Transcripts For CSPAN Charlie Cook Discusses Election 2016 R

To handle some housekeeping, you will see two mics on either side of me in the center aisles. There will be a questionandanswer portion of todays event. When it comes to that moment, we do welcome anybody that has a question to lineup behind the mics. When you are preparing to ask a question, we ask that you first state your name and organization. Now, getting to introduce charlie. Charlie is the founder, editor, as well as publisher of the Cook Political Report. He is also a political and election analysis analyst for nbc news. Charlie founded the Cook Political Report in 1984, and it has been what i would call the bible for election and political Trend Analysis in washington. One other housekeeping matter, we have a hashtag today. It is njdayafter. We certainly welcome you tweeting on social media about the event. Without further ado, i would like to introduce charlie cook. [applause] mr. Cook gee, im sorry we have nothing to talk about. [laughter] mr. Cook i first want to ask your indulgence. I did not go to bed last night. I got back to my hotel room in new york at about 5 00 a. M. And had an 8 00 train, and thought, you know, what is the point . So if i am moderately incoherent, i hope you will understand. Im glad we have such a great crowd here. You know, i dont think any of us will ever have to be reminded where we were last night, what we were thinking. You know, a lot of times i can think back about elections and not quite remember was that 1996 . And everybody in this room we have been around politics for a very long time, and seen a lot of things. You know, we saw the reagan tidal wave election in 1980, and the gingrich election tidal wave of 1994, all kinds of very, very interesting elections, but i have never experienced one that felt as much like a baseball bat on the side of the head as last night. You know, it seemed over the course of the day it seemed kind of normal. I guess, being in a cab, i finally had a cab that had a wreck in new york. I figured that had to happen sooner or later. Seems like it was an omen. We were doing something with chuck todd on msnbc. It was between 5 00, 5 30, and the first wave of exit polls came in. When they give you the first wave, they dont have the first line of clinton trump, Something Like male, female, party, demographics, but they deliberately dont give you the bottom line. So you have to kind of do the math in your head looking at gender. Looked like it was probably clinton ahead by about three which was not far out of line with where a lot of the polling was. It wasnt until we got deeper in the evening, particularly when we started looking at specific states, that we started seeing anomalies wait a minute, this is not heading where we all thought. And i think historians and political scientists and pollsters and operatives and all kinds of political aficionados are going to be pouring through the data for years to come to try and figure out exactly what happened, why we did not see it, and how it got to be so underestimated. When you think about what this election meant, it was an unprecedented rejection of so many people and things. It was a rejection of, in no particular order, hillary and bill clinton, of the Republican Party establishment, of the national establishment. When you think about it, we have five living president s. None of them have endorsed donald trump. Bob dole was the only living , former republican president ial nominee who endorsed him. Of the forbes 100 ceos, not one has made a contribution to the trump campaign. Best i could tell, there were two major newspaper endorsements. One was the Las Vegas Review journal, and the other was the national inquirer, and i didnt know they did endorsements. [laughter] mr. Cook it is like, wow we are going to be unpacking this for a long time. As i am sure, many of you have been glued to various sites, you know that secretary clinton pulled ahead by 2 10 of one point right now on the popular vote. That in high dollars that and five dollars will get you a cup of coffee. What is interesting is that during the 19th century we had split Electoral College popular vote outcomes three times. None during the 20th. And now, we have had two in the first 16 years of the first 21st century. So, we had 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000, and now, 2016. The thing is, we knew that this election was going to be about change. I mean, we kind of knew that. On one level, it is not terribly surprising. We knew the history that whenever a party has had the white house for two consecutive terms for eight years, five times out of six since the end of world war ii, the American People voted for change. The only time they didnt do that in the postwar era was eight years after president reagan, when they elected his Vice President , george h. W. Bush. There was a tendency there, but there were so many factors that seemed like it might be this might be different this time. While Hillary Clinton certainly had incredibly ugly numbers, favorable and unfavorable. So were Donald Trumps. The desire for change seemed to be so great a poll where 31 felt the country was headed in the right direction, 62 wrong track. The interesting thing about that number is, the last time peter hart and fred yang on the democratic side, and bill on the republican side, and bob teeter had been asking that question almost monthly for the better part of 30 years, and the last time the right direction was more than wrong track was back in january of 2004. 