>> vice president biden in 2011 set in front of a chinese audience, your policy is bound one which i fully understand. i'm not second guessing the one child policy. that is a policy that is had barbaric consequences, which among other things, chang was seeking to protect chinese women against. so words are important. and it's important for our leaders to be consistent and strong on this issue. >> thirty seconds on this question. >> secretary clinton's statements was i think a fair distillation of the policy of every administration for the last 40 years. she was perhaps indiscreet in saying so, but that was, there

was nothing new in what she was saying. after all, richard nixon established relations with china, one of the most systematic and massive human rights violators of the 20 century. and we did so precisely to cooperate on strategic issues. we can press human rights issues and also work on strategic issues. as for the one child policy, vice president biden's, i'd -- governor romney, sometime go on china, which i would say 99% about the threats that china posed, it was unbalanced but the only specific area i remember on human rights he emphasized was the one child program, which struck me as a curious,

particular violation to single out among the many problems, perhaps reflecting a political agenda. >> you get my final question. a few days after our presidential election here in the united states, china will be transitioning to a new leadership. the new generation of leaders will guide china probably through the next decade. if given a second term to how does president obama see the opportunities in the transition? what measures with the president propose to take the new heads of state relationship? >> well, president obama reached out to hu jintao right after president obama was elected. and right after he took office. he's met with hu jintao more than any previous president had met with a counterpart. they have met something upwards of a dozen times. many phone calls. i'm sure that this pattern will

continue with the next chinese leadership. the chinese haven't done us a favor yet of telling us who will be in the new leadership. that will be announced on november 8. i think we're all confident we know that the general secretary of the congress party will be xi jinping. will have a pretty good idea of at least four members of the politburo standing committee, and perhaps other members. i think, the important thing here is that china needs to resume the path of aggressive reform in the economic and political area. i think xi jinping is a very, very smart man who understands what china needs to do. a real linkage between economic and political reform in china. these are not unrelated. again, going back to the road report -- world bank report i

mentioned, one of the key recommendations is about rule of wall of how important is to economic development in china. that is also historic the first step of most entries an issue. embarking on a path towards democracy. the question is whether xi jinping and the new standing committee will choose to take the aggressive steps that need to be taken on economic and political reform or whether they will take a model through process. because it's very dangerous and difficult. to challenge the system in china because they're so many stakeholders, what i would call a responsible stakeholders, at the local level, benefit from current arrangements that the leadership would have to be taking on. so, i think that taking on some elements of the economic reform program are much more likely, and the political reform area i

think though that ultimately the chinese will have to do both and we need to encourage them to do both. >> dr. frieden? >> there are a wide array of issues that the new chinese leader will have to address, and in particular, just mentioned the importance of economic reforms. and i think it is the case that many people in china come including people at the high levels of the chinese system recognize the current economic model, the one that china has been following for the last 20 or 30 years is not sustainable, that it emphasizes investment over domestic consumption, it emphasizes exports and that it has produced it is beginning to produce distortions in china's economy which may set it up for future crises, and that those could happen sooner rather than later. but the recognition of those problems and the solution of

them is an entirely different matter. and the reason why the solutions are so difficult is because the current political system is set up in a way that allows participants in it at various levels to profit from an economic model, which is producing over time and unbalanced economy. local officials can be paid off by contractors for contracts to build roads, apartment buildings and so. the expert or. land from farmers and drove to people who want to use for economic development. and get paid off along the way. and that points to a problem, which i think is one that's significant and needs to be kept in mind. and that is corruption in a chinese system is endemic, and as we realize as we saw, illustrated in the bushes like is, it penetrates to the highest level of the chinese government.

political reform is an entirely different question. it is not something at least not in the ways we would recognize it, it is on the table for discussion. in china. people talk about democracy, the importance of increasing avenues for people to express their views, but when you look closely at what they're proposing, it's democracy within the party, competition among small numbers for political office. it's not something that we would recognize as genuine political reform. i think we need to be hopeful and open but we also need to be realistic. i remember with hu jintao came into power, there were many people who believed that he would be the chinese gorbachev, and people wait and see, wait until he gets in, he's going to be a reformer. that really has not turned out to be the case, i hope. beginning to hear some of those same kinds of predictions about the new leadership. i hope they are true, but i

think we have to be skeptical and reserve judgment. >> an opportunity for rebuttal. >> just briefly. number one, i think if xi jinping does in fact undertake some of these difficult reforms decisions, we have a real stake in his success. and we should do whatever we can to encourage that. to say something about the state of human rights generally in china, just briefly. clearly, highly efficient, nothing that we would recognize as a democratic or does the tory system, but my first visit in china in 1981, and the difference between china in 1981 and today, not merely in terms of economic prosperity, but in terms of the options and i would

say freedoms that ordinary people have in their daily lives in terms of access to information, in terms of speech in certain categories, in terms of any job, in terms of getting to travel is light years away from the time that i first visited. so i think it tells us that progress is possible in china. we are going to need to be patient. it's going to have to be their decision, not our decision, how fast they move and how far they go. >> i agree with that. i think we have to hope for the best but also think we have to prepare for some other possibilities which are not so pretty and which may be difficult to deal with, and which might include a regime that is increasingly relying on the kinds of assertive or even aggressive nationalism we seem express in protest against japanese companies and japanese citizens in china, that is

increasingly militaristic and its attitudes and behaviors. i certainly hope they don't come to pass, but we have to hold open in our minds the possibility that history doesn't simply move in one direction and doesn't only move in the direction we would prefer. that to me in part is the last 20 or 30 years can you go back to the immediate post-cold war period, there were many people who predicted and expected rapid movement in china towards political -- the lesson of this i think last two decades has been thus far the chinese communist party has been resilient, it's been tough, it's been smart, it's been brutal, and it has managed to maintain its grip on power. i don't think that'll be able to do so indefinitely i wouldn't want to place bets on exactly when did they will come when it passes from the scene and will have to do with whatever emerges in china. we hope that it will be a reformer we have to be prepared

for the possibility that it may not be. >> thank you, gentlemen. we've come to the conclusion of the second set of questions. we will begin the third set of questions, which will be narrated by the 100 executive director, angie tang, who executed the questions from the audience as well as a live viewing audience via social media. >> again, i want to thank all of you, speakers, moderators or guiding us into this spirited and robust exchange. and we have an overwhelming amount of questions, and we have about 15 minutes to go through it all. so we've done our best to select questions that have not been previously asked and also to assure a diversity of topics. the first question comes from our online viewer, professor lee, from the university in shanghai. he is 12 hours ahead of us in

watching us right now. the topic is on energy security. while competition of energy would lead to distrust and rivalry, how would your candidate position china and the u.s. expanding their cooperation on global energy security? or both. >> it's very good to hear from our good friend, professor, and glad to hear that he is awake at this ungodly hour and listening to us. i'd like to think that this is an area of important potential cooperation, not an area that should lead to conflict. we need, as many sources of energy as we can find. the notion of futures ago that some were propounding that china by investing in this or that country was some awlaki of sources of oil represented a

misunderstanding of the nature of international energy markets. frankly the more the better. oil is fungible, and if there are additional chinese investments, let's say in sudan, that means that they buy less than saudi arabia. so there is come in terms of the chinese going policy to -- [inaudible] except when our investments of particular countries where it competence the ability to affect their behavior, such as iran. and i am pleased to say that in the last two years that china has not expanded its energy investments in iran. that's something we pressed them on, and they have behaved accordingly. this administration has developed a framework of cooperation, including things like building efficiency,

alternative sources of energy, electric car standards. conservation of energy is something that is in both our interests. there are of course some conflicting interests and the conflicting areas are in the technology area. it was going to have the technology of the future that will provide for future sources of oil. we have the edge in many of these areas. for instance, in the shale gas and shale oil area, and in many other areas, and it's an important source of american competitive strength that we maintain that edge. >> professor? >> yes, i agreed my professor. i think there are possibilities for cooperation or maybe not direct but parallel, if you like, the development of new sources of energy that just refer to.

