We are joined by Steve Gibbons from Washington University for tonights debate. Thank you for joining us. Good morning, glad to be here. Host we have a little bit of a delay, so i will try not to speak over you, but if i do, i apologize. Is Washington University ready for the debate . We are. This is a culmination of six months of planning. A lot of hard work especially the last week or so. We have been ready for the media for about a week or so with forrds to facilities between 2500, 3000 members of the media here. And in the last two or three the team has arrived, and we focused on getting the debate venue sets. Late last night, and i think we are ready to go. You are also a chief of staff. How many audience members will there be tonight. We talked about members of the media. How many will be in attendance . Guest we think right about 1000. The last number i heard. That number sometimes changes as they finalize sightlines and things like that, but that does not include about 40 members of the public who will be a part of the town hall format. That is a separate, smaller audience right in front of the candidates. Host this is the fifth debate happening at Washington University. What is it about the university that makes it a goto place of sorts for a president ial debate . You know, i guess i dont know for sure. We have a long tradition here, as you noted, beginning back to 1992, when we hosted, for the first time, and when we did that, we did that with one weeks notice, so something was happening at another site not working out, so they approached us. And we stepped up to the plate and hit a home run in 1992 with george bush senior, bill clinton, and ross perot. We have kept coming back to them every cycle, and they have been willing to give it to us. I think st. Louis and the midwest is probably a good location geographically for lots of reasons for travel, for political demographics but i think, you know what we hear , from the commission is that they like our facility, they like our people, they like the attitude that we bring to this because, you know, we do not do this for a living. We are not convention planners, we are not meeting planners, we all do other things, but for the six months, we really are able to pull together and pull off something very special. Host the estimated cost for a debate is about 5 million. Can you break out what the biggest part of that cost is . Yeah, i would say it is technology and security. You know we really have seen , both of those costs rise over time. You know, in 1992, technology for the media was literally a couple trailers of pay phones so that the media could write their stories and run out and call in their stories in to their editors. We have moved from that over time to the beginnings of the internet, to world wide web, to ethernet, and then finally today, you know, where we have very robust cell systems, you know cellular systems here, very robust wifi systems for the media who are here to cover the event, and then just the tables, the pipe and trade everything we need to do to , convert what is our athletic complex, you know, into something very different, which is a Television Studio with lots and lots of room for the campaign staff, for the media to work. So it, you know is taking a , Building Made for something totally different, transforming it into this, and then in a few days, transforming it back so our collegiate athletes and our students can continue to use the facility. That is a big turnover. It is quick. And then security has changed over years in the post9 11 years too, it has just gotten increasingly more intricate. Host ok. Is there any lesson from the first debate at hofstra that you are using to prepare tonight at Washington University . We think they did a great job, but the short answer i guess is no. We knew what we needed to do to pull this off. We did not see anything happen there that made us force a change in any way, so we did all the planning that we needed to do, and then once the commission got on the ground here, these last few days have been, you know tweaking Little Things and , making things work, but i think we are all set. Host we appreciate you taking time to join us today. Steve gibbons, president of the cherry debate as well as associate vice chancellor and chief of staff at Washington University, thank you so much. Thanks. Good talking to you. Host joining us here in washington now are charlie cook, washing editor and publisher of the cook report and Stuart Rothenberg, Founding Editor of rothenberg and gonzales political report. They are here to talk about campaign 2016 ahead of tonights debate. Gentlemen, thank you for joining us tonight. Lets take a look at the rankings for the president ial debate you have. Both of your reports have ,illary clinton in the lead saying if the election were held today, that she would win. Tell us a little bit about what went behind, what are sort of the reasons behind this. Charlie what we usually do is go through past election data in each state, and what you would expect from a generic republican, and then you look at the polling data specific to this race specific to each race, and there will be some aberrations. I was usually pretty democratic, usuallyas iowa is solidly democratic, but it has been more for trump this year. Ohio has been a little bit more trumpy, so there are variations, but we have been doing this since 1984. Stua has been doing at the same period of time. His business is a couple of years older than ours is. It has worked well for us. Host according to the cook report political report, it has Hillary Clinton at 272 electoral votes, donald trump with 197, but 69 electoral votes still up for grabs. It still seems pretty close. Charlie not really. If you were just going to go ahead and push everything one one way or the other, she would have Hillary Clinton would have about 273, and donald trump would have about 265, and that is giving trump every close state. That is giving him all romney states north carolina, where he including north carolina, where he is behind. Florida andng him ohio, and that still gets him just to 265. 