12 years ago. And so, we knew there had been sustained anger and hart had done a series of seven focus groups, so far this year or this cycle i should say for the Annenberg Center in pennsylvania, around the country. The last one was two weeks ago. I think the Annenberg School has it on their website. You can watch the focus group, but you could see the anger, the alienation. This was a focus group of late deciders, but, even in that focus group, even listening to these people, it seemed like they desperately wanted change, but that donald trump seemed, you know listening to these people, donald trump seemed to be a little too risky a change, risky of a change. That they wanted change. They wanted something different, but he might have been a bridge too far, and maybe i read too much into it. There were two quotes in the analysis that hart did that stuck out to me, that i thought told me something. One was a woman named donna saying, i so much wanted trump. I so much wanted a nonpolitician, but i dont trust him and im afraid of him , and i just dont think he knows when to shut up. If he would just say, im a businessman, im not a politician, and im going to make America Great again and and stoppedin right there then i would vote for him. You know, it was like, ok, i can kind of see where shes coming from. Another woman, jennifer, in the focus group, was undecided. I wanted to like trump, but i dont know that i can because it is embarrassing the way he acts. His temper tantrums, hes an embarrassment to our country. I dont embrace clinton, but i would vote for her. Its probably just going to be a vote against trump. That was sort of the theme what we were picking up around the country. People desperately wanted change, but was he an acceptable risk . You know, he was clearly change, but was he too much change, was he too risky a change . So there was reason not to say, well, maybe this is going to come up short . Clearly, there were a lot of voters out there that think that our political system is not working, or, at the very least, its not working for them, and they think that our Economic System isnt working or at least not working for them. Then, you had people that, some you have some people that seem to feel like things are not changing fast enough, and think about you know, some of the Bernie Sanders supporters, for example. Sanders went out and campaigned awfully hard for clinton and cannot be faulted, and Elizabeth Warren went out and did a lot, so this is not criticism of them, but that clearly some of the people that they were tapping into were restless and they did not see this as enough change and may not have turned out in quite the numbers expected. I think, far more, there were people that felt like things were changing too quickly. And whether they were looking at society and culture and all of the debates on transgender bathrooms, and this and that, that maybe too much was happening too quickly for them. Or in the Economic System, in terms of whether its globalization and trade that has put, obviously, some people out of work. But then there are other people that were probably replaced by robot machines and things, but as far as they were concerned, they were replaced by workers abroad, when it really may have been productivity. But clearly, the world for these folks that either chose or didnt have the opportunity to go to college, people that could have made a really, really good income, have a nice living back in the 20th century, but far fewer of them could make that work in the 21st century. Clearly, they were afraid, angry, looking for something else. Clearly, that was sort of building up out there. And then, we saw something and i had a lot of questions before the election, was sort of brexitrelated, and i think we could talk about the polling in just a minute but maybe thinking about brexit in a sense of, you know, all the experts in the United Kingdom and all the experts around europe were basically telling the people of the u. K. You dont want to do this, you do not want to leave. And by 52 to 48, the british people voted to leave. They did it despite the fact that the vast majority of the countrys leaders, economic leaders, the experts all were saying dont do it, dont do it, and they did it anyway. I think it reflects something there and here that this devaluing of this feeling that our leaders let us down and our experts dont know what they are doing, and they see the quagmires in iraq and afghanistan, and they see all of the problems in the middle east, and the rise of terrorism, and they blame leaders and experts for it, and so they say, well, what the heck. Have to lose . That sort of thing. They look at relationships with china and russia and see that gosh, if things are going so so badly, how can a Real Estate Developer do any worse than that . We are just sort of seeing this thing where they were willing to sort of defy all warnings that in the past would have, may have scared them off from doing something, and they did it anyway. I confess that looking at and watching focus groups and looking at polling data of all the problems that secretary clinton had in terms of trust issues and being perceived as evasive and all of that, it really looked, i mean, it looked like Donald Trumps past and things coming back up as well as just behavior i mean, think about, we could see a change in polling data after the first debate. If you want to lump in first debate, the billy bush tapes, where it looked like that made a real difference. That that was sort of a seminal point in the campaign. Clearly, it either was not, or it got undone by subsequent events. I do not know what the effect of all the comey backandforth did, but i suspect it probably sort of kept that alive, pushed it back to the front of peoples mind, reinforced doubts or re reminded them of things they didnt like about secretary clinton. All of these things. We also saw a sign of things happening in, you know, just sort of think about how debate discourse in this country has changed over the last 20 or 30 years. And whether its cable news, talk radio, the web, social media, but we have gone from a place that i guess in retrospect seemed like it was moderately polite to just bareknuckle brawling. Last recommend sunday night, how many of you saw 60 minutes . Fair number. You can go