out with a beautiful baby and a healthy wife. i went to my second ob-gyn appointment hoping to look at the ultrasound screen and see a healthy pregnancy and instead i saw a pregnancy without a skull and a brain. so that was a watershed moment for me. and realizing that i was diagnosed with a pregnancy with a fatal anomaly. i was going to have to flee my state to get care. >> last month, legal scholars, journalists and activists gathered to review the recent supreme court term. discussions including rulings that had impacted emergency abortion care, immunity for former president trump, voting rights and administrative agencies. from georgetown university law center, watch tonight starting at 9:00 p.m. eastern on c-span,

on our free mobile video app, c-span now, or online at c-span.org. host: welcome back to "washington journal," we are joined now by kyle kondik, the managing editor of "sabato's crystal ball." welcome to the program. your latest analysis says that in the few weeks since vice president harris became the democratic nominee, the electoral map has been reset. what do you mean by that? guest: i think that trump has taken an advantage in the race against joe biden in the first debate. the numbers didn't change a ton but you have to remember that biden scheduled the debate to improve that position and his position got worse. we and others had made trump into a bit of a favorite prior to biden getting out and harris coming in. harris has stabilized things and

sort of refocused the attention of the race on six or seven key swing states that were developed -- decided by three points or less in 2000 20. michigan, pennsylvania, wisconsin, georgia, nevada, arizona. so you know, prior to harris getting in we were talking about from winning new hampshire or minnesota but the map is now focused on those six or seven key strict -- key states now, a top up -- a tossup election like we have become accustomed to. host: let's talk about one of those states. georgia was leaning republican and now it's a tossup. why the change? guest: basically the harris polling in georgia, trump is still probably marginally ahead in that state but her polling in that state has been much better. one of the weaknesses for biden in polls that i don't think were going to manifest on election day was that trump was making significant inroads with black

voters and georgia has a significant black voter population. that might've been a part of the reason his numbers were so weak in that state but harris seems to be shoring that up a little bit. again, so georgia kind of moves back into the leading role that it had in the 2020 election. host: so, how do you make the ratings? what factors do you consider? guest: ultimately there are lots of different models for projections out there where the polls change and they change the ratings. we treated more qualitatively, taking the polls into account, candidate decisions, our own sense of things, all sorts of stuff and when we feel it's time to move the rating, we move the rating and that's what we decided to do last week. host: a couple of other changes for minnesota and new hampshire. guest: you could argue that with walz as the running mate it helped in minnesota.

the jury is out as to whether running mates actually matter in terms of having a home state of effect. but minnesota and new hampshire there were polls showing that things were really close and look, if trump were to win the national popular vote, biden was the winner of it by 4.5 in 2020. let's say that trump was the winner in 2002. that would be a five or six point shift in 2020 and suddenly the states that he was the winner of buy 6, 7, 8 points, those states would be like tossup's but with harris coming in and stabilizing things, you would expect minnesota and new hampshire to be like it was in 2020 and not being credible targets. host: the harris campaign is hoping that walz will be influential in states like wisconsin and michigan. any evidence of that? what do you think? host: i don't really think so.

j.d. vance is also from the midwest and there was an argument that he might have a regional effect, but to the extent that vice presidents matter electorally, you can sometimes argue that maybe they are worth a point or two in their home state. it's never been demonstrated that vice presidential candidates are sort of worth more in a regional setting. so, maybe walz or vance is a good messenger or maybe not for certain parts of the country but i don't expect them to change the calculus much. host: have you seen a change? guest: i have not. walz was just announced a week ago and there's very little out there in terms of how people perceive him. a couple of polls show that his favorability is broadly a little more positive than negative. vance has been around for like a month now. his favorability is much like trump's, net negative, minus nine or 10. we will see what happens but i think it is too early to tell. host: if you would like to join

our conversation with kyle kondik, call us. lines are by party. republicans, (202) 748-8001. democrats, (202) 748-8000. independents, (202) 748-8002. this is what you said in "sabato's crystal ball," "if harris is improvement -- an improvement in the midwest, she seems to have opened up the sunbelt." explained what you mean, what other states? guest: we are talking north carolina, georgia, one of the things in the polling is that biden was consistently lagging in those states and it was rare to see him leading, down by a point or two. the numbers we have seen since harris came in have shown that the states might be more like ties or even harris slightly ahead depending on the polls you are looking at. biden i think was very much dependent on michigan, pennsylvania, wisconsin nebraska