the united states is in the midst of what may become a revolution in its ability to extract oil and natural gas. new technologies from sources close to home which would have economic and also strategic implications for us that would be very positive. i think the technologies that american companies are developing for those purposes are strategic significance, and we ought to seek to maintain our advantage in our lead. the ceilings of communication -- sea lanes are vital because much oil travels overseas and that's again one of the reasons why united states is such a strong interest in the peaceful resolution of disputes in the south china sea. the stability in regions that produce oil is also, in energy is also extremely important. and also the united states and china may have interests that at times diverge. china has at times been willing to enter into a merger

relationships with countries whose governments we and others were seeking to pressure because of their human rights policies. and i think this is of particular importance in the persian gulf. and again, it has to do with iran. nothing that i can think of would be worse to the stability and functioning of energy markets, at least in the near-term, and a war, particular war involving nuclear weapons in the persian gulf. and for that reason i would hope that china would be willing to do more than it has to join the rest of the international community in pressing iran to abandon its ambitions to acquire nuclear weapons. >> okay, second question. a few were from twitter. victor, seattle, washington, on the west coast, topic is political reform. how would obama or romney administration and courage political reform and strengthen civil society in china?

>> again, i think this is something that jeff and i both potential but it's not something the united states opposite can do direct but we can do it in direct and never will variety of different ways. one that i think is potentially very important, where we begun to make strides is encouraging chinese students who want to come and study in the united states. i now have students who come to princeton, used to be the case became primary to study science and engineering. now we have students come to study politics and economics, and that is i think all to the good, exposure to full range of ideas and perspectives ultimately will have a beneficial effect on china's future development. i mentioned earlier the importance of civil society groups in china, in many cases these will be private actors, nongovernmental organizations supported by private individuals

or foundations that are seeking to promote legal reform, protection of rights of women and so on. and again, the role of the government and that's is incorrect but it's something that we have an interest in come in in coaching and seeking to promote and again i mentioned the importance of communication and easing, or increasing the ability to these with which people within china can communicate with one another and also be exposed to the full array of information to the outside world. so there are things we can do. they are a mostly indirect. >> just briefly, what happens between governments on human rights and other issues is less less important than what happens between our societies and the exchanges on a civil society level have profoundly more greater impact in expanding

notions of freedom in china than does anything that the u.s. government says, although we still say it. air in a letter to students. and they're more diverse portfolio -- aaron alluded to students. i think journalism, a number of journalism schools and yes have programs of exchanges with china. icing dramatic changes in quality of chinese journalism and the last decade, still operating with tremendous constraints are just my quality point of view and even some of the newspapers, which i will not name, to stretch the envelope of censorship in china. law schools, the number of law schools in the united states would have relations with chinese counterparts, there's a scores of them. women's issues, i remember when secretary clinton went on her first trip to china. she had a forum with 16 women

from different areas of women's issues in china. it was blogged. it was a streamed, these were people who, people for instance, who would challenge the hiv aids policies in china. incredibly brave women, and secretary clinton provide a forum, a kind of come if you will, a cloak of protection for them to speak to a larger audience here these are the kinds of things i think we can do. >> third question from right here in the room, in the audience, from cctv. the topic is treated president obama and governor romney both said they want america to have a positive relationship with china, but beijing must play by the rules. how will they push china if they think china is not playing by the rules? how specifically, dr. bader?

>> how specifically -- >> will push china if china is not playing by the rules. >> well, you know, i was, my last act in government, my last time around, my next to last time around was to complete the negations with china's accession into the world trade organization. the world trade organization lays out in detail global rules. it was a 17 year negotiation with china, and it made extensive commitments. china needs to live off of those commitments, and the u.s. and other countries, particularly i would say in europe and japan, need to call china on violations and work together when it makes violations but it's sometimes difficult. countries are fearful of retaliation, and more specifically, companies are

fearful of retaliation. but the old ben franklin attitude, hang together and hang separately i is i think relevant here. if other countries deal that we're facing an unlevel playing field, together, we have a better chance of affecting chinese behavior. we also have authority under u.s. trade laws, and we will continue to the. some of the trans-alaska years have been positive. aaron alluded to the increase in the size of the trade deficit in recent years, but if you look at the percentage of increases in exports and imports, u.s. exports to china are increasing much more rapidly than u.s. imports from china. it depends on how you do the math. >> transport? >> yes, just picking up with that issue, the trade imbalance. it's also i think a point to look at the composition of our

trade, and there are some oddities in the balance of trade. the biggest american exports to china right now is waste and scrap. that is not an area which we as a highly advanced country would seem to have a comparative advantage, but the fact that that's what we're able to export most easily to china, i think, points to some problems in gaining full access to chinese markets for the middle range, if not the highest technologies. again, i think we both agree that the playing field as it currently exists is not level, that china is systematically doing things that put its own companies and entities at an advantage and disadvantage those other countries, including the united states. that it is taking advantage of and finding ways around some of the rules and procedures that

exist under the world trade organization. of course, we have to use that mechanism, but it doesn't deal with all issues. it's not clear whether it deals fully with the currency question. it may be difficult to use the btl mechanisms to address some of the things that the chinese government is doing through the so-called state-owned enterprises to give them an advantage and make a more difficult for outsiders, foreigners to compete for a share of the chinese market. i think the point that it would make again overall is too. one, we have to find ways to exert leverage. and two, we have to pursue an integrated strategy that deals with this full range of issues. and i guess since i think of it, i have a to point which agrees with jeff. to the extent it can be, a multilateral effort because i think we share important interest with other advanced industrial democracies indeed with china on these issues. >> our final and concluding question today will be from gary

wong of a nonprofit, ngo teach for china in china. sent to us by e-mail at the question is, addressed to both speakers, how does the u.s. prevent perception among the chinese government that the u.s. is pursuing a policy of containment against china? >> well, we can say it again and again. i don't think that that necessarily will have the desired effect, but again i think we can point to the history of american policy india with china. since the late 1960s and early 1970s, again, to reiterate a point i made earlier, no country has done more than the united states to try to welcome and integrate china into the international system. no country has done more to the purchase of chinese products an investment of american capital in china, to assist in the

development of china's economy. so if the trend or pursuing a policy of containment towards china, we would not be doing those things come and we continue to pursue those policies. however, if people in china, the chinese government, don't like some of the reactions that they see recently on the part of their neighbors come just mention a couple of them. the development by korea, longer range missiles, the development by japan with the united states, increasing cooperation between the united states in several countries around the south china sea, increased efforts on the part of the united states to strengthen its military position in the region. it needs to look in the mirror and ask what it is that china itself is doing that may be provoking some of those responses. it has not been all response the rest with china, but some does. >> dr. bader? >> a u.s. policy containment towards the soviet union, it's

hard to think of to policies that could be more unlike each other than the policy the u.s. has pursued towards china and the one we pursue towards the soviet union. i think aaron outlined very well what we've done over the last, last generation to encourage china's emergence, to encourage china's rise. we speak about it all the time, as aaron said, they may have difficulty believing it but we say and we mean it. and i've been in meetings with president obama, with other asian leaders, many of whom our chinese friends, would be disturbed to learn we're skeptical of chinese intentions. and president obama reiterates just a strong and private as he does in public that we welcome china's rise. so long as it conforms to certain standards. i think that in addition to the things that aaron mentioned tonight, i see nothing to

disagree with, very thoughtful description of why our policy is not containment but i think the chinese they want to take a look at our approach on issues like the south china sea. i mean, if we were seeking the policy of containment, we would be taking sides. we would be siding with the vietnamese. we were beside him with the philippines. we would be taking positions on specific claims. we're not doing that. retarget international principles, and if standing up for international principles is containment, well, i think that's something china needs to wrestle with, not us. >> now closing statements. and professor friedberg, after the coin toss, we'll go first speak let me can express my thanks to the organizers and also the moderators for their i thought very fair and interesting questions. and again, to all of you here in the room and around the world.

