Fundamentally different from a president ial election. Different people vote. I looked at the House National exit poll and i made this point on the news hour but i will make again. Paring the 2014 elected electorate to the 2010 electorate i know this comes as a shock but not everybody votes. Whats important to me as a handicapper is who votes and now with the National Public opinion is. 2014 to 2012 and the 2014 electorate was more older, more male, or republican, wealthier and more of them said the country is headed on the wrong track. Probably should not surprise you those voters voted or republican. But even more than that in 2012, the exit polls said do you disapprove of the job barack obama is doing . Approve, 53 , disapprove, 46 . It shocked a lot of us. Midtoed him in the upper 40s. When people voted, that is who voted. This time, do you approve or disapprove, 44 approve and 55 disapprove. It was a different electorate with a different mood and delivered a different opinion about the president of the stop tates will president of the united states. Election because the country wanted change. Are there people here who think the president is doing a good job in the country is headed in the right direction . This doesnt make you wrong, just makes you different than the people who voted. [laughter] its simply a matter of opinion, but it is important who votes and what their opinions are. Forward . It mean going i have rarely found a politician who won an election who didnt think it was some kind of mandate. Or an affirmation of that persons agenda or priorities. Ive heard so much cockamamie analysis i get press releases from every group claiming they are the reasons why the republicans one or, very Creative Press releases, or why they are the reason democrats did not do even worse. It is rare you get a politician who says this was not about us at all. We dont have a mandate to do anything. I expect coming out of this election, republicans will over read their mandate. Not all republicans will do that. Many in the leadership understand their negative their mandate was more like a aive mandate will stop negative mandate. House and Senate Republican leaders will have problems with the rank and file. The republican majority is bigger and that may give Speaker Boehner more freedom, but dont kid yourself. The establishment guys won the primaries, macconnell knocked off the tea party guy. Alexander defeated a tea party guy, so we have the establishment, but the chamber establishment did not fight as much in these individual races and the electorates are different. Broun is leaving from georgia a very libertarian antia tablet and republican congressman from georgia. Michele bachmann is leaving, that tom emmer, the male version of Michele Bachmann is coming in minnesota. Boehner is going to have to tread very carefully. , i have three Big Questions and their leg their names are dance open and alaska and tom cotton in arkansas. ,hey are smart and personable but im not exactly sure where ofy fit in this question what is your role as a legislator. This is an important question particularly on the republican side. See theirse people role . Do we need to compromise and compromises good or are we conservative republicans to elect president s or our own party and they tell us theyre going to shrink government and instead against your and we get Medicare Part d and we are tired of it and not compromising. So what are they going to do . All three were endorsed by the club for growth. The club is very enthusiastic and tends to support candidates who view principal over pragmatism. I met with all three and can see them going either way. I dont know how they are going to behave. Ted cruz orjoin a mike lee, this is a neutral term ive just come up with in the last eight seconds. Caucus in theing senate that the in the senate. That would make things very difficult for mitch mcconnell. I think there are lots of questions and im rather skeptical that the republicans will be able to be on the same page. Finally, then i will stop did the president get the message . Probably not. The message got after 94, i think and he made it clear he was upset people didnt like him and he wanted to be where people were. This president is on foot he knows where the country should go and is right about that. Brothers spent a lot of money and a lot of people didnt vote. I dont expect a lot of flexibility out of the white house will stop i think washington will continue to be a place where its difficult to get eggs done. Lord knows we havent not in a lot of things done but the economy is not going not growing fast enough to stop its still going to take a lot of effort to get things done and a lot of enthusiasm and good will. Im going to say lets keep our fingers crossed. Or now from the cq roll call review and the legislative ironies for the next congress will stop the next panel is about an hour long and focuses on the successes, failures and some of the surprises of campaign 2014 and what lies ahead. [applause] good morning, everybody. You should be here. Thanks very much for that nice introduction. Thank you everybody for being here. The cameras,ed this is going to be on cspan2. Rob cecild to have and rob collins here. Im very excited. I will keep the introductions brief because we are going to get into the meat of our conversations. Going to start with the executive director of the National RepublicanSenatorial Campaign committee. Purple strategies before that i created the successful Hispanic Leadership network and work with chuck hagel and is a veteran of 14 campaigns will stop guy cecil is socratictor of the Senatorial Campaign committee. He was chief of staff to Michael Bennet from colorado. He had been a National Political and field director for the Hillary Clinton for president campaign. A very Successful Team during 2005 at 2007 as political director and is chairman of the Charter School in my Old Neighborhood of at work and a former minister which might