2. 5 points is like the next margin up that clinton has over trump. Host Stuart Rothenberg has Hillary Clinton at 279, donald trump at 191 with 68 up for grabs. Very similar, but a little closer for Hillary Clinton. At this point, is it her race to lose . Stuart i should point out first although i offer my two cents or sometimes . 10 to my colleague, nathan gonzales, nathan really does the ratings. He is the height of the operation these days. But yes, i am there where nathan is and where charlie is, but we should offer the caveat that these ratings were done before the last 48 hours where the when the environment has fundamentally shifted. I agree with charlie completely. On one hand if you look at it and say, well it is close, Hillary Clinton is just over 270, so anything can happen, and she could lose a state that she looks to be winning now but the reality is when you look at the competitive states and how how they have performed over the past two election cycles, and now you look at the states, more than a dozen republican officeholders have withdrawn their endorsements, this race has blown open, and we will be seeing that in the survey data that will come out in the next week or so, depending on what happens in the debate, obviously. The next debate. But i guess if charlie and i were to push all of these undecideds out i think we would , push democratic right now. Charlie i think the odds of Hillary Clinton going well over 300 electoral votes is much higher than her losing. I think the odds are better of her hitting 325, 350 than of her coming in under 270. Stuart yeah, i have not thought, i have never thought the race was a tossup, even though we heard a lot of that ofm well, i guess the middle september 2 right before the first debate. I never thought it was a pure tossup. Now somewhat, but you have to look at the fundamentals. They refer to Hillary Clinton in this race. Host all right, we are talking to charlie cook, the editor and publisher of the cook report, as well as Stuart Rothenberg, the Founding Editor of the rothenberg and gonzales political report, about the election ahead of tonights debate at Washington University. Just a reminder that you can see the debate and all of the coverage of tonights debate on cspan beginning at 7 30 on cspan as well as cspan. Org and cspan radio. So you are saying that the race has blown open. Charlie that was the phrasing are used, yeah. Host previous to this, it would seem that the race had fallen into what charlie called a predictable patterns. Talk a little bit about what those are and how they might possibly be changed. Charlie if you look at this race from the first of may onward, it has most often been at a point where clinton was ahead somewhere between three points and five points, and then everything when donald trump would go off script and mess up and clinton was doing well, the margin would grow up from five six, or seven, or eight. Conversely, when donald trump stuck closely to the script, clinton makes mistakes that you have the whole follow from the pneumonia episode, trump pulls out ahead at even, but i do not really buy that. But i think three to five is kind of that default area. It will default to five. But i think now after the first debate and after the billy bush tapes, no, i think three to four, five, will probably be more like the floor rather than the main. Guest i disagree, of course. Stuart i disagree, of course. I look at it a little different way to what protectable patterns means. Charlie talked about it it as survey data, but when you look at the demographic groups supporting each candidate, the protectable patterns have been holding. What is the predictable pattern . The single biggest producer of who is going to vote for the republican over the democrat, donald trump or Hillary Clinton, the obvious one is the party of the individual voters. Democrats vote democrat, republican vote republican. So that automatically gives you an insight into how the election is going to break down. We did not have that indicator in the republican primaries, did we, because it was all republican. So you take away that indicator, and suddenly it is much harder to predict what is happening. But you have how white voters will behave versus African Americans or latinos. You have older voters, men, then, and when you look at electorate that way, you start seeing dramatic shifts. You have to revert back to predictable patterns that produce printable results. Host ok, we are talking to charlie cook and Stuart Rothenberg about the election. Viewers can call to join the conversation. 202 7488000 for clinton supporters. Donald Trump Supporters can call 202 7488001. Thirdparty supporters, 202 7488002. And undecided, 202 7488003. Now, in the past, we have seen revelations about donald trump , things coming up from his comments from about the former miss universe, comments about insisting that those exonerated by dna evidence are guilty, those have not moved the needle. What is different about this weekend that you think will move the needle this time . Stuart well first of all the , needle has been moved because we have seen a number of republican officeholders who had endorsed him who have now unendorsed him. There have been changes. These were not the people who supported trump. That may be true, but they had endorsed him. They have said they were not going to vote for him, and now they are not. This is just a guess. , henature of the videotape did not know he was being recorded, you get the pure, unadulterated essence of donald trump, his language who he is as , a person, how he sees himself, how he sees others, and