. that would get him to exactly 270 if he held on to what he had into doesn't 20 but lost nevada, arizona, and georgia while it was happening. harris seems more competitive in those places than biden was very look at, democratic presidential candidates in recent vintage, even in the years they have lost , have carried states like wisconsin, pennsylvania, michigan. i would be surprised if she lost any of those states if she won the presidency. they seem to be more credible options now in terms of improving as much of the map as possible harris to win the election. we are still talking about the competitive states exclusively being ones carried in 2020. north carolina is the one possible exception. that was the closest win for trump by a little more than a point and a half. host: talking about the senate

races, there are some very close ones. montana, what's going on there? guest: trump was just out there hoping to shore up tim sheehy. jon tester is going for his fourth term in the senate. he has 13 pretty competitive elections in 2006, 2012, and 2018. that's the story with the map overall, the senate is cyclical. go back to six years each time and democrats have had a number of good elections on that map. the last time they had a bad one was 1994, the classic republican wave year when republicans took the house and the senate. it's been a long time. democrats were playing almost exclusively defense. west virginia, the state of joe manchin, already on, trump is going to carry that state probably where there is not as much ticket splitting is there used to be. you can go down the line, what are the most competitive races?

montana, ohio, michigan, nevada, pennsylvania, wisconsin. democrats would have to win all of them just to try to salvage a tie in the senate. maybe democrats could credibly compete for texas or florida, current republican held seats, but it's all democratic events. so there are avenues for republicans to win the senate but one positive thing i will say for democrats in the senate right now is that setting west virginia aside, they haven't really wrapped up any of these other races and there has been very limited polling in montana. there was one from emerson college last week that had she he up two over tester. democrats leading in the other races, though it doesn't mean that they are over or anything. so you know, it's not over but the republicans have so many avenues where the map just looks good for them. host: has the shakeup on the

democratic ticket change the calculus at all? guest: well, the polling would say no because democratic senate candidates generally do a lot better than biden was doing. one thing we might see is that if harris improves, she might start catching up to those candidates and ultimately in this era you would expect with senate and presidential results to be fairly similar, though there will be some limited number of people splitting their tickets. it's not like it was a generation or two ago where we would talk about 20 or 30 point differences. you don't really see that like you used to. i'm of the belief that if the presidential campaign sets the tone for everything else, a rising tide lifts all ships. if harris is doing better than biden, by definition it has to be good for democrats in the senate and house races. just again, if you are not expecting a ton of ticket

splitting, if harris is just doing better, it raises the floor for the down ballot races. look, we are -- republicans should probably win the senate. it's not guaranteed or anything. the presidential race is really close and i think the house is, too. host: what's going on in the house? guest: a relatively small universe of competitive races. the vast majority of those seats are safe they republican or democratic. there are a lot of different reasons for that. you know, the overall playing field might be bigger than those 19 tossup's. we are probably talking about three dozen races at most that are really going to get a lot of attention and again it's probably going to be less than that. some of the battleground seats are interspersed around the swing states with a couple of open seats in michigan that are close to competitive that democrats are defending. some in pennsylvania and arizona.

a lot of the other key races are in nonpresidential swing states. california, seats that biden carried and have republican representation in congress. same with new york state. it's not going to be total overlap between battlegrounds and house battlegrounds. republicans are slightly ahead, 211 seats safe likely leaning republican. those 19 tossup's, the house will probably go the same way as the presidential given the ties, but you could see a world where trump wins the presidency and democrats get 220 seats in the house or something. it's that closely contested that you might see a split outcome. if the presidency's flipped to the republicans with two changes in opposite directions, there is no historical precedent for that

in the current two-party history of the united states going back to the dawn of the republicans right before the civil war. host: really? guest: having it flip in different directions, you know, the presidency going from democrat or republican, the house going from republican to democratic. that's part of the reason i kind of don't think it will happen, there's no historic precedent. guest: all right, let's talk to john in virginia. caller: what do you think about the young people? are they pumped out? seems to me there are so many young people coming up right now to vote, to go with it right now, but i want to note that other people were running in the united states, picking up still behind. guest: the youth vote gets a lot of attention, even the really

