Backlash against republicans. Why does this tend to happen in second terms . Think about when a brandnew president is elected and you are young enough to remember in 2009 , whether you were democrat or republican, liberal, moderate, conservative, there was a real curiosity how this new president is going to do and howxcitement, passion, is this guy going to do . Y people wanted the country to do well after tough times, and that is fairly typical when a new president is elected. But over time, the novelty wears for myd over time decisions are made, tough, governing decisions are made that tend to tick people off, and that the fresh, new ideas and to dissipate some. The team that elected the president lycian really, they generally go off and make money. So they have the cteam on the field. The final thing is chickens come home to roost, things that you said or did in the first term come back to you, and they will thingsou on your ass, like that come back to haunt you in the second term. Also, there is a tendency for bad things to happen to president s in their second terms great sometimes it is economic downturns. For example, president eisenhower had two recessions in the last two years he was in office. I did not know you could have two recessions that close together. You could have unpopular wars in the kennedy and johnson administrations. You could have scandals like and ford. In nixon Monica Lewinsky for clinton. And the thing is, iran contra for president reagan, but that things usually happen in the second term and people getting and tired. Lets do something different. It is a pattern that holds up pretty darn well. So those are the two questions. What is it going to be . Well, when i look at what is going on and look at the polling i needede thing to get a chance to go by the office and print this out our website is cookpoli tical. Com, and when you go up on the home page it is all free you look on the righthand side of the page and theres a box, and it talks about the political environment, and then it says read more. Itthat, and there is a is about a 10page document that we update several times a week with the polling data that we think of polling data that is most relevant ascertaining what is the environment going to be like. To start off with right direction, wrong track numbers, and then we go to president ial approval, and we have the gallup cnn, and pew, and then we go through consuming or Consumer Confidence. To the extent we are taught Midterm Elections are a referendum on the incumbent resident, then looking at the president s job Approval Rating is important. It is said that americans vote their pocketbooks then they tend to vote if they are worried, scared, fearful about the economy. They tend to be more pessimistic, which is not good for an incumbent party. As they feel good about things they typically vote on other things, but we have a Consumer Confidence rating. Then we have favorable bothorable ratings for parties from the various polls, and before that some numbers from the Kaiser Family foundation, which is the largest objective body of polling on the Affordable Care act, watching several questions there in terms of their popularity, and we have the generic ballot texts, maybe onouple other questions there. That is a good way to check in and see how things are going. When i look at what is happening right now, the Democratic Party has lousy favor numbers. Worseican party has numbers. The president s approval numbers right now are about 42 , which bushactly where president was at this point in his second term, which is after direct was already after iraq was already turning sour. It is for some days digit four digit the same where president bush was at this point, which is not a good place, and republicans took some significant losses in 2006. The republican theres no reason to believe that republicans have improved their standing one iota among minority voters, younger voters, women voters, moderate voters none whatsoever. At the same time you look over and you look at the president s of approval numbers and they are on the track toward where you have bad second term Midterm Elections, and it is what it is. Maybe things get better, maybe they do. We will see. That is why you do not just take a poll and skip the election. That is why you have campaigns. Right now it looks like both of those things are going to happen or both of those things look to be if you were going to have the election today operative, which would tend to suggest canceling each other out. When i talked about what kind of election it is going to be, at this point am a theres not any evidence that this is going to be a wave election, because for people to vote against somebody, they kind of have to vote for somebody. And the thing is they do not like either side here, and so i do not see them handing out compliments or willynilly handing out victories to either side because they are not really happy with either one. I guess a media urologist would say it is like an unstable air meteorologist would say it is like an unstable air mass. That is the, ok, environment, lets get down to cases, and next speaker is going to get into races, but i want to do it from a larger sense. You have the house and the senate. In the house immigrants would need a 17seat net gain to get a majority in the house. In the big scheme of things, 73 is not a particularly big number. You can look there is a great ornstein, tom malbon, and they now have it up on the web. They will publish they do not publish on hardcopy anymore. Go through the brookings or the aei website. When you go back and look over remember am trying to what my point was im getting over a chest cold 17 is not much. It really is not. But the thing about it is in the new world order, it kind of is a lot, because there are very few competitive districts out there. I started as i mentioned earlier, my newsletter in april of 1984, and it was not uncommon 100, 125,ays to have 150 or more competitive districts. Now the pending on how you determined define it and i was reading someplace they were using higher numbers, and saying the finding it defining it as a voting for president in one party and