we point you to the direction of our website aljazerra.com. there you will find all of the day's top stories. everything you need know is all at al jazerra do th aljazerra.c. >> close? not even close to being close. in the u.s. senate, in the house of representatives last night a route. it's inside story. >> hello, i'm ray suarez. polling firms and universities public their final surveys before the polls open nationwide. some incumbents were in trouble. the republicans were breaking

late, but it looked like the democrats were going to hold on in a bunch of places and even pull a surprise or two. nope. close races weren't. one point turned out to be five. five points turned out to really be ten. when the smoke cleared the idea that governor's races might be a bright spot for the democrats, massachusetts, maryland, illinois, and kansas took care of that. we heard the voters roar. it's a little hard for figure out what it all meant. though president obama's game did not appear on midterm ballots, he was on the minds of those who went to vote. >> it's time for changes all the way around. >> i think as much as anything it was a vote against obama. >> the things that he wants to do are extremely liberal, and he blamed it on everyone else. >> to everyone who voted i want you to know that i he hear you. for those who chose not to process in the process

yesterday, i hear you, too. >> the president addressed his role as his party grappled with losing control of the senate. >> the american people sent a message. one that they have sent for many elections now. they expect us to focus on their ambitions and not ours. they want us to get the job done. >> republicans are hailing the election as a dry oomph people power. like republican senator elect cory gardner. >> tonight we shook up the senate. you shook up the senate. your message was heard from nevada to pennsylvania avenue in. >> more to the point republican senator lindsey graham from south carolina tweeted in a word blow out. wake up, mr. president, get engaged.

#gop. mitch mcconnell sounded very much empowered as new senate majority leader wednesday. >> the first thing i need to do is to get the senate back to normal. that means working more, i don't think we've had any votes on friday. >> but with all of the commemorations, seems to bring in one tune. >> it means getting the job done. >> very frustrating when you see the funding of the super tack. >> use's exit polling shows america's done with the way that washington has functioned or not functioned these past four years among republican and democratic voters. 65% feel the country is on the wrong track.

that's 12 points higher than the 2010 elections. only 20% trust washington to do what's right most of the time. 45% say that the economy is the most important issue. down six points from 2012 and down 18 points from 2010. the democratics of people who did come out to vote tuesday were virtually unchanged since 2010. 75% of voters this year were caucasian. 12% were african-american. 8% were hispanic. so if demographics have stayed the same, it seems that sentiment is the driving force on fuse tap 78% of voters say they disapprove of the way congress is handling its job. 75% say they disapprove of how president obama is handling his job. voter bethany of arlington, virginia, is one of the 78% against congress. >> there is a lot of ingrained attitudes.

it's definitely disengaging. everything that i read is negative, negative, negative. more cooperation. when you get the extremes out of the parties, both sides, really, it should help. maybe it's a far flung wish. >> we're doing a postmortem of last night. was greg orman going to caucus with the republicans or the democrats. who cares. he was crushed 11 points. in a country where most voters support image wage and reducing the human contribution to climb change, a thumping victory was delivered to a party that opposes many if not all of those things. i'll try to figure out what it

all means. with steve, chairman of the hen water orepublican party in texas. and simon jackman, a professor of political science at stanford university. welcome all to the program. steve, being the republican chairman in texas gives you the first word. how do you explain what happened yesterday. >> in one word it's obama. he made a mistake saying even though he was not on the ballot his policies would be. i think he was the primary reason why we won. >> this states like yours would it have made any difference had he not injected himself into the race? >> i think we still would have won, but it helped us with the margin of victory remembering

that we beat him two years ago by 16 percentage points. then he did something that i think was very foolish. he did robo calls in the state sporting the candidate. that was a very big mistake on their part. >> what do you think happened yesterday? >> well, what we expected to happen but a lot more so. >> it was always the case that republicans had on their side. geography on their side. more red states than blue sides. theft personalty on their side. they have president obama who is unpopular to run against, and secondly they did a very good job of selecting more acceptable candidates this time around.

they had a discontented electorate about the economy. and a frustrated electorater frustrated by the inability of washington to get anything done. you put all of that together and add to that the fact that republicans clearly improved their ground game. they've gotten better indicates to run, and they have a better message that boils down to two words "obama bad." you put that together, and that's what you get. >> we're talking about the many surveys have the approval rating of 10%, 12%, 14%. why are they so hard to run against. >> one thing that struck me about the exit polls is that the gap between the democratic party, the republican party, and president obama had almost disappeared among those who showed up to vote. while it's clear that congressional republicans are

not very popular, but they're not more unpopular, so given that level playing field, all the other factors i mentioned could come in to play. >> professor jackman you did not do all the polls, so i can't put you too much on the spot. but maybe, help us understand what was happening. in state after state after state one an- and two-point margins that we were told about going in, turned out to be blow outs. when you see that, as a professional what do you conclude happened? >> it's one of bigger misses for congressional polling in awhile. in 2012 the problem was if anything we underrest stated how well obama was going to do, that was largely attributed to the likely voter models that under lie a lot of our polling projections, under estimating the extent to which younger voters and minorities were going to show up in support of obama in 2012.