older voters are sort of a bigger part of the electorate and are a more reliable part of the electorate. one of the sort of things going on in the polls, and still is to some degree, biden was the winner of the 18 to 25 vote. there will polls showing trump at leading there, which i never believed. but there was, there was weakness provide an amongst young people. that seems to have fixed itself to some extent but harris thing on board. it's also fair to say that if you dig the democratic crosstabs on these polls, they will differ widely around the marginal subgroups. but you could find polls where harris is doing better than biden or you could find polls where she's doing much worse. sometimes it's probably just more helpful to not worry so much about what the subgroups say, but look more at the top line number and what the entire

electorate is saying about a given race. even back in 2020, biden was clearly not the choice of the youngest voters in the democratic primary, that was bernie sanders. even on super tuesday when he was wrapping up the nomination, he had a lot of weakness with young voters. harris, i think, just has to be a better candidate, you could hardly find a democrat weaker in that demographic. but you know, there is a thought out there that particularly young men are maybe a bit harder to get for democrats than in the past, younger women being very democratic. that is just something to watch going forward. i do think that the democratic young boater problem is correcting itself to some degree. host: in we are taking your call? your calls for jeffrey bloodworth -- calls for kyle kondik for the next 25 minutes

or so. jimbo, baksfld, california, asking you this by text, can you remember a presidential election changing so quickly? if the election were today, do you think that harris would win the electoral college vote? guest: i don't have a great feel for who is favored. i know that's a bold position for an election handicapper, but i do -- i kind of want to see more with harris. if i were on the democratic side, something i would struggle is -- with his biden was a decent candidate for the key northern battlegrounds and was able to get that extra little percent or two to get him over the top, particularly in kind of white working-class areas. i'm wondering if harris can ultimately do that. but you know there were polls over the weekend from "the new

york times" that had harris doing pretty well in the industrial north, winning in those three key states. tossup. not a bold thing to say, but it's where i'm at right now. and then i'm blanking on the first part of the question. host: has a presidential election candidate ever change so much? guest: you haven't seen a candidate wipe out like this since johnson retired in 68 and that was in the midst of the primary season. you've got to remember that the primaries didn't even matter that much back then. humphrey becoming the nominee, he didn't even compete in the primaries, got 1% or 2% of the vote, but had all the impacted support in chicago. so, it was not a moderate convention. also it was april when johnson got out. this was much later than the actual calendars here. i wouldn't call myself an expert

on this election or anything, but in 1992, ross perot was running pretty rough, looked like he was going to drop out and then came back in. strange situation, i'm thinking of that now, that might be a good example of a very topsy-turvy kind of election. you had a real credible third-party candidate, though he didn't wind up winning any electoral votes, but he did get 20% of the vote. host: senate race in arizona, kyrsten sinema retiring. what's happening there? host: kari lake was -- guest: kari lake nationally has become a star but has weaknesses at home. then you have room in gallego, a left-wing member of the u.s. house, democratic nominee, he's been able to run a pretty good race. the polling that we have suggests that he is doing better

in the senate race than a harris is doing in the presidential contest. that could be a state where you could see him do better than harris. now back in 2000 20 when mark kelly first got elected to the senate, he was routinely doing better than biden in polls but at the end of the day he was only a winner by a couple of points, biden was the winner of the state by a few tenths of a point, so not a huge difference but you could imagine a world where maybe he squeaks it out by a point or two or harris wins by a point or two. talking about republican targets, that's one of them, though i think in their heart of hearts they wish they had a different candidate there. host: brad, international falls, republican, good morning. caller: if he believes the most unpopular vice president in history of the united states became america's sweetheart in two weeks, how in the world does

he think that she is going to get elected? guest: it's interesting, her popularity was quite poor when she was not, you know, not leading the ticket. her favorability and approval rating was like, you know, her un-favorability was like 15 or 16 points higher than her approval and favorability. disapproval and on favorability was over 50%, the numbers very much mirroring biden. what we have seen since she entered the race is that when the role of a person changes, perceptions can change quite quickly. another person, an example, donald trump. in 2000 15 when he first got into the presidential race, there were polls that because of course he wasn't a political figure but he was a national figure and his favorability, one