congress for another, it went from 99 10 years to only 25 now. The better statistics is that 96 of all the democrats in the house are sitting in districts and 92 ofcarried, the republicans in the house are sitting in districts that mitt romney carried. Theres just not a lot of elasticity in the house left anymore. Part of this is redistricting, and we have had you can either call it gerrymandering we have had it as long as we have had congressional districts. Because state capitals are now adding so much more polarized along partisan lines, because computer map making has gotten so much more sophisticated than back in the old days when people were working off of a card, cards, numbers on paper, it has gotten awfully good right now. If you are the dominant party in a state and you want to absolutely minimize the representation of the other party, you could do an amazing ow much better than you could before. There are other things that are a place as well. For example, population sorting. There is a wonderful book that some of you might want to read , andguy named bill bishop he talks about how people in a , ine vote with their feet that people tend to move and concentrate with people like themselves. People are more comfortable when they are with likeminded people. And this is becoming more and more and more so. When you look at democratic look geographically across the country, one of the districts that democrats tend to can to be large urban areas, closein suburbs, and college towns. Where do republicans live . Smalltown, rural america, and reachesxurbs, the outer of the suburbs. That is a clear pattern or political pattern that is out there. Even notwithstanding any political gerrymandering that is taking place, you have this taking place as well. Then the final reason is to get about the last four elections. In 2008, you were member the iraq war was getting really pretty ugly. President bushs numbers were down to 28 , Something Like that. The 2008 election, you had a really ugly election for republicans. N 2010, it got even worse 2008 an ugly election for republicans, and so a lot of republicans that are sitting in competitive streaks or districts that may be a democrat ought to have, they got washed out back in 2008 just as they did in 2006. They had back to back ugly elections for republicans, that window cap a lot of republicans in competitive districts. In 2010, the way it went the other church in was a fabulous year for republicans, and it washed out the see of a lot of democrats that were sitting in districts that should have been republican. Wasing out of those in 2008 a decent election for democrats. 80 senior for democrats. For democrats. R you sorted it out so there are not many fish out of water that are out there. It has been his motorized the elasticity it it has minimized the elasticity in the house. It has made it difficult for the press to make a 17see games as it would be difficult for republicans to make a 17seat gain in this environment. And you look at the individual races one by one and we have a fabulous house editor David Wasserman who does this, and all he does from one election date to the one two years later, is right now more likely than not that republicans would actually pick up a handful of seats, 3, 4, 5, 6, a very small number, based on their where there are open seats and where the competitive races are, and that is not aced on any macro assumption whatsoever. Then you get over to the senate side, and i do not want to poach into that, but democrats have a lot of exposure. The thing to remember about the senate always is that just as the house has twoyear terms, is set in a house two years earlier. In the senate with 600 year term somebody with sixyear terms, so when one party has a fabulous year in the senate, six years later they are going to be playing defense. Big risk of vulnerability. That is exactly where democrats are in the senate and where seats thatf the 8 are most likely to make a difference, six of them are in states that mitt romney carried. Again, i do not want to poach on to the next speakers turf. That is how i view the political environment right now. On a micro level, democrats have a little bit more exposure in the house. In the senate they have a lot of exposure. At the same time for republicans, to get a majority they need a sixheat gain. They have to not run the table, but pretty close to win the majority, which is why i would put the republican march rd incentives considerably less than 5050, even though it is almost a hundred percent chance that republicans will pick up seats, but not the six seats that they need. And just sort of as an aside, it sure as heck looks like republicans were going to pick up a bunch of seats in 2012 and in the end they did not do that. Part of that was because of these brand problems we were talking about. The other problem will exist again, and that is that in this can tea party era, rob republican primaries have become ready exotic places great there has been an increased tendency for republican primary voters to choose people who god did not necessarily intend for them to be members of the u. S. Senate. [laughter] it has cost them seats that they should have one. Won. L atther you are looking nevada, colorado, delaware in 2010, or at missouri or indiana in 2012, arguably, right now the , and republicans should have five more seats than they do right now, but they do not because they nominated terribly flawed candidates that were not able to win seats that appeared to be very winnable, if not [indiscernible] that is one more consideration out there. Lets open this up for questions, comments, accusations. You had your hand up a long time ago. Let me go with you first. I apologize for that, but my question is, is you talked scenarios, and i agree because you are the expert. It could be something else, but those would seem to be the you had your hand up a long time ago. Let me go withtwo most possible. Exactlyseems to be right. My question is, could you speak to the difference between the electorate who votes and the efforts between midterms in president ial elections because it seems to me that those are quite different and also determine