i don't know jeff, if we've done our job, if we were, if not on c-span but on a commercial network whether the ratings would be good, whether people have a little dial they do when they watch the presidential debates, our numbers are red light and green lines would be going up and down. so we make a bow, oklahoma get a phone call and why didn't you say xyz and why didn't you fight or? we've done the best we could. i'd like to go back in closing and reiterate some of the points that i made earlier. we have many preoccupations in the world. we have many problems and challenges. i believe that the growth of china, the rise of china in the long run is going to be the most important foreign policy challenge but also opportunity that this country will face in the 21st century. and we've been deflected by very so eventually focusing on that

adequately but that hasn't changed the way the world is going. as i said, we have to acknowledge that there are significant uncertainties about china's path. we hope that china will continue to grow more prosperous, that it will remain stable, that it will pursue cooperative policies with its neighbors, and that eventually it will undergo a process of evolution or transformation that will lead it towards greater political openness and greater freedom. but we don't know that that's what's going to happen. china may experience significant economic setbacks in the near term, or in the longer-term. in a vast increase of significant political instability, and it may behave in future more like it's behaved in the last several years than the way it behaved before. in other words, we may be in for. will have to deal with a china which is growing stronger and behaving more assertively perhaps that has been the case

in the past. but we have to keep our eye on our longer-term objectives, and i spelled this out earlier, the imports to the united states and world, peaceful and prosperous region. the place of the united states, the role of the united states has played in maintaining stability and peace in east asia and asia generally since the 1970s has been absolutely vital to the ability of all the countries in the region to the extent that they have, to focus on the economic development and growth. american power and american place in asia has been essential to the stability and prosperity that has come to exist there. i think it is going to continue to be essential for sometime to come. our goal ultimately as i mentioned is to use terms used to refer in europe at the end of the cold war, and asia free.

we have to use the right mix of element. and this policy of mixing engagement with balancing i think is going to continue, whoever is elected in november. but as i've argued, and i think the current administration has not found the right mix. it is not done enough. i think on the balancing side, and its policies on the engagement side also have been adequate to pursue american interests. so i think we need change, and i hope that's what we'll get in two weeks. >> i'd like to thank the sponsors again, thank the audience, the moderators, and thank aaron for a very simple and enlightening discussion. eight presidents since president nixon went to china. they've understood the importance of a positive and constructive relationship with china for u.s. interests.

this has been a bipartisan policy. it's been supported and pursued by presidents of both parties. campaign obama and president obama have fallen well within that tradition, and the parameters of that policy. when i was in the obama administration, we consulted regularly with a wise man and wise women from both parties, i would say notably some of the senior statesman of the republican party, who have been so involved in building this relationship for the last generation. and i'm pleased to say that they were privately very supportive of what we were doing, and some of them in fact in public supported it. and none that i'm aware of have disagreed critical. president obama will continue that fundamental approach, should he be reelected, as i

both hope and think you will. would governor romney? that's a question. i don't have the answer. his position on the currency manipulator at 12:01 p.m. on january 20 certainly gives me cause about his intentions and his ability to do so. the obama approach for the last few years has featured i think four fundamental foundations. number one, welcoming china's rise as a successful and strong country. number two, ensuring that that rise be consistent with international law and international norms. that means organizations like the world trade organization, the international monetary fund, the u.n. convention of the law of the sea, the universal

declaration of human rights. number three, ensuring that china's rise enhances regional stability. and what we have done pursuant to that is we have developed partnerships and alliances throughout the pacific region, vigorously, from day one. no time to get into all of those. relations with korea, with japan and australia, i would argue have been brought to a new level. and last, the economic issues have obviously risen to a much greater place in the u.s.-china relationship and before, enhancing u.s. competitiveness, market access, and a level playing field. this has been an objective of the obama administration. time does not permit me to describe in detail the accomplishments of the administration. i would just say on north korea

and iran, i believe we have had some notable achievement of getting china's cooperation in cross strait relations. we have assured and contributed to stability, the u.s. and china have worked together on economic stimulus package is or parallel economic stimulus package is which prevented a second great depression. china was the first country to welcome us to the east asia summit. looking to the future, it's important the world understand there is not going to be under president obama a g2 between the u.s. and china, nor should we paint at a zero sum rivalry in which every country in the region has to choose sides in which no country wants. what we need to do is aimed at a partnership. that's a long range just. that's not a charge of one term but that's what we should be aiming at. >> think you so much. you may applaud to that, yes. [applause]

>> now through election day watch our coverage of the presidential candidates year plus debates from key house, senate and governor races from around the country. >> former senator tom daschle and other friends of the late george mcgovern will be honoring him at a funeral service today in sioux falls, south dakota. george mccubbin was a u.s. senator for 18 years and ran for president in 1972. you can watch the funeral at 2 p.m. eastern time on c-span.

>> with less than two weeks until election day the american enterprise institute look at the latest poll numbers and voting patterns in the battleground states. analysts gave predictions for the presidential race and house and senate races. this is an hour. >> on behalf of my aei colleagues, michael barone, henry olsen and norm ornstein, i'd like to welcome all of you and our c-span viewers to this, the final pre-election session of aei's election watch program. we will be back on november 8, 2 days after the election for luncheon session where we will be examining the exit poll entrails and try to tell you what happened and why. we hope to see you then. in 12 days, or 279 hours, voters will start casting the election day ballots. if tradition holds, the voters in new hampshire, population 11, will gather at midnight to vote

and announce to the world who has won there tiny hamlet. hours later, the exit polls consortium of the five networks and "the associated press," they will fan out across the country at selected precincts, handing out a single page ballot that will be used to explain the results after the polls have closed. for the 26 pollsters who have been tracking the contest nationally in recent months, and the six who have been doing daily tracking in, the contest will finally be over. americans have done a lot of complaining in the last few months. we've heard that the campaign is too long. it's too expensive, and it's too negative. but amidst all this i think it's very important to remember that november 6 will be the 57th time in an unbroken succession, stretching back to george washington in 1789, that americans have freely chosen their chief executive. and if power in the executive

shifts on november 6 from the democrats to republicans, it will be the 22nd time in our history that power has shifted from one partisan philosophy to another. shots were fired in 1860 after that election, and there were weeks of wrangling over the contested vote in the 2000 election but the peaceful transfer proceeded. i think that's the record that all of us, of which all of us can be very proud. i want to say a word or two about the latest issue of aei's political report. for those of you watching on c-span this will be posted on the aei website, www.aei.org later today. it's a compilation of some of things we don't think you've seen in other polling reports about the election. in it we take a look at the exit poll from past elections to see when voters made up their minds. that's an important criteria. we're looking at the late deciders of this particular point in the campaign. and then we look at about 22 groups, how they voted in

election contests where we've had exit polls since 1972. i don't think there's another collection like this anywhere in washington. and for those of you who are tired of the polls, we have on the last page of the handout some unconventional indicators. last night on the leno show president obama said he slightly favored the detroit lions, but our indicators are unconventional indicators show that if the lions win the election, mitt romney. the san francisco giants wind, obama is favored. we also look at the redskins record, and they will be playing the carolina panthers in the final game, and the redskins are slightly favored. and if they win, the incumbent is likely to win. just so you have that. now, onto our election panel. in today's abc -- excuse me, in tuesday's abc news "washington post" poll, romney and obama were separated by seven hundredths of 1%. i don't think i've ever seen

anything that close. we're going to turn to michael first to talk about where he sees the election at this point and then henry will take a look at ohio, the state we're all watching most closely. and, finally, norm look at the senate, compared with and house races. michael, let's begin. >> thank you very much, karlyn, and this is been an exciting election season here. i think we all pretty much agree we have something of a sea change or significant change in this election after the tour will -- the first debate between barack obama and mitt romney. it seemed to transform the race. before it obama was narrowly ahead. now looks like romney has narrowly ahead in the abc "washington post," apparently was one respondent out of a thousand or whatever number they had of people there.