on the 60 minutes website. Frank once did a focus group, that was and i have watched a lot of them, and i remember at the time being a little suspicious, because it was like, i have seen lots of focus groups where they had some people that seemed kind of angry or pretty angry, but i have never seen one where its all of them were. And i was a little suspicious that, you know, maybe there had been some aggressive recruiting of people that were particularly ok, lets call up 300 or 400 people in the area and pick out the 25 most tickedoff people that you find, and lets put them in a room with some Network Cameras and see what happens. I have to tell you, it was compelling television. Im not sure it was straight up, i sure cantspect, say it was fixed, but it really gave you a sense of how debates and people interactions had changed. How pointed things had become. And so, we come back to this choice that people were having, and there was one set of focus groups that were done with walmart moms. And this one woman characterized the race as between quote, between a dishonest washington politician and an unqualified hothead. A different focus group, one in charlotte, peter hart said a man said that it had come down to quote, vote for me because im less of a sleazeball. I mean, thats how voters were seeing this choice. I mean, wow the fact that we could see this in the exit had for example, and this was out of the 24,000, as of about 2 30 this morning, when i printed out the crosstabs, it was about 24,000 interviews. President obamas Approval Rating of voters yesterday was 53 approve, 45 disapprove, and , normally, if you look at that, you would say well, ok, the party of the sitting president would have a fair chance of holding on and actually did win the popular vote, but looking at the favorable unfavorables of just the two candidates where Hillary Clinton had a 44 favorable, 54 unfavorable, so 10, but trumps was 38 favorable, 60 unfavorable and that was the one that won. Wow, wow. [laughter] mr. Cook like i said, we will be unpacking this for a really, really, really long time. In an analysis, by the man who does the abc Washington Post poll, sent out an analysis this morning. One line that kind of hit me was a revolution against politics shook the country tuesday, with workingclass whites venting their economic and cultural frustration by lifting insurgent candidate donald trump to the presidency, and where this was, we heard a whole lot about ok, it was noncollege whites over here, against whites that were College Graduates over here, and minority voters over here and that is a way, and i will go through some of these numbers in a second, that is one way of looking at it, but part of it was this urban versus of versus smalltown rural, and one of the first signs that things were starting to go in an unexpected direction last night was david wasserman, our house editor, and he was across the room. We were in the decision desk room at nbc, and he comes over and whispers in my ear, something to the effect of, you wont believe the numbers we are seeing in some of these states and in some of the Rural Counties where they were getting turnout levels in places that were just absolutely unprecedented in these rural, smalltown settings. Which raised the question of, clearly, i mean, we knew about the noncollege whites versus college, and we kind of knew that part. I mean, i was personally aware of the sort of this Cultural Divide between smalltown rural america, and i might say Middle America geographically compared to the coasts on each side. But it was much, much, much, much hotter than we expected, and so, there is this, kind of the city people or people from the east coast, west coast telling us how we ought to live our lives and really just sort of a rebellion there as well. Our colleague from Atlantic Media National Journal from atlantic magazine, ron brownstein, has a great turn that we have seen this inversion, this political inversion. If you think back to the franklinroosevelt new deal coalition, one essential element of it was basically bluecollar whites, workingclass whites, central part of the new deal coalition. They have either left, or i guess you could say the Democratic Party had left them or driven them away or however you want to characterize it, to the point where trump won noncollegeeducated whites by a 39point margin. Heres a frame of reference. Reagan won them by a 32point margin. So seven points more, greater than what Ronald Reagan got, and reagan won a 10point landslide. This was an election where trump actually, you know, seems to have lost the popular vote by, you know, a fraction of a percent, but certainly, it was not anything like the 10point blowout 10point landslide like Ronald Reagan achieved over jimmy carter. Let me just run through just some of the exit poll data that just jumped out at me as particularly important. Those voters under 45, they were 44 of the electorate and clinton won them by 12 points, 52 to 40. But those 45 and older, that was 56 of the electorate, and we knew that people, particularly 65 and older, turnout at a higher level. Trump won them by nine points, 53 to 44. Gender, women made up 52 of the electorate, and clinton won by 12 according to exit polls. Men made up 48 of the electorate, and trump won them by 12 points. Seems to me, given that women are usually 52 53 of the electorate, you know, my Louisiana Public School Arithmetic suggests that she was supposed to you know, she should have won this given that, but go figure. Then, lets look at race. Back in 1992, when bill clinton beat president george h. W. Bush, 87 of the electorate was white. In 2012, it dropped 15 points to 72 . This electorate was 70 , and the thing is there were some folks that were saying this could drop down to 59 to 68 , Something Like that. It ended up being 70 , but of the whites that voted, they voted for trump by a 21point margin, 58 to 37 , while the 3