Gwen against good news which warranted a president ial hug. I feel fortunate and blessed to be standing here today. Gwen and we remember Washington Post editor ben bradlee. Covering the week, john harwood, chief washington correspondent of cnbc. Dan balz, chief correspondent for the Washington Post. Jeanne cummings, Deputy Managing Editor for bloomberg politics. And alexis simendinger, White House Correspondent for real clear politics. Awardwinning reporting and analysis, covering history as it happens, live from our nations capital, this is Washington Week with gwen ifill. Corporate funding for Washington Week is provided by how much money do you have in your pocket right now . I have 40. 21. Could something that small make an impact on something as big as your retirement . I dont think so. Well, if you start putting that money toward your retirement every week, and let it grow over time, over 20, 30 years, that retirement challenge might not seem so big after all. The future of surgery is within sight. Our research is studying how real time multimodality imaging during surgery can help precision and outcomes. Brigham and womens hospital. It all starts here. Funding for washington eek is also provided by the annenberg foundation, the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to pbs stations from viewers like you. Thank you. Once again live from washington, moderator gwen ifill. Gwen good evening. Pick a state. Any state. And you might find a different answer to every question you have about what will happen in the midterm elections now only 11 days away. Tonight, for our friday focus, we decided to drill down a bit into the attitudes that are driving this years election. That will either push voters to the polls or keep them at home. Contributing correspondent john harwood is here to give us a sense of the perfect storm of crosscurrents that could decide a critical election year. Starting with how voters see the economy. You know, gwen, the economy is the ultimate fundamental. People talk about fundamental conditions. Some people thought for a while it was going to be health care this year, that the democrats would make that the pinch pin of the election and thats faded and weve gotten back to the economy. And its interesting, if you look at conditions, theyre a little bit better than the sour public mood that were living through, which seemed to suggest. Since barack obama started his second term, the Unemployment Rate in this country is down 25 . That is 2 off of 7. 9 rate when he took office. Dow jones average is up more than 20 . So you think people would be in a good mood. But theyre not. Gwen no. They are so not. But what is interesting to me, though, is that voters seem to be also asking for compromise. That what do they want from their lawmakers . Theyre saying they want compromise. They want confrontation, how does it sort itself out . Well, youve got a situation where in 2010, when we had the tea party revolution, you had republicans and democrats really face off with a significant majority saying no, my side needs to stick to their guns. Now you have seen a shift from majority wanting people to stick to their positions to a majority saying 50 saying no, its time to compromise and get things done. We saw that also on our nbc wall street journal poll as the top issue. Tied with jobs was compromise. But when you drill down on those numbers, you what see is a huge polarization by party. Republicans, a marmingt of them dont want to compromise. Independents and democrats do. Thats why paradoxically voters who want compromise but also are discontented and want change may end up getting the party that doesnt want to compromise. Gwen and i want to follow up on that. Everybody else can jump in but one more thing you found looking through these polls. Which is motivation. Who is motivated to show up at the polls and how much will that influence what happens . Well, that is a very big question surrounding the election. First of all, the greatest enthusiasm is with the republicans. You see that in the numbers. Substantially more. Almost double the share of republicans say theyre highly interested in the election than democrats. And among tea party republicans, its way high. More than 70 say theyre interested. The question is going to be how much does that matter . I talked the other day to neil newhouse, pollster for mitt rosm and the romney and said dont overestimate the importance of enthusiasm because if the other side is skilled at turning out voters who arent enthusiastic those votes count as much as the people who are all fired up. Gwen how do candidates maneuver through these crosscurrents . Were going to talk in a moment about what governors are doing but lets talk about senators trying to get elected, reelected or hold on to their seats or survive. How these are all crosscurrents. That they could get tripped up in. What theyre trying to do is figure out what little data point in the Public Opinion environment they can latch on to and ride in the campaign. Take mark udall, the senator in colorado for example. You have the Unemployment Rate there, a full point below what the rate is nationally. And yet, is he talking about the economy . Not really. Hes talking about womenas issues. Hes talking about abortion and contraception because they think thats something that will motivate and drive out the democratic base. Hes behind right now. You mentioned obamacare and it seems as though it wasnt really working for the republicans. And yet they are closing by bringing the issue back. Where is the public on that issue and could it work . The it will work to motivate some of their base voters. And there are certain aspects of it that resonate. What you hear a lot in the states that ive been to this fall are oh, what about that promise if you like your doctor and you like your insurance plan, you can keep it . Everybody remembers that. Thats very easy to put your arms around. But when we asked in our nabs wall street journal poll, the top issues, health care was fifth. 