one more respondent for romney over obama. and he's had in the real clear politics.com average of recent polls but not by a wide margin. by 1%. i think in some ways some people said the debates hinged on style. i think basically what it did is bring back the basic fundamental so of this election. working for president obama is the sense that most americans have that they want to think well of their president, and i think in this case they feel that many people feel that it would be a bad thing for america to be seen rejecting the first black president. working for mitt romney is the idea that most people have not favored obama's signature programs, and most people are disappointed with the sluggish growth in the economy. i think we have a more fluid electorate than we had in 2004, comparison that's often made. karl rove back then said that only 7% of voters were changeable.

scott rasmussen did a poll predebate where he looked at the number of people that said they were clear romney, clear obama. it was 42-41. that suggests something like 70% are potentially changeable, roughly double the magnitude of '04. and i think that we have seen some shift in the polling numbers. we've seen a shift in the list of target states. in 2004, the easy way to predict the results was to take the 2000 result, add two points for george bush in each state, and he wouldn't be far off anywhere. in this election in the target list changed so that wisconsin up working for, obama state in 2000 is now at two or three-point state and is clearly in contention. whereas other states that were heavily obama like washington and new jersey by similar margins, are clearly in contention. i think one of the things that

happened with the debate was that frustrated the obama firewall strategy. the obama people spent something like half of their preconvention money on anti-romney ads in three states. the three states, which aside from indiana and north carolina were their weakest states in percentage terms in 2008. florida, ohio and virginia. and basically with the states they would have 332 electoral votes. they could lose a few other states and still be well ahead of 270. i think what we've seen postdebate is that obama has fallen behind in florida. that virginia is an even state. he remains about two points ahead in ohio, which henry will talk about. i think that that firewall strategy means that this election is very much in play, and the obama campaign that romney only had a very narrow window to 270 is no longer correct.

election watch last spring and "washington examiner" column i tried to explore a couple alternative scenarios to that 2004 center of a long hard slog through a fixed list of target states. and i think at least one of them perhaps two, are happening now. the one that seems to be happening is affluent suburbanites moving towards romney. the affluent suburbanites non- southern states have been trending democratic over the last 20 years on cultural issues and other factors. romney, in 2008, obama carried the 75,000 group by 50-49. in current nationwide polls, we're seeing it going for romney by statistically significant margins. that's a change. the only explanation i can see why states like michigan and

pennsylvania, which about a quarter whose votes are cast in affluent suburban counties are getting close and perhaps why ohio is slightly it would appear towards obama, only about one-eighth of that state votes cast in affluent votes. the other scenario i sketched out is possible but not necessarily likely was the 1980 late swing towards the incumbent, away from the incumbent toward the challenger. that happened in 1980 after an october 27 debate just one week before the election, we saw a very, a very big swing away from jimmy carter and towards ronald reagan. this year i think we are seeing what might be, but not necessary, a slow-motion 1980

with the october 3 debate ideas for changing some opinion and leaving the question mark over the question of whether or not it would be for the movement in romney's direction. so i will just conclude with that point, and -- >> you were only five minutes. i'm very impressed. henry is going to talk about ohio. we've been watching at aei, ohio for very long time. and i want to refer you to a book written by our emeritus colleague and the great, richard, in 1970. they wrote a book called the real majority. and in that book they identified as the key to the election the dayton housewife. she was from the middle of the country, had a mid-level education. she was a 47 year old catholic married to a machinist, and she was going to be the key to electoral politics in ohio. she became so famous in that election cycle that dick cavett, the late-night talk show, actually sent a team of producers to ohio to try to find the dayton housewife.

and after that, the dayton housewife appeared on the dick cavett show pronouncing about the election. she had a cigarette and it was really quite an experience. but anyway, we've been watching ohio for a very long time here henry, and now you can tells what it will be the dayton housewife, a cincinnati housewife, what should we be looking at? >> nowadays will probably be likely to be the columbus separated woman with one child. the end of this campaign, i'm just thinking come it's like we're at the end of long running popular tv show, like cheers. in a couple of weeks all of our favorite characters will be gone and will only have our memories. but two years from now, just like cheers, reruns, we can always come back here, look up to the stage and say norm. [laughter] >> ohio is the most pivotal state because, not only is it

the closest large state that's out there that romney needs to win in order to win, but because it's virtually impossible to see a romney win without it. that if he sweeps the three southern states, that have been thought of as potential battlegrounds, virginia, north carolina and florida, he either needs to take ohio and one other of the swing states, or he needs to virtually sweep three or four of the other swing states, depending on how they come out. so what i did to help decipher ohio is put together a list of media markets and superimposed on a map with the assistance of my research assistant. what we have here, the reason to look at it by media market is because what each of these candidates are going to be traveling, they're doing it with media in mind, that when somebody goes to an area that's covered dramatically on local

news, they get a lot of free publicity in that area. so where a candidate did this, and what a candidate is talking about or what audience a candidate is addressing is subtle cues about what their strategy is and who they see as their path to victory. let's start by taking look at as you can see, the democratic strength is in urban areas in the city of dayton, the city of columbus, the city of cincinnati. it's in the southwest part of the state. you see the three blue counties. that's old coal country mining area that's highly white working-class, appellation influence. the county is near the parksburg market, is the home of ohio

university. and then you've got the industrial area of lake erie. and slightly down there. the blue dots show where the democrats have visited. and here you can see, based on where they visited, that they have been employing an early voting strategy. that each place they visited is a place that has a significant -- virtually everyone has a significant african-american inner-city population. each one is one where currently, if you look at the ohio early voting totals has overwhelming numbers of people are coming out to vote early. you've got three visits in cleveland, one in lorraine, which has a small industrial community down road from cleveland, one in 10, again old industrial, small african-american committee. you see that barack obama has visited ohio university down there in athens county. that's a student strategy.

and the one dot in wheeling market is bill clinton. they said that they talked to the area where virtually everyone who votes is going to be culturally like him. this is an early voting strategy. there's only one dot that doesn't fit into that, and that's the one that is two counties north of columbus. joe biden was in there in ohio yesterday and he wasn't there to pay homage to their favorite son, warren g. harding, nor was he there to pay homage to another favorite son, six times socialist presidential candidate norman thomas. he was there because they are starting to move from an early voting to a swing voting strategy. ohio ends early voting next tuesday. they are now going to be going to preserve the gains that they made in the republican county of ohio four years ago. and that's where the battleground is going to be fought for the next 12 days.

it was announced today that bill clinton and barack obama will appear together on stage for the first time, the number of swing states among the ohio. let me take a venture and guess and say that they're not going to be visiting inner cities very much. now take a look at the romney strategy and they're all over the map. why are they all over the map? because they literally have to be all over the map. george bush carried ohio with about 50.5% of the vote in 2004. john mccain lost it with 46.1%. if you look at where the difference is, the drop, basically romney wins this state if he equals the bush percentage. romney -- the bush percentage dropped most in three media markets. toledo, columbus and cincinnati. those are the three places where he needs to pick up ground where he lost. and the second thing he needs to do is sustain the ground that they kept.