have come in handy over the last several days will stop im going the news. Ith weve got to outstanding senate races. Im curious about what you are hearing. Is a state with alex postmark collection they have 14 days to get five counting centers. They meet when they hit a threshold number of ballots in their possession. Senator stevens went in up over 300,000 votes 50,000 votes came in after that. We knew the polling was bouncing all over the place thomas so we prepositioned teams before the election with the theory that its hard to get into alaska, its always harder to get out of. And payter to be there an extra night of hotel rooms. Folks who help with the or whatever that is called. Then we have some really good smart legal minds making sure everything is where it is. I think we are up high a significant amount of arjun that we should when, but we are going to see how the process plays itself out. Our candidate is feeling good about its position and with such an aggressive gap with such bothssive ground game on sides, a lot of absentees were turned in early and a lot of early voting occurred. Unlike the ted stevens campaign it, he ran ak at more mild campaign. There should be a richer mix of votes as opposed to 2008 when senator begich got 60 plus percent of the votes that came in after election day. We feel pretty good in our position. In virginia, mark warner was with most0 votes precincts reporting there. What are you expecting in virginia . As the canvas started to happen in the counties, most of it would the complete today. We expect senator warner to hold the lead. It is difficult to turn 16,000 votes into a win for the other nextand we expect over the couple of days that ed will realize the same thing and not for a recount will stop bikes is that what you are hearing from mr. Gillespie . These are candidatedriven events. If after the recanvas, they determine they want to take a step toward, we will take that step toward with them. You might have heard Steve Rothenberg predict republicans will ultimately have nine seats because he thinks the louisiana runoff will go toward bill cassidy. How do you view that louisiana race . I think Mary Landrieu got what she got. Her early vote wasnt what it and that enthusiasm just was not there for her. Baton rouge is a good place to deep roots in that community. Campaign andgood he has the resources and he did that primary. F im sure guy would agree that Mary Landrieu is a tough politician. If the republicans think this is a long and gentle slide into victory, they are going to cool themselves and if they step if they dont start budgeting right now, we could wake up and say we blew it. A very activeas history and usually there are runoff elections after every general election in the state. 2002 is a great example of what can happen. Runoff, she was going to theany runoff will stop africanamerican registration level at elysee and it is as high as it has ever been, and colluding including threekatrina. Our challenge over the course of the next weeks is to do everything we can to inspire our base, African Americans young voters, women to turn out in the runoff election. Is one thing we can agree on Mary Landrieu is a tenacious and tough all addition and i think she will give it everything she has over the next few weeks. Spread a photo weve got so many photos of Mary Landrieu and shes really in her element which he is campaigning. She is super vibrant and happy. There are not many candidates doing line dances. Louisiana is its own magical and wonderful place. She fits right in. From a philosophical point of view, do voters look at this as theyve already won the majority so is turnout going to be an issue or are republicans going to have a bigger majority . You could look at and say the democrat base was depressed and i going to be more depressed. Think we have to run our own races and from a committee perspective, our ground game will be the number one thing we focus on. Will cover the tv and the other stuff that goes into the communication but getting our folks out and call it a 1em we a runoff, but it is a brandnew election. We have to have the mentality that just because they showed up six weeks ago doesnt mean they will show up. Important. Its not for the majority anymore. A senate seat is a terrible thing to raise to waste will powernvesting hours and and money to get there. We are going to talk a lot about this cycle in general. Weree we came on stage, we talking about how we have both been on the how you have both been on the losing side. Did you have a sense going in that was how is going to play you hear tom cotton wins in arkansas and realize its going to be a tough night which mark i was on the committee in 2006 when we reclaimed the majority running against an unpopular president. Ationalizing the election in 2008, i was there for the first half of the 2008 cycle. Aree are two things that true winning is better than losing, that is still true. But the second thing is we knew going into election weekend that over the course of the previous week, the numbers were marginally moving against us in a uniform fashion. We do about 500 interviews in night in every state am attracting every race, and it became very clear that in undecided and independent voters that had not withtheir decision, even 120 million of ads in North Carolina or 100 million in colorado or 60 million in alaska, you still had undecided voters who were making an assessment about the election and it became clear they were moving in one direction over the course of that week. Obviously hoped we could stem the tide, but it became clear to us as time went on that that was going to be difficult to do. Nate silver he did not come out and give his speech until he was sure he that you guys had the majority. Were you seeing these same things in the weekend polling . I dont think i would let it through the prism of one mcconnell spoke. Room full of a volunteers who want to see you, you want to respond to them. They