8 said it was their top voting issue. And yet the advertising down the stretch on the republican side is still very much using obamacare. How do you explain that sort of contradiction . Well, weve got a base election. And so each side is trying to fire up their people. Obama himself is such a polarizing force and so unpopular and something that the republicans can use to try to drive their base and also drive disaffected independents. So sbome care contains the word obama. And useful for that reason. Thanks for clearing that up. First of all. The core point there. Gwen so while we in washington are obsessing about what the midterm elections will do to the balance of power in the u. S. Senate, something equally as dramatic has been playing out in gubernatorial races around the country. And the outcome of contests from tallahassee to topeka may have even more to do with your life. Dans been out on the road and here to explain why. How many competitive races are we talking about, dan . There are 36 states with gubernatorial races. And you could say about half, actually, are somewhat competitive. And charlie cooks Cook Political Report at this point puts 11 of those races as pure tossups and another republican held seat in jeopardy and leaning democratic. The most interesting thing, though, gwen, is the number of incumbent republican and democratic governors who are in trouble. Normally what we see is its open seats where you have the greatest competition. But there are probably seven or eight republican incumbents who are in really tough races. And three democrats who are in really tough races. Gwen you were in colorado with John Hicken Looper one of the top democrats. I was. I was there earlier in the week. Governor hickenlooper won fairly easily four years ago and had weak opposition and won without any great trouble. He came in with a kind of a quirky personality that had worked for him very well in denver when he was the mayor. He was kind of a probusiness centrist. Not particularly partisan. Today, he is in trouble. In part because that style of leadership is now seen as ineffective or weak or wishywashy. Gwen playing against bob beaupre the republican. Bob beaupre ran for governor in 2006 and loss badly and a former member of the house and come back and running a much better race. Hickenlooper and he are in almost a dead heat at this point. I think that the democrats in colorado that i talked to believe that hickenlooper will be able to pull it out. But the republicans still think they have a shot there. Dan, one thing thats interesting is that as john pointed out in the case of the president , many of these governors have seen their economies improve. And yet theyre still in a lot of trouble. So whats driving . Whats driving the different races . Jeanne, different in almost every state. The economy is an aspect of it. But take a state like wisconsin. The economy is an issue there. Governor walker, who won in 2010 s. Running against a businesswoman, democrat mary burke. They have clashed a lot about whether he had fulfilled the promises on the economy that he made when he ran. But the real issue is scott walker and what he did when he first came into office when he blew up the state over collective bargaining rights for public employees. He survived the recall in 2012. But republicans nationally are quite worried about whether hell survive. And theres real stakes for him in that race. Because he wants to run for president in 2016. Hes got to get through the next 11 days before he can do that. Gwen a leading democrat in wisconsin told me recently that a lot of democrats didnt know who she was and knew she was not scott walker. Yes. Dan, real quickly i want to ask you about governor hickenlooper and you pointed out that he prides himself not responding in kind to attack ads. And yet hes being attacked for being sort of weak and maybe wishywashy and how will that work out for him . He predicted this will accrue to his benefit. I have talked to him a couple of times about this most recently when i was out there. I got him on the phone. And he said i said, do you have any regret about this . He said, i do not. He said, negative ads are going to kill democracy. Now, we should stipulate that his nt stopped any of allies running ads against beaupre but he hasnt run any of his own. Do you regret that . No, that may be one of the reasons i will win and so much negativity and this allows me to stand part. Pat roberts, the senator in kansas is coming back in that race. Is Sam Brownback coming back, the governor . Perhaps not enough. I was there for a day and a half. If you look at that race, this is a conservative governor in a conservative state who may end up proving the limits of how much you can go. I think hes in genuine trouble. I talked to some National Republicans who say that the problem on the one hand his path is simple. He just needs to get republican votes. Because its an overwhelmingly republican state but at this point hes not doing that. And theyre not sure given everything thats happened up to now that hes going to be able to get enough republican votes to survive. What about florida . Go ahead. I love florida. Where theyre bound to elect someone that the majority of the people dont like. They both had higher unfavorables. As they say its the risk we take in democracy. You have the governor, rick scott, who is a republican, anything but a politician. Not a natural politician. You have charlie crist, the former republican governor turned democrat who is if anything, a pure political animal. And both of them have managed to turn off the state. Theyve spent you would know better than i exactly how much theyre going to spend. Gazillion. Gazillion is about it. And nobody particularly likes him. They have had a series of debates, one weird debate where the governor wouldnt come out. They had another nasty debate last week. This is going to go down to the wire and you can flip a coin at this point. I kicked your fan while you were talking. I didnt mean to do that. Gwen theres a fan im leaving the stage. Gwen another way to keep track of where the campaign has been and where its going and i hate to say it, follow the money. The center for responsive politics reports that da that 4 billion is being spent on these congressional elections. The most ever, including in the 2012 president ial year. Its a sign that although voters may just be waking up to all this, invested activists on all sides have been spending freely for quite a while. So where is the money coming from and where is it going, jeanne . Much of the phenomenon this year is twofold. Its you basically we are 400 million higher than 2010. Thats 3. 6 billion in the last one. 4 billion this year. Two things hard at work here. The primaries. The republican primaries were very, very expensive. Over 100 million was spent out there by candidates, committees, superpacs to just settle the intraparty fight, the civil war among the republicans. A prime example of that is Mitch Mcconnell in florida. Hes gwen in kentucky. In kentucky. He spent 21 million getting himself elected six years ago. Hes going to spend over 40 million getting himself reelected or defeated this cycle. And much of that is because he had to finance or his allies did, two campaigns. Two full blooded campaigns. Gwen and isnt there a lot of money we dont even know there . Yes. Gwen thats just the money were talking about. The dark money. There is dark money. Now, the dark money is not as big in this midterm as it was in the president ial. Theres still plenty of it out there. Gwen explain what it is for people. Sure. We see groups like karl roves american crossroads has a superpack superpac that reveals how much money and where they get it from and all of their spending. And then they have another arm that is an educational arm. Voter educational arm. And that is classified sort of as a charity. And they dont have to release their donors. We dont know how much money is in there. We do learn how much they spend. We dont know how much they raise or from whom. So there is some dark money out there. But what weve also seen this cycle is once again, more of the billionaires stepping into the political environment. And playing. You know, and many of them are playing on issues. But a few weeks ago, we saw alarms being set, turned on by many republicans. Because the superpacs that republicans had always dominated were actually being outspent. And in part thats because you look at the biggest billionaires in the game, the top three, are democrats. Led by tom stire who has legend to spend 50 million of his own and well on the way. Hes already spent 42 million. Jeanne, one of the things that we always are trying to figure out is which party is doing better in the fundraising and how they spend it. Are they at parity . How would we theyre way over parity. Theres enough money. Everybodys got enough money. I mean, theres so much gwen just where theyre going to spend it. And nare and is it all ads and is it all no. Theyre spending a lot of money on perfecting the way of communicating with people. So some of it some of them are starting to move into social media. A lot deeper. So its not just tv ads. Frankly, the tv stations are running out of space. There is a station in iowa that added a 4 00 p. M. Newscast just so they could suck up more money. Jeanne, bottom line question do you when we wake up the day after the election, if we have a result, say in the senate, do you think that that result will have been determined by money . Or do we know that both sides have more than enough to get their messages out and it really is not the critical factor . I think it will be about money. But not message. Its where they where they invest it. And one of the big things were watching Election Night is the Democratic Senatorial Committee put an unprecedented amount of money into the ground game and thats where they either win or lose. And that investment, if you think about money, its not tv ads but whether that was a wise investment. Gwen whether they were able to energize their base efficiently. And bring them out. Gwen Americans Still have questions about the spread of the ebola virus. But one thing seems certain those at risk are three west african countries and those who come in close contact with those most sick usually Health Care Workers. Two more infected Health Care Workers and a freelance cameraman in the u. S. Have been declared ebola free. While another has been found to have the disease in new york. The president has appointed a coordinator for ebola and has met with nurse nina pham who was released from the National Institutes of helt. But even reporters still had questions, among them, was that face, alexis, what is all this skepticism about . There was overwrought questioning about whether the president would feel free to bowl in new york or whether he was really safe in giving a big bear hug to this very petite nurse from dallas. Nina pham. And what we saw was a lot of optics and the president s desire was to be very reassuring, to show that this is a very hard disease or virus to contract. And in this particular case, nina pham is ebola free. And in fact is going home to dallas. So we saw that in new york as well. Theres a new case, dr. Craig spencer as we know, who is now at bellview hospital. E mayor of new york, bill di blasio was seen riding on the subway because this particular doctor whos come back from west africa and guinea and has the virus. Gwen does this government mean that just saying you cant catch it and you are at low risk is not working so theyre demonstrating through sending out doctor fauci wearing a lab coat. Absolutely. Gwen and appointing an ebola coordinator that its safe . I think your point is really a good one. And i would have said yes. But now theres another wrinkle. And that is by tonight, the governor of new york and the governor of new jersey, a democrat and republican, sat down together and initiated their own statebased quarantine protocol for Health Care Workers coming back from hese three ebola aflicked afflicted countries through new york and new jersey. This is hours after trying to tamp down the concern about ebola spreading in their states or in new york city. And they decided to ignore the c. D. C. Protocol and say we can do our own thing. And we can quarantine these Health Care Workers for 21 days. The federal government, president obama and his new coordinator, ron clain, are juggling another ju