the three west virginia markets, mccain actually outpolled bush. the youngstown media market, mccain ran virtually even. so you see the early trips are in rural area to sustain, try to get their vote back, in west virginia and young towns market to try and keep the vote they had. and today romney will make three stops in ohio. is going to stop in cincinnati. is going to hit that market. is going to stop in worthington which is a suburb of columbus in franklin market. then he goes to one of the far northwest red counties, a toledo market, which is the county that has one of the highest proportions of auto workers as a percentage of total employment. and perhaps not coincidentally four years ago, was one of the counties that saw one of the largest drop-offs from bush to

mccain even though mccain still carried the county. this is going to be the republican strategy. it is to go back to the places of people who voted for george bush in 2004, people who voted for barack obama in 2008, and convince them it's time to come back. what do i think is going to happen? all of the polls suggest that this is one of mitt romney's toughest states. as michael pointed out, it's less affluent than a number of other states. it has fewer people. it's affluent counties are less affluent counties than affluent counties elsewhere. it's a hard hit state over the last decade. there are polls in ohio and in wisconsin and iowa that ron brownstein has written about that suggests that as i feared, six months ago, that blue collar white vote that needs to be turned out by romney overwhelmingly to win is actually not doing that. that in all three of these

midwestern states, they are not responding to the romney message that would be consistent with the idea that a choice between a populist incumbant who has had a so-so record, and a business executive who seems to use the obama description, out of touch with middle class and working class aspirations. that enough of them will either stay home or will support the president to fuel a narrow victory. one glimmer of opportunity for the romney campaign, and that is that by very small margin, ohio continues to have a higher percentage of undecided voters in other swing states. it's about average six and a half percent compared to about four, 4.5% of swing states. there are still people who have not made up their mind, and that suggests that if romney can cut

the gap within the next week or so to about a point, and maybe he can eke away on top because as the data suggest, those people will break roughly 85 or 60-40 against the intend the paper right now looks like a very tough road to hoe for the romney-ryan team, and in part driven by a ohio's unique demographics and the very confident strategy that's been executed by the president. >> thank you very much. norm, i think a year ago most people in this room would've said that it looks like pretty good year for the republicans in terms of the senate. but things have clearly changed. can you tell us a little bit about the senate and the governors races and the house at this point? you should all have a handout that includes the latest prediction from larry stabenow, charlie cook and stu rothenberg, prognosticators we work with on a bigger basis. and i think are watching these races very, very closely, as is norm. norm. >> thanks, karlyn. i would say to start that it will tell you an awful lot of our culture that we've gone from i think the dayton housewife to honey boo boo.

i just arrived yesterday from the west coast where it was 82 and foggy, just like clint eastwood. [laughter] and i want to thank clint for cutting a commercial yesterday to keep the half-life of that joke going for another week or 10 days. there's a lot we could say about both the nature of the contest and ohio which we can get to, but just to start with the senate. as karlyn said, with 23 seats held by democrats, only 10 held by republicans, and looking at it from the perspective of a year or even six months ago, where it appeared that make one or two of those republican seats would be affordable to challenge, and half or more of the democratic seats, there seem to be a very strong possibility, even a likelihood that republicans could contest for a majority of the senate. keep in mind, the one small caveat that the majority, number of net seats needed to change

depends on who wins the white house. if mitt romney wins the white house, republicans only need a net of three. if barack obama wins, they need a net of four because of course the vice president casts the tie-breaking vote. but even with those numbers, the imbalance suggested that republicans were in great shape but a lot has changed. if you look at the 10 republican seats up for contest now, there are at least five where you're either in a tossup category or where republicans are likely to lose. likely to lose category starts with maine, where the independent former governor angus king seems to have pulled into a comfortable lead in that race. ..

>> and turned it into a very different kind of contest. this morning my guess is that richard mourdock's home and office are being flooded with flowers saying keep it up from the obama campaign and from the joe donnelly campaign. [laughter] since mourdock's statement yesterday which got into a contest with todd akin over who could say the more inflammatory thing about rape and abortion. but all of it coming, of course,

badly timed the day after a commercial in which mitt romney, right into the camera, endorses richard mourdock, and we have footage of him standing next to mourdock saying he wants him to be part of his team. i would note here that that may have a small, admittedly very small, impact on the presidential campaign. if you have a couple of days particularly from the last debate in which mitt romney made the pivot, um, i think the most striking etch a sketch move i've ever seen from a very conservative stance to a moderate position, and the campaign theme is don't worry, you can trust us, that this does not exactly reinforce that message. it forces a couple of days where you have to focus on other things. and that also is something that's beginning to spill over into other senate contests where candidates are being forced to

either get distance from mourdock or embrace what he said. and if you look at the statement made by john cornyn who's the head of the republican senator tore y'all campaign committee, it's a very uncomfortable i can't get distance from another nominee after we cut off todd akin but, boy, i don't want to get into this thicket at all. then if you pull out states like massachusetts where elizabeth warren has pulled out to at least a small but not insignificant and insurmountable lead, in arizona where jeff flake had to go through a very late primary in which he was roundly criticized within his own party, and richard carmona until his own recent gaffe making a joke about candy crowley at an inopportune moment, but a former bush surgeon general and iraq war veteran has proven to be a strong candidate. and in nevada where the superior turnout effort of the harry reid

machine has kept shelley berkley within striking distance of dean heller, you've got a different kind of contest. democrats are not going to, are not likely to win all five of those contests, but every one that they win means that republicans have to win an extra seat to move closer to that majority. and while we have one sure thing, i think, out there in terms of a turnover and that's nebraska where the democratic hopeful and former senator bob kerrey is going to be romped by republican deb fisher, in many other states where republicans thought that they would have a wide open opportunity to take seats, in wisconsin where tommy thorpe has done -- thorpe has done, not run a very effective campaign and is in a toss-up contest, in florida where connie mack proved to be a poor candidate against bill nelson, and he seems to be pulling away,

in michigan where pete hoekstra has not done anything close to closing the sale against debbie stabenow, there's still plenty of opportunities. and that includes places like montana where it's been a dead heat for months on end. but in other states like north dakota which should have been a romp, we have a close contest as well. so i would say the odds of republicans taking the senate unless it turns out to be a 1980s scenario as michael suggested where the floodgates open over the next ten days for mitt romney, and i still believe it looks more like 2004 to me than it does like 1980, the odds of republicans winning the senate are fairly slim. they are still greater than the odds of democrats taking a majority in the house of representatives. democrats are probably going to lose ten of their own seats,

most of them the moderates from among the remaining moderates. so they would need 35 net or more to take a majority in the house. and simply not in the cards and not doable. there are opportunities there, and i would be surprised if democrats don't eat into the republican majority by a bit, but if it's more than single digits, that would be a really striking achievement. it's probably going to be more like seven, eight or nine seats net. now, there are a few i would say gubernatorial contests that are interesting to look at. most of them are not particularly interesting. i did find it striking that mike pence who appears to be coasting to victory in indiana went out of his way to get distance from richard mourdock yesterday which i can't quite figure it out. the most interesting contest to me is in new hampshire where

ovide lamontagne who's been a perennial candidate has been dead even -- >> he was a student of yours, is that correct? >> he was a student of mine many years ago at catholic university. in other places where democrats had hoped to do well like north carolina they are not, in washington and in missouri where democrats thought that they were going to be in deep trouble, they're probably favored a little bit. there isn't much going on at the gubernatorial level this time because, of course, the big contests were in the midterm election last time, and that's going to be what's most interesting to watch two years from now, whether states continue to be 'em battled by an economy and there's a backlash against those economies many of whom like in states like michigan, ohio, florida and wisconsin remain popular, but that's something for another day. >> thank you very much, norm.