just spend a day, a week, a , so working hard for you you want to be considerate to them. I would not frame it up as was he not confident he would get there. I think he was in front of his team and wanted to say thank you. I think we felt good. Kentucky moved quick and then New Hampshire moved bizarrely and very quick. It should not have been called so quickly, i think. It was a tight race all night. To say what kind of night are we going to have . Polls plus the information we were getting across the country from our teams midfield, we felt like we were having a good night. Kansas at about 2 00, we felt really good about where we were and that was a pivot point where we said kansas is good, colorado we felt good, the information we are getting all day long North Carolina felt really good. The way the state was shaping up and in georgia, polling had bounced all over the place. We knew we were close to 50 but we were not sure we were going to get there. That was the feeling that we were going to have a good night. You know a lot about colorado. Think its important as a democrat that we take time to make sure we are analyzing the election and we are not over learning elections were learning the wrong lessons. One of the dynamics that is interesting is the election was not won or lost based on turnout. I think the comments about the way they are is the most telling in that regard. Contrary to what most people would think, there was a better gap tween republican ballot returns a democratic out returns than in 2010 when we run the when we won the election. Votersere 70,000 more that returned ballots. Democratic counties turned out nine points higher than republican counties and we increased the africanamerican percentage of the population of the vote from 19 to 21 , a two point increase in africanamerican turnout from 2010. The two largest democratic counties, we increased turnout by 16 . The challenges it doesnt matter in a wave election. There will be lots written about technology, republicans could have carried a commodore 64 and a wagon behind him going door to door. Wedid not will stop did not. We made a decision early on to invest on the ground in the instances was not going to be a wave election. Whats important for me to communicate as we should not walk away from that commitment. Changing theone in dynamic of a Midterm Election and not the final step. Midterm will not be a wave election. We need to continue to build the groundwork in states where we are not engaged in the election. Ofle we increase turnout, the 13 states that increase turnout, 10 of those are senate races. Its important for us to pause and assess and make decisions about how we continue to build the ground game for future elections. The 2016 landscape looks better. Of the 10 races rob and i frequently talk about, the president lost 10 of those races. In nine of those races, he was defeated i doubledigit and lost by 20 or more points. Electorate for 2016 were we are talking about a lot of other states. The governors race in maryland by 10 points, one of the bluest states in the country, by a smaller margin than you lost purple states that are competitive, it reveals there is something larger going simply whether your technology was good or whether you knocked on 10. 2 million. That is why i think it is that we dontus give up on the door knocking and voter registration. In a close election, that focus will pay off. Make sure we are analyzing everything and not coming to an act coming to a reaction on what worked and what didnt work. What paid off for the republicans . Said, in theat guy [inaudible] i had been around raising money and and around campaigns that the recruiting, funding finding candidate second win a campaign and win a general, candidates curious enough to create a modern campaign and would go through training. There are two bars we had to get over. The low bar is we avoid saying super alienating things that scare folks to vote. The high bar was could we go and present a legitimate case to change horses . , thom tillis gets an hour of free debate time because kay hagan did not want to show up. Candidate, weaker other states, you saw the republican saying lets talk more, lets debate these issues. The National Environment favored them but its our feeling that we train them up and invested a lot of time. Change thatcultural started in 12 that i hope will continue that we invest heavily invest in theand Technology Behind the door knock and invest in the door not your knock. Team for to your continuing to grant interviews for the press and telling us how to be better. The Democratic Movement writ large. That was a huge sea change that i had seen. It felt like every election cycle we got further and further away from the grasp roots and i 12, led by the rnc and the work that they did host and the campaigns that are state parties said lets get back to what we do best, which is talking to voters and mobilizing our team. Candidates were very nimble issues, when Foreign Policy jumped to the fore of the american peoples minds in september and october, we were pleased and blessed to have so many x military and current military candidates who are comfortable explaining the benefits of American National security and projection of force overseas. With ebola and the veterans crisis, they werent nimble and how they spoke and said im going to put this in my stump speech. They create a plan in april and that is what they execute on i think you can miss opportunities and their campaigns are very nimble in that front. We were really please with that. Part of the challenge in this election is that there were multiple times where republicans were able to easily nationalize the election. At crisis of the children the border, the veterans administration, ebola, isil, there were multiple times when it was easier for them to nationalize election, to making it personal to the president , which again, in a lot of states did not work. The reality is that the states