i think that struck home with many people. Charlie let me clarify this. On the republican side, i do not think this is going to cost trump a lot of the vote he already had, and i think as sue as stu said, republicans are going to mostly stay in line if, for no other reason, that so many of them hate Hillary Clinton. So vociferously, this election is not about donald trump to them. It is about Hillary Clinton, so they are locked in. But what it does is it poisons the well of those undecided voters, of those pure independents in the middle, it means folks that may not like Hillary Clinton much at all, but at this point, they are sort of more leaning, more likely to go ahead and hold their noses and vote for clinton because it has become so poisoned. I dont expect to see trumps actual vote share drop much at all, because his people, as you said, they have been with him through thick and thin, and as he said, he could shoot somebody in fifth avenue, and they would still be supporting him. When you look at, even before this last incident, the fox news poll that came out before the tapes did, Hillary Clinton was minus nine in favorable, unfavorable. Pretty 5 viewed Hillary Clinton 25 viewed Hillary Clinton favorable so she was viewed as unfavorably at 54 . Trump was 15, and that is a lot worse even than the real clear politics of the Major National polls. We are, he is she is 9. 5, 20, 20. 6. So he was in deep trouble before these tapes came out, and this just absolutely poisons the well of undecideds. Host ok, we have an undecided voter calling in from victoria, texas. Owen, you are on with charlie cook and Stuart Rothenberg. Caller yes, yes gentlemen, thank you, cspan. What i want to know about is open borders. This country is already in dire shape. There is no jobs to support people. The power grid is failing. Our road structures are failing, and the more people that you pop into this country, the more demand for water, electricity, roads, food you can only put so many people in a phone booth, and if you overpopulate this country, and then we have a Natural Disaster like we had in florida, people had better wake up. Host ok, lets let them address that. How big of an issue, how is that resonating in the the election . Charlie ok, that does not sound like an undecided voter, ok . [laughter] charlie they ought to have a Lie Detector Test when people call in and say whether they are trump, undecided, or clinton. Sure, there are a lot of issues facing the country, and immigrants one, the economy one, jobs are another. There are a whole bunch of issues out there. You are looking at some really crosspressured voters. I mean when you look at , republicans and conservatives and liberals and democrats come s, if you look at swing voters, they tend to think that Hillary Clinton is smart, knowledgeable, experienced, confident, and they dont like her and they dont trust her. They look at donald trump, they like the fact that he is not a politician, he says whatever is on his mind. They may not agree with him on a couple of issues, but they question whether he has the temperament, the judgment the , personality, and even the fundamental knowledge about governing that you need to have. So these voters are very very , crosspressured, and i think the information that is piling up that is more likely to take them to the negative side for trump is getting pretty overwhelming. Stuart it sounds like owen is a trump voter or will be a trump voter even if he has not decided , and i think immigration is certainly a big issue. Some have looked at the countrys history and heritage of immigration and welcoming people, and people like owen onnt out to the stresses economy, government services, and it really depends on how you see the issue. Host lets talk about polls for a minute. What polls do you like . What should voters look in look , to it determining whether a poll is trustworthy or not . Well, we talk about the about this all the time, and it can be a controversial subject. Look, we believe, as most kind of experience old hands do, that there are certain polls that are more accurate than others. But that it is always a safe thing to look at the whole range of surveys from a particular time period. There will be surveys outside the margin of error. Specifically that is the case. So the safest thing to do is to put eight, 10, 15 polls to see the general direction of the election, how it is moving, and the general contours of it. There are some polls getting a lot of attention these days that seem to be outliers consistently. The rasmussen polls are often outliers, the l. A. Timesusc polls have been outliers. Some of those i am more skeptical about. We look at all of them. We look at major media polls. Charlie the danger is for people to do one of two things either to cherry pick where they , look for the poll that tells them what they would most like to see happen, and that is the most accurate poll in their that tellsny poll them anything differently is obviously a logically flawed poll. The other thing is to assess over whatever the most recent poll is no matter who took it, no matter whether they have any track record at all, and no matter whether it is consistent with all the other data. What i would suggest, and i will do this here for the overhead camera, look at the averages. This one is realclearpolitics. Com, which is a conservativeleaning website, but they do a very good job of doing the averages for all the Major National polls and averages of the key battleground states. And if you touch the little button right here, you can change to the other set and then widen back out to the other group of battleground states. And that keeps you, but looking at the averages, it keeps you from cherry picking. It keeps you from obsessing over the most recent poll, and that is really the best way to do it. And then, polling, i will say, polling th