because our panelists have been so very disciplined, we have a half an hour for your questions, and while you're thinking about your questions, i would like just to say thank you to andrew rugbegun, our research assistant, jennifer who helped henry with this hand today and also does a great deal of work for norm, brad wozniak who helped henry and our two very able interns patrick and elizabeth who provided a lot of help at the last minute. michael said he'd like to say a word in response to norm before we turn to your questions, and then we'll turn to your questions. >> just a brief word in response both to henry and norm. on the importance of ohio, many people say it's totally dispositive towards the election. i don't think henry went there. i think it's, it's obviously very important, but currently if you look at real clear politics polling, romney's ahead or even in the states with 207 electoral

votes, within five points of states with 337. obama's within five points ahead, even or within five points of 332, similar numbers. he's ahead in more states with more electoral votes in the current state polling. i think both have ways to get to 270. obviously, romney wants very much to carry ohio, but the old rule about a republican never winning the presidency without winning ohio was forged mostly in times when ohio had a whole lot more electoral votes than florida. 1960s, ohio had 26 electoral votes, florida 14. it's now ohio 18, florida 29. so it's very important. it's not totally essential, and i think henry made the right balance on that. in the senate races, as norm said -- i agree with norm's total outlook. the republicans are in trouble in arizona and indiana, two states where no sensible republican should be in trouble.

and on the other hand, you know, it's a possibility of a wave. i remember sitting down with my then-employer peter hart before the 1980s election, and peter said we're going to go through an exercise and see if the republicans can win a majority in the senate. they were starting off with 41 seats. we went down a list and basically came to the conclusion, yes, republicans can win, but they'd have to win virtually all the close races, so it's not going to happen. well, it happened. and then republicans lost eight of those seats six years later in the close races as well. when i look at the races in democratic-held seats, i see seven states in which democrats are leading but under 50% in polling. that says to me those are not necessarily locked-in seats including florida. connecticut, florida, missouri, ohio, pennsylvania, virginia and wisconsin.

so i think with a strong romney run, there is the possibilities of republicans winning a majority in the senate aren't, are not dismal, but they depend on running some of those seven races and turning those under 50% democrats into losers. >> i actually had a couple of comments as well. one is i have more respect these days for stu spencer who runs romney's campaign than i did before as -- stu stevens, excuse me, as we hept through the -- went through a whole season of not saying anything about romney and letting him be defined elsewhere. but if you look at the pivot that romney has now made, you know, watching that third debate and as romney endorsed the international criminal court, i was waiting for the explosion from the 11th floor here as john

bolton went to def con 1. [laughter] but there was nothing. and the fact is, he managed to get conservatives enough in his camp that he could make a pivot endorsing most of obama's foreign policy and doing things like that without losing that base which is really quite striking. and whether he can continue that move is going to be interesting. just two other comments, one on ohio. obama has opened up more field offices in ohio than starbucks has outlets, which is really astonishing. [laughter] and romney has not. the ground game differences are really striking here, and how much difference that makes, you've still got to get voters enthusiastic, and i suspect that the final days that obama's going to be spending as much or more time getting his own voters enthusiastic as he is aiming at those independents. but the early voting has helped. and, henry, there will be early voting in ohio on friday,

saturday, sunday. that was what the supreme court allowed. limited hours -- >> [inaudible] >> yeah. yes, yeah. but declined unanimously to review it, and after an appeals court said that the early voting should apply. the hours are limited, but the sunday voting is one that in the past has proved to be extraordinary for particularly african-american voters who go right after church. so there is a path for romney without ohio, but it's a long and winding path. and then finally just one comment on -- as you watch these polls, and that includes the real politics average which is a terrific thing to do, but one of the things we're seeing in these final days is that in all these swing states rasmussen is going in and polling once a day, sometimes twice a day, and if you look at polls like rasmussen, these are robopolls. they cannot, by law, call cell phones. and there's a very substantial

difference in the voting inclinations of cell phone voters and noncell phone voters. you have to make, you have to be very careful as you look at these polls. also, of course, the national polls as john buckley pointed out the other day in looking at what is a real possibility of romney winning the popular vote and losing the electoral college, those are changed a little bit by the enormous level of support among white voters as henry has talked about in the south. he's not polling those white voters in ohio which is one of the main reasons. but the overall national numbers do not necessarily reflect what matters, which is in these states that we've been talking about. >> two quick points. um, the reason i still think ohio's very key is because if romney doesn't win ohio, he really has to win wisconsin if he's not going to run the table in the swing states and if you don't think that there's going to be a massive swing to romney that will make individual state

calculations roughly irrelevant. he's closer in ohio than he is in wisconsin despite ryan being on the ticket, and historically ohio has been anywhere from one to three points more republican in a given year than wisconsin does. which is why romney's here in ohio today, and he's not doing a tour of madison, green bay and milwaukee which would be the equivalent tour in the wisconsin. secondly, on the blue collar question as michael pointed, i believe, at the last election which was a big difference between southern whites without a college degree and midwestern and eastern whites without a college degree. i suspect if you could get below it, you would even see it more stark, but the blue collar whites in the rust belt states and in iowa are substantially more likely to be catholic or nonevangelical protestant. and when you take a look at

where the swing against obama was last time, where the big gun in ohio is, i suspect if you're going to break that down on election day, you're going to see the same weakness that, you know, romney has been less able to connect than the republicans were two years ago with the non-english descended evangelical protestant. the thin or the -- the finn or the swede or the norwegian in the upper midwest, the german catholic in dubuque, the catholic in lake erie area, and that will be, if he loses, the reason why he lost. >> let's turn to your questions now and, please, identify yourselves. we'll start over here, and if you could wait for the microphone, um -- tell us who you are.

>> thank you. thanks for having us again and again. my name is -- [inaudible] i'm a u.s. or correspondent for swiss newspapers. i have a question for you, henry. you haven't mentioned the governor of ohio at all in your analysis. is that, was that on purpose, or you don't think he plays a role? >> um, i've never found that governors matter a whole lot in presidential races. they don't pull states along with them. they can help organize volunteers or money for a candidate, but their standing or their popularity almost never actually pulls over. the one thing i should have mentioned and i didn't, though, is that the case strickland raised two years ago is actually a good indicator of mitt romney's weakness which is that kasich, after he left congress, came from an investment bank background. he was running against somebody who before he was governor was a representative from that west

virginia part of ohio, and they ran a class warfare campaign. it was eyes on the side of the working class man, he was on the side of the wealthy. and kasich, in the atmosphere of 2010, only won by about two points. and if you look, he did much better in the affluent suburbs than he did in the working class areas. and once, one of the things i will be looking at and may talk about after the election is the degree to which the kasich/strickland numbers were an indicator of whether romney did or did not hit his vote targets in 2012. >> question here. >> john green with the national association of health underwriters. so late breakers, if there are that many undecide canneds in ohio, don't they tradition traditionally go against the

incumbent in the final days? >> i think a lot of the data has been crunched to suggest that they don't necessarily go against the incumbent. what karlyn's data in the poll here suggested is that they go against the leader by a margin of about 5-4 or maybe 6-4. so let's do the math. if there's 6 president undecided -- 6% undecided in ohio, that'll gain a point to a point and a half on the margin for romney. so if obama's really up by about a point and a half, that suggests a nail biter. if romney -- if obama's really up by 2-4 which other polls suggest, that suggests a close loss. but you can't just take the 6% and say they're all going to go to romney, there's really no evidence to suggest that the break is that decisive. >> i'm not clear that, it's not clear to me that people have a clear awareness of who the leader is at this point. the realclearpolitics.com