and in 2014 we overestimated the extent of the electorate a was going to show up. they didn't show up. despite what they may have been telling pollsters or what pollstering we're assuming they were going to do. this is a big part of the story. that constituenting that has been ther there in '08, '12, an. >> when you look at sam brownback and pat roberts, the sitting united states senator, were both said to be in terrible trouble even in all the final polls taken by a wide variety of companies. there was a pattern there a and it said that these guys were in trouble. they weren't anywhere near trouble. when you see that, was it the design of the pool? was it geography and where they were asking the questions? they were asking inside the state of kansas. what goes in to a result being

that far off? >> um, the kansas senate race in particular, once that stopped being a two-party contest, and you overload that on the fact that it was a midterm environment that become march harder for pollsters to deal with. given the number of forecast that were being made last night i'm not surprised you get in to an environment like that there were misses. the brutal fact is that it's a red state. it's a 62 romney got 62% the vote there in 2012. so i think you got to start from that presumption, and so it would be a very brave pollster going to predict anything roar than republican wins. >> steve, was there a lot of work being done on the ground to change at least from the republican point of view the profile we've been given of the midterm electorate?

get out more young people, but ones that vote republican, for instance. >> i think one of the things that was missed, one of the early guests mentioned the ground game, that is our national chairman deserves tremendous credit and decided to employ hundreds of full-time workers here in the country, normally considered a safe state and a very high percentage of our workers were full-time unengagement. here in texas there were five full-time staffers just working the engagement, staffers working asian, african and hispanic engagement. john cornyn actually won the latino vote, which is quite amazing when you consider two years ago we only 27% of the vote. we also caught up with data. some people think we actually have now exceeded the democrats.

would years ago we were using paper lock lists. we can up let the information in realtime. so i think we've closed if not exceeded the data gap. we have a wonderful field operation, and it showed this last election. one final point our computer models this week projected based on early voting that we turned out about a third of our hard-core base whereas the democrats turned out a quarter of their hardcore base. i think what was missed in the polls they're only polling the folks who may vote when you look at those who actually voted we have a fired up base who showed up whereas the others did not. >> we'll pause here. the american people have spoken. we'll continue to try to figure out what they had to say when we return with more "inside story" after this short break. stay with us.

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>> we're back with inside story. on "inside story." i'm ray suarez. in states with large numbers of inuninsured americans. where governors did not extend the medicaid under the affordable care act. republicans paid no price. they paid no price for last year's shut down. past though ballot questions and elect wage-raising opponent republicans. what does it all mean? you can't expect voters to be societily rigidly logical every time, but sometimes they seemed all over the map on some of these questions. >> president obama said unwisely but accurately that his policies were on the ballot, and this was a much more negative election than an affirmative election.

it was a negative judgment in . the american people do not think that this economy is working for them. even more disturbingly, they don't expect their children to do even as well as they have done. only 22% of the american people, according to the exit polls, expect their children to live better than they do. that is a flat contradiction o of the american dream. so this is very serious. i think the american people have put both political parties on notice that neither has taken the economic burdens of average families nearly seriously enough. the first party to figure out the agenda will pick up a lot of loose marbles lying around. >> are pollsters asking

questions about what people make of their own conditions? i know you have to ask questions that people have been asking all along to get useful data over time. but also one that is kind of get at how people are feeling now. >> certainly not what they're feeling but how they're living. oh can we ask questions about their lives. wrong track, right track, in academ academia and political polling we're interested in the affordable care act being such a hot issue. we're asking people about their health histories, their interaction with the insurance companies. we're doing a lot of polling about details rather than asking 30,000-foot questions about the

state of the macro-economy. >> middle class wages have been flat or declining since the mid 70's. right now the median wage has been on a decade long decline. long before president obama was president. is this a temporary leg up for republicans? are they eventually going to have to vote with voter anger over these long-term economic trends that one party or another is not the sole proprietor of? >> people just voted they're not better off. and you're correct, the average income is down $2,000 per family while he has been office, yet housing cries have been increasing. what we talk about is that a lot of higher paying jobs they can't match with people who are qualified. not only do we have a problem with wages, we have a problem with people getting the skills so they can have higher wages.

if you went back a few decades ago we had a lot of good middle class jobs for people who didn't have college educations, the assembly lines, and detroit and the auto workers were making very good wages with benefits. most of those jobs are now gone from the united states. at the same time we've millions of unfilled jobs because people don't have the kills. only 23% of those with a college degree are unemployed. in texas we have welders, tile fitters that are in their late 50's and 60's, and we don't have people to fill these skilled jobs. i think its incumbent on both parties to figure out how to raise people's wages. i think one simple solution in terms of complexity but hard to accomplish is to try to elevate the skills of the workforce to meet the modern society. so i think it's a broader question of just economics. it's a

societal problem and educational problem. i think both parties can agree that our education system is broken, and we need to get together and fix it, both parties together. >> before we go to a break. quick replay? >> i agree with that analysis, and i just add one point. three decades ago a lot of firms were in the business of training on the job for their workers. they walked away from that, and that means that government is going to have to step in with some funding for skills training through community colleges. i hope the two political parties can get together on a program to do that. >> well, by putting it in community colleges firm after firm is basically saying we want government to pick up part of the tab for training for our workers. >> that means more government. >> which is something that voters keep saying they don't want. >> you got it. >> we'll be back with more "inside story" after a short break.

the new republican majorities that will come to the senate and house in january consists of politicians who talked out very clear territory against pollution, against attempts to rewrite immigration law. against the frank dodd wall street reform act. do they really mean it? we'll find out. stay with us. >> on the next "talk to al jazeera", legendary tv host dick cavett. >> steve jobs said, "how does it feel to be dick cavett"? about the only question that's ever floored me, you know? >> "talk to al jazeera". saturday. 5:00 eastern. only on al jazeera america.

>> you're watching inside story a.m. if last night's election is not solely symbolic language, if there is really a difference about the parties.

professor, when people say these are the things i'm for, does it necessarily follow that they vote for candidates who are also for those things? >> not at all: they'll vote the way they always vote. they'll answer that question because we're asking them to answer that question. the degree that just cuts through a lot of that. can't be understated. most people are rested on democrats, rested on republicans. that is perhaps the biggest thing you've got to report when passing survey data. >> they don't seem conflicted. are they ill -informed? help me understand what's going on there when they vote to raise the minimum wage in that state

an abandon . >> i think that help create some of the daylight that we saw on that particular interesting--those two questions that were on the docket, and quite a lot of states. >> steve, everybody was talking about compromise today. but when you look at some of the issues that face the necessary congress i'm not sure, some of them are buy near values. you keep the affordable care act or you don't. you pass the excel pipeline or you don't. you can't have build it or build it half as large or anything. you build it or you don't build it. are republicans willing to be under pressure to follow through on some of these things that may not be as popular as they polled? >> well, they're still going to

be gridlock on areas where there is a white ideological gulf. as republicans we have to show that we can governor. there are things such as repairing roads and bridges that is in the west interest of our country that i think republicans can get together with democrats on. if not, we'll be thrown out of office in two years. >> they promised no government shutdown earlier in the year. can you take that to the bank? >> yes, he'll be leader the senate, but i don't expect a government shutdown. i expect a lot more to get passed because of the house and the senate. but many of those provisions will be vetoed. >> already, senator ted cruz is signaling that they may not go along with the majority leader in the united states senate.

are there internal struggles in the republican party that are just as threatening to getting things done as the struggles between republicans and democrats? >> of course there are, and we've already seen that play out in the house of representatives for a number of years when speaker john boehner had such a hard time corralling all of the frogs into the same wheel barrel. having side that. my money is on mitch mcconnell. he has spent his entire life preparing for and seeking the job he's about to perform. he is a very, very skilled leader. he's tough. i think that he will be able to persuade potential defectors to go along for the most part, and to marginalize those who refuse to do so. and i say that because i think he is really serious, yes, about confronting the president where

there are disagreements, but getting things done, getting things to the president's desk that the president can sign in areas such as taxes and trade, both of which he mentioned explicitly in his press conference, and said that he discussed with the president already. so i'm not without hope that some important things will actually make their way in to law. >> bill, good to see you. professor, jackman, steve ministeri. thank you for joining us. >> thank you for having us. >> this brings us to the end of this edition of inside story. thank you for being with us. the program may be over but the conversation continues. we want to hear what you think about the issues raised on this or any day's programs. log on to facebook page. send us your thoughts. or you can follow me, reach me directly at ray suarez news. see you for the next inside story.

in washington, i'm ray suarez. >> on "america tonight": the day after. stunned democrats face the harsh reality of a mid term blowout. what's behind the big losses? who didn't show up to vote? and how to explain the disconnect between what voters believe in and who they chose to vote for. >> the disbelief that there are so many uninformed voters out there. >> were you informed, did you check the facts? >> our follow-up to america votes 2014, the battles for kansas and the nation and whether this will bring a break