissatisfied with biden early on. That is changed as we go forward. Because of roe v. Wade. It change things. There are people who are kissed off about it people who are pissed off about it i think people and the universe of libertarian american taxpayers an independent, none of the above is actually on the ballot. My point is that there are disgruntled voters out there mostly disgruntled republican trout or because of road roe v. Wade because they do not want to vote democrat. But everywhere and who votes thirdparty is like a boat for a democrat. That is good for us that is one dynamic we need to watch out for. We see it in our polls we know that pulling in the third party is higher than actual vote and i believe the delta at this time they be smaller. This time it will be interesting post election to analyze this. Let me pick up on that and the abortion points in particular because there was a time in politics where i would have said prolife forces were more motivated by an abortion debate to vote against protesters but that is truly not the case here. Why is that why are they more automated now . They are not motivated. No i mean prochoice. Because they had a right taken away from them. So it is, one of the things that we talked about is that there is a difference between the hypothetical and the reality. And before the ruling came down, a candidates position on abortion was important but it did not matter as much because nothing is going to change. But now, in a state like michigan where i know there is literally a ballot measure that will decide whether or not abortion is illegal in the state because theres a trigger law that went into effect that no one knew about. 1913 1930. So now you got it on the ballot. It is impossible to extract that campaign that abortion now that campaign. And its not the only state that will be on the ballot. You saw kansas how that issue is an was. What tony said in the past in some ways the abortion was like a defibrillator for democrats and certain voters. What we found with Governor Gretchen Whitmer what we found the research in university of michigan is that most women felt like abortions would still be available year from now not realizing there was this constitutional line from 1931 that was going to ban abortions in michigan. That puts people on edge and action. We talked earlier about enthusiasm in may enthusiasm for republicans were here. Enthusiasm for africanamerican latinos were down here. It was for a lot of things. Again, our base voters can get disappointed in their own army because they cannot get things done and who has a major impact on patient esther mark young people starting out. There was a lot of reason for the disappointment and whatever you want to call it. And everything is this now. That is where enthusiasm is with democrats and republicans. It is a combination of things like road that put in action and we got a lot of things done for working families americans and seniors saying they are on our side. It is a ballgame do we have edge . No. Are we competitive . Yes. And that is what is waiting to happen. What will the media do . They already think if we do not have what they consider enough victories, we will have messed up the election even though this will be an election where republicans take 30 seats in the house. Because the expectations are swamped. Even though it is rational. It is expectations are irrational and one thing that is always true is the people in washington, what they think has very little to do with h