average is 48, romney; 47, obama. depending on the poll what weighting you give to them, some people discount public policy polling, you could regard, plausibly regard either one as the leader. i do think we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the incumbent president of the united states is at 47%. now, sometimes undecideds simply don't vote and, you know, a certain number of them simply don't end up participating. but, you know, 47% which the obama people thought was the magic number that was going to dissolve mitt romney into water on the stage once you mentioned it is not a entirely happy number for barack obama. >> no, it's not. and i'm not saying that the election is over, and, you know, this is in that zone of uncertainty where lots of things could happen. i mean, it was 12 years ago when

george bush was ahead by, you know, 3-6 points fending on the poll -- depending on the poll and news of his drunk driving -- >> 12 years ago. >> yeah. 12 years ago. came out and just stopped his progress. he didn't lose votes, but he didn't gain votes, and al gore stormed in a five-day period to win a popular vote. who knows what the next 12 days are going to bring. but, you know, looking at the data carefully i don't want to discount the possibility that michael is right at all. far from me to do that. i just think there are lots of reasons to think that in ohio that's looking a little stronger for obama than it is for romney and that the opportunities to win an electoral victory absent a late-minute 1980 break against the president are difficult to see. >> the question here and then there, i believe. right near the front.

>> i'm barry casselman, i'm from minneapolis. i blog as the prairie editor and write for several publications here in washington. my question is for michael, but obviously, for the other panelists as well. many, myself included, have been critical of the polling that has taken place in most cases -- not all -- throughout this campaign season. and my criticism is that the, one of the things that happens in almost every poll is they're weighted, and they're weighted based on democrats and republicans and independents. is -- and it's my impression especially when i look at the meat of the polls where they explain who they, who they sampled is that there's an overweighting of democratic voters this cycle based pretty

much on previous races that may not be applicable. i'd like your comments. >> well, karlyn has written and talked about this at some length. you know, basic polling techniques were developed in a country from the mid '60s to the mid 2000s was a country with universal phone land lines and a population that answered the phone when it rang. [laughter] we no longer live in such a country. the pew research center reports that only 9% of the calls they initiate result in a completed interview. are those 9% a representative of the larger voting public? we hope so. [laughter] but we're not entirely sure. we do know that exit polling has tilted to varying degrees towards democrats and that in the 2008 democratic primaries it tilted heavily to barack obama. part of that was interviewer bias, the biggest bias being in

precincts where the interviews were female graduate students. i'll let you guess into what direction, which party's direction that worked. but part of it is respondent by willingness to be polled, it appears, in the exit polls. so i do look with some suspicion on some of these polls that show a larger democratic advantage in party identification in states or the nation than was the case in 2008. that seems suspicious to me. we have to keep in mind the party identification questions are different in different polls so that, um, the question -- responses are not always commensurate with the exit poll with which we typically compare it. but, um, you know, karlyn has talked about, you know,ing polling as we know it may become as obsolete as, i fear to say, print journalism has become. >> i could add a few things to

what michael has said. i think this is a business beset by very serious problems. the impressive pew study on response rates showing a 9% response rate, it's hard to belief it can go -- believe it can go much lower than that. most of the major national pollsters do not weight for party identification in the united states. that's not true in britain, but here they consider party identification an attitude, not a demographic. they weight for all the standard demographics because the census tells us how many women and men there are in the population, how many 18-29 year olds and those over 65. but some of the pollsters in the united states now are weighting for party identification, and they're providing us with two very different pictures of where the election is. those that are weighting showed no particular pickup for mitt romney after the date whereas those who did not showed a very different thing going on.

as michael said, i would not be surprised if we do not see telephone polls by 2020. a third of households are cell phone-only households in the united states, as michael said, the pollsters can't reach those households in the same way. this is a business that has some very serious problems going forward. >> and one thing, um, when i get into a poll, i always look at rdi. but that's fluid. people's racial attachments are not fluid. you either are or are not nonwhite. and one thing i find is that all of the polls that tend to show romney with larger leads, in my opinion, underweight the nonwhite vote. the gallup poll, when it had romney ahead by seven, didn't show in public what its white/nonwhite percentage was, but i did backward calculations because they said what, you know, romney carried whites by x and lost nonwhites by y, and it worked out that the overall numbers made sense if the voting

population was 80% white. the voting population hasn't been 80% white in this century, so romney was never ahead by seven points. that was a problem. their likely voter screen was screening out nonwhite voters. the washington post poll that showed romney up by one person shows 24% nonwhite. it was 24% nonwhite in 2010, there was 26% nonwhite in 2008. that's an optimistic republican sample. which suggests to me over the next week that's one of the key factors i'm going to be looking at. because the differences between white and nonwhite voting is so stark that even a one-point underestimation of the nonwhite share basically shifts about, basically shifts about one point on the margin. >> just another comment. this is important stuff because everybody's going to be following these polls. there's a reason why the gallup poll has shown in its tracking

surveys why fluctuations from one day or week to the next, and they also show it in party identification numbers which normally are pretty stable. and that is another problem with these surveys which is who's going to answer the phone? the people who are enthusiastic, if something good has happened, you're going to want to talk to a pollster to talk about it. if something bad has happened, you're not going to want to. peter has written a very interesting analysis of very different surveys u .gov took the voters and asked them questions after the first debate and before the first debate and found almost no difference. very sharp distinction from other surveys because there was no enthusiasm gap in this case. it's the same groups of people. and all of it tells us simply that you need to take these surveys with an enormous grain of salt.

>> gerald chandler. everybody agrees that the first debate swung voters toward romney. what i'd like to know is, how many of those before were committed obama voters, and what does that say about the future? can people who say they're committed voters be changed at all? >> i think what we saw at the outset of that debate was after the democratic convention we saw a drop in undecideds and a movement towards what i call weekly attached. that running throughout the summertime a little under 10% of the vote said they were undecided. after the two conventions, that dropped to around 6%. and that's when you saw obama move up by a couple of percent. i think we are seeing people who are now weekly attached as they get closer to election day, they'll become stronger attached, and the closer we get

to election day the less likely it is we're going to move people. but at this point there are people who are still weakly attached, and they can be moved. >> hi. my name is ruth, journalist with the dutch delegation. um, there's a consensus that debates really don't move elections, but we have seen now the first debate did, it seem. can you parse for us the way their last debate in terms of foreign policy may or may not have moved some voters' blocs in florida or has made romney a viable candidate for other groups of people in. >> i would say, you know, i think i disagree with norm in terms of if he's saying that romney has hugely switched his positions on these issues. i think an argument could be made that his positions have been pretty intellectually

consistent by the standards of candidate over the years -- candidates over the years. [laughter] and, indeed, somewhat more so perhaps. but interestingly, it seems to me that romney's performance in that last debate was, did two kind of interesting things. number one, he was talking about how much he wanted peace, he didn't want to have anymore afghanistans or iraqs. i think he was speaking particularly to women voters, particularly to college-educated women, a group that he seems to be making significant gains with as compared to john mccain's performance in 2008 or perhaps george w. bush's performance in 2004. um, i think, also, that that's, it's partly -- the germano/scandinavian zone of america, if you will, iowa and

wisconsin, two states that are very much target states, and minnesota where rasmussen pointed only a five-point obama lead although it's not anybody's target state at this point, those have always been the pacifist, isolationist, doveish parts of america relatively speaking. and i think barack obama's, you know, boasts i killed osama bin laden not as big a plus in those states among some people who have been voting democratic as they are in many others. and romney talking about peace. the other thing he did was talking about tumult and chaos in the world. i think the libya situation has hurt barack obama by giving people a sense that his promise in 2007 and 2008 if you elect me, you know, the world will love america, and the muslim world in particular will love america because, hey, my dad was