hole i was looking at yesterday, abc news had his favorability at like 15% nationally. his unfavorable ability was at 70%. within a month of him becoming the presidential nominee, his favorability was in the 30's and his on favorability was still 60. still poor, those numbers were poor throughout the campaign, didn't prevent him from winning. but him switching from being a political gadfly to being an actual candidate changed numbers quite a lot and it goes to show for the future that if we are looking at hypothetical candidates who turn into real candidates, the numbers can change quite quickly and that is what you seems harris. another important note on the favorability question is that harris, her favorability is like minus four, minus five, not that bad really for a modern candidate. trump's is better now, to. it's like minus eight, where it

had generally been like -12, -13, particularly before the rnc and the assassination attempt. that has reduced the number of double haters, people with an unfavorable view of both candidates. that was a huge feature of the 2016 race where a huge percentage of the electorate had a negative view on both candidates, and it is still a feature of this race but it is arguably smaller. guest: james is next in collins, mississippi. caller: to your guest, i want to ask a simple question. please let me know when you are going to cut me off, because who i feel -- hello? host: go ahead. caller: i feel that younger people are not being looked at,

18 to 30 years old, and women are not been predicted to have a push. but i believe that this, this race would not be close. i don't know why the media is coming on to say all of this stuff about the election calling it a close race. it's not going to be close. believe me, it's not going to be close. this is just the beginning of something. but why when they start talking about all of these different aspects of who is going to win and lose, why do you all -- what would it take for people who live and shop in those family housing urban development communities in this country, a lot of these people, they live in these complexes like where we see things going on with a different point of view. the thing i want to ask you, why do you all, why do you keep disrespecting these young people and women?

this is a woman and young people race today. not all of this stuff you all talking about. whoever get the most young people, whoever get the most women, that's going to decide the election. it's not going to be close. can you explain that to me? guest: as i mentioned earlier, young people don't turn out the way older folks do. maybe someday we will have an election, maybe itl where yount spikes. relatively speaking youth voter turnout was decent in 2020, although i guess turnout was just very high in 2020. and of course there is a generally speaking younger voters are more left-leaning, more democratic. older voters generally speaking a bit more conservative and republican leaning. some polling indicates that when biden was in the race he was leading with senior citizens.

that was another number i found difficult to believe given how we have seen those voters behave in recent elections. as for the criticism about saying the race is going to be close, you know, there were times in 2016 and 2020 where it looked like the democrats were going to win by a big margin. you know, what ends up happening is we are in a very closely divided country and these races have a way of getting close again. even when biden was at his lowest point back in july, i didn't think that trump was any huge favorite, he could coalesce things eventually where his performance had become poor and you had that optimum ability around where harris had in the short-term. we haven't had a double-digit winner in the national popular vote since reagan in 84 and five

of the last six with 2008 had been pretty closed and competitive. we have had a couple of elections where the popular vote winners didn't win the electoral college. one of these days maybe it is this one but i don't think the data really points to that. i think that if you base those poles on the numbers we have now and the recent history, it's likely we would expect a close race. host: this is from x, ohio has a gerrymandering board on the ballot. does this come into play? guest: ohio has a very convoluted redistricting system. basically the voters approved it, it was designed as a kind of bipartisan compromised and it hasn't worked. republicans controlling the state government were able to kind of win the battle, effectively, over the supreme court imposing massive map

overlay. the maps are not as good for republicans as they maybe could have been if there was no limiting redistricting power but that is what happened there. so there is this effort they are now led by marie o'connor, the longtime chief justice republican elected to the state supreme court, she has become a real critic of gerrymandering. so, there is a proposal to create a redistricting, nonpartisan redistricting commission in ohio similar to what's in michigan, for instance. that's going to be on the ballot in november and if it passes you would expect ohio to have more competitive congressional and state legislative maps, though you would expect republicans to win more seats than democrats, but given where ohio is right now they might not be as lopsided as they currently are. host: joanne is in ashburn, virginia. hi, joanne. caller: hi, i just wanted to

say, two callers ago, the young people, like, you know what, i called on the wrong line, to be honest. host: ok, just call us back on the right line, ok? we will take your call. donald, capitol heights, maryland, go ahead. caller: good morning, how you doing? host: good. caller: i'm calling to ask one simple question. i'm a vietnam veteran and i don't understand how we can allow a person who is a draft dodger to be in charge of our military. i think someone should say that donald trump is a draft dodger in should not be able to command our military. thank you for taking my call. guest: you know, the topic of military service has been prominent in the election lately , not necessarily for trump but i think that that is sort of what you