which scenario is more dominant. President ial elections tend to draw obviously a much bigger turnout, broader turnout, and it is a turnout that more looks like the country. Goterm elections, you have a lot of voters that are sort of casual voters. Sometimes they vote, sometimes they do not. They oftentimes vote president ial, but in any election other than that, they do not show up. The group that drops off the most is younger voters, downscale voters, you really younger voters, and one particular group that stan greenberg, the democrat pollster, who with james card fill carville had this polling think tank thing for the democratic side that they focus on the young single women voters , that women voters under 30, 35 who were single is one it is a group that when they vote they vote. Inavily democratic, but the w is an opportune term because they do not turn up for Midterm Elections. It does not mean that all midtermwin elections because they lost control of congress in 2000 six, which was a Midterm Election. Generally speaking, the Midterm Election turnout dynamic is something that is more favorable while a democratic while president s role is more favorable to democrats, that is true. It is not determinative, but it is an important factor. You were next. I guess you spent a lot of time studying elections. What has been the most surprising result in your time, or what results in the last election shock you the most that you did not expect . Ll, that is an interesting one because there are a lot of surprises you are in this bigness business long enough, you see stuff that i did not see that coming, and relatively wonntly, after barack obama the iowa caucus and then lost the New Hampshire primary to hillary clinton, that was a shocker because somewhere in this big country there somebody who predicted that hillary would win the New Hampshire primary after losing the iowa caucus, but i never met them. That was one. I would say professionally i would say it was at 1994, gingrich Midterm Election. The reason is that we had not since inelection 14 years, since 1980. Thei had vivid memories of 1980 election. Long before i got in this moderateam i am a independent now, but i got my start, grew up as a democrat and had my first few political jobs on the democrat side. The election by 1980, i was at the headquarters of the democratic senatorial having committee. I was visiting some friends. Actually, lucy who is now my wife was working there at the time. Date indiana was the first indiana and kentucky are the closingtes poll times. Yh lost at about 6 30 in the evening. The democrats at losing until well after midnight. It was like boom, boom, boom. That was the first wave election since 1974, the watergate election, but i was in college in 1974 and was working on the hill, but not aware that much. 1980 was that was really something. We went 14 years before that was replicated. You had people Running Campaign committees on each side who had never personally experienced a wave election. There is a tendency to get a little too wrapped up in this all politics is local think if you go a long time without a wave election. And so it is like hard to imagine it happening until you really see one up close and personal. That 1990 41 was probably was probably awe. Tep back in there can be some people that will be relied on to predict that their people will win every single election. Arecan figure out who they and never listen to them. The first person that did not qualify in that category we my house editor at the time was a young man who is now a lawyer and intellectual property expert at the Motion Picture association. He was our first house editor. We were over at the Democratic CongressionalCampaign Committee side,do this with each staff come and run to the races, and on background, what are you seeing, trade notes back and forth, because we meet with a loud of candidates, and they meet with the candidates and trade notes. Anyway, we were over the there and had just done the alabama to wyoming run down of and political director at the time, a Media Consultant now, the meeting was over. Some of the people wandered off. It was just two of us standing in the conference room. He said, charlie, are you seeing anything odd out there . No, not really. He said, the last month or two we started seeing some now, this was april of 1994. He said, we started seeing some very odd numbers around the country in places where democratic incumbents are to be this is in a different era and numbers were universal. Butsely higher than democratic incumbents that are in the mid50s that should be in the mid50s are just over 50 . Urban areas, role areas, suburban areas, north, south, east, west, across the board, and i remember at the time thinking i have not noticed that. Early on a cycle you do not see a lot of polling data on the house level, individual house races. Dave andred thinking, vic feys io, the chairman of the committee at that point, maybe a are trying to lower expectations so if they had a good election result, a big victory. June, as ixt may, sell more data coming out, it started looking like, i think he is on to something. You can start seeing it built over the summer and build and build and build and build. At that election, republicans needed a 40seat that game to get a majority in the house. Gain to get a majority in the house. If you gave republicans every conceivable seat that they could possibly win, they still could not get to 40. It was building and building you could see the direction of the arrow. You can tell the wind was blowing strong. At the end, i was saying maybe there is a one in three chance that republicans get a majority in the house, but that is like how many of you have gone bird hunting. Thet is a shotgun, you lead bird a little bit. If you aim at the bird, your shot will go behind the bird. You lead the bird. It was going this way, so i was saying one out of three. It not only not only did they get 40 seats, they got 52. You had republican candidates getting elected who did not get a dime from their own party, that their own party did not even think they were going to win. Conversely, democrats losing and their party did no