a muslim. i think that that's, um, you know, what's happened in libya tends to undercut that. the differing explanations that we've had from the president and the administration about it has tended to undercut that. and it clearly has eroded what was an obama lead on foreign policy to a point where it's about a parity. and romney talking about tumult, chaos, things spinning out of control was trying to play on that. >> i would just say let's go to the videotape, and i would commend to all of you the daily show which did a juxtaposition of things that romney said in the primary campaign and things he said in the debate, which i think probably move a little bit beyond the usual margin of candidates. but he did it adroitly, and as i say, it seems to have, it doesn't seem to have excited a base that he has moved. in terms of debates and

movement, we do see debates where there's movement, and it's distinctive and important. i think the only election where i would point to where the debate might have been decisive was 1980, in part because there was one debate, and it was ten days before the election. but it was a question of whether a challenger at a time when an incumbent was extremely unpopular and voters clearly wanted a change were not convinced that the challenger was over the bar of acceptability. and when reagan got over that bar easily, the floodgates broke. i just don't see -- i do see the first debate as one where romney got over the bar of acceptability for a larger number of voters, and they were open to him. and that's a big, big deal. but i don't see fundamentals. and i didn't want see it much in the third debate -- i didn't see it much in the third debate. we did a survey of undecided voters right before the third debate. a third of them were leaning to romney, a third were leaning to obama, and the other third were undecided between whether they were going to watch monday night

football or the seventh game of the baseball playoffs. >> watch all of this event in our video library at c-span.org. we're taking you live now to georgetown -- george washington university, the law school at george washington holding a forum on the dodd-frank law and whether it can prevent another financial crisis. the keynote speaker today, securities and exchange commission chairwoman mary schapiro. speaking now, the dean of the george washington law school. live coverage here on c-span2. >> securities and exchange commission. so one of the things that i think makes this law school, the george washington university law school, distinctive and different from other top law schools is the degree to which we are integrated into the real world of law and policy practice in this country. and so one of the things we are always striving to do is not be an ivory tower academic institution solely, but also one

that is always trying to engage the practicing bar, people from corporations, people who are not lawyers in the educational enterprise and also in public policy discussions. and, obviously, we have a great advantage in being in washington, d.c. and having so much access to the world of policy. but in addition it's not the location, it has to be your orientation as a law school. and so it is something that i've emphasized since i've arrived, but it long predates me that this school wants to always be the place to convene public policy discussions, to create a forum for actionable information, to create an opportunity for nonpartisan and bipartisan discussion. as i like to say, in d.c. but

outside the glare of d.c., not on a congressional hearing room floor, not in a formal interagency process, but in an academic institution where important policy discussions can be had, and maybe we can move the ball forward on important issues of thought leadership. um, in that regard we are thrilled to be able to host this conference, and can this is part of a series of conferences that we have held over the last few years on the important regulatory reforms of dodd-frank. and to welcomeback to the law school -- welcome back to the law school mary mary schapiro. mary is not only a graduate of the law school, but has been great friend of the law school for many years. she has spoken here on numerous occasions, and we are always thrilled to have the opportunity to welcome her, and be i'm

really grateful that she has figured out a way to fit this into her unbelievably busy schedule so that she can be here to speak and give us her views, up to the minute views from the sec. so, please, join me in welcoming mary schapiro. [applause] >> good morning, everyone. thank you very much for that kind introduction, and in fact, for your wonderful stewardship and leadership of my alma mater. and it's always wonderful to be back at gw. i also want to thank the university for hosting the financial regulatory reform symposium. i think it's an important opportunity to contribute to the debate and the discussion around financial regulatory reform. four years ago this month this nation was suffering from a near

collapse of our financial system. while there are differences of opinion as to what was the most significant trigger, a bipartisan senate committee report known as the levin-coburn report, asserted the crisis was the result of, quote, high-race, complex financial products and the failure of regulators, the credit rating agencies and the market itself to rein in the excesses of wall street. while this period of our history will be written and rewritten over and over again, congress and the administration knew that the status quo was unacceptable. so together they passed landmark legislation to address many of the issues that were highlighted during that tumultuous period. the dodd-frank wall street reform and consumer protection act is a vital and comprehensive response to the financial crisis, an event that devastated the american economy, cost the

american people trillions of dollars and millions of jobs and undermined the confidence in our financial system -- that our financial system requires if it is to thrive and support a growing economy. the sweeping scope of this financial reform legislation sometimes obscures the fact that despite its breadth, it is rooted in a handful of sound principles that should have been more firmly in place before the crisis. and whose embrace serves to make markets more table and efficient. simple principles like markets should be transparent, regulation should be consistent without gaps that can be exploited by those who wish the indulge in risky, destabilizing or even illegal behavior. market apartments, not taxpayers, should bear the risk of their market activities. and regulators should have the willingness and the tools they need to apply these principles to the day-to-day workings of the financial markets. the dodd-frank act translated

these principles into law that is the foundation for effective regulation. interestingly, the title of this historic legislation may seem to suggest that there are two parts to the bill; wall street reform on the one hand and consumer protection on the other. yet a closer examination of the law reveals that both portions are rooted in those same important fundamentals. that is because opacity, flaws and regulatory gaps make the system less able to perform its allocation function, more likely the collapse and more likely to subject investors to unnecessary harm. when i was invited to join you today, dean berman offered me a broad opportunity to speak on a wide variety of topics, largely but not entirely focused on the dodd-frank act. but as someone who has lived and breathed dodd-frank since well before its passage in july 2010, i'm sure i could speak for hours

on even the most arcane aspects of that legislation. but i promise you i won't. but when i arrived as sec chairman in january of 2009, there were some calling for the agency to be abolished or split up and divided among other entities. so when the financial reform legislation was being drafted, i took a particularly active role in advocating for the importance of the sec's mission, a mission to protect investors and insure the efficient operation of our markets and formation of capital. and i impressed upon policymakers that the sec could and would step up and fulfill its mission. in the process i worked with those on the hill and in the administration to insure the sec would have its authority bolstered, not weakened, and i'm pleased that that's occurred. it was a sign that congress appreciated the need for a strong sec. at the same time, i'm also proud the congress gave us tools in dodd-frank that i sought, for

example, to create a new whistleblower program that is resulting in high quality tips from insiders at financial firms, to require hedge fund advisers for the first time the to register and be subject to our rules, to proceed with additional clarity in establishing a uniform standard governing the conduct of investment advisers and broker dealers, and to develop a comprehensive regulatory regime for over the count derivatives, among many other things. today i'd like to focus on a few specific provisions of the act tying them back to the fundamentals i mentioned a moment ago in hopes that should the students who are with us today ever put your impressive educations to use as public servants, you will look back -- you will look at potential regulation in just this light. so let me start with title vii or dodd-frank, the part of the act that for the first time creates a comprehensive regulatory regime for the over the counter derivatives market.

it illustrates the importance of financial fundamentals on a vast scale, addressing a derivatives market with a global value of some $650 trillion. derivatives are financial products that derive their value from some underlying thing, and one common type of derivative a swap which is a financial contract in which two counterparties agree to exchange or swap payments with each other as a result of such things as changes in a stock price, interest rate or commodity price. back in the early '90s when i served as commissioner at the sec and later as chairman of the cftc, it was difficult to imagine the sheer size or potential impact of this then-emerging market. at that time the notional value of the deriff tyes market hovered around $10 trillion, and much of that was comprised of hedging by end users against the risk of currency or commodity price fluctuations; that is, companies were essentially using

these transactions as insurance against an adverse event. while there were some regulators who appreciated the need to get a better handle on what was going on behind the curtain, industry strenuously objected to any regulation. and with the commodity futures modernization act of 2000, congress created a huge gap in the regulatory structure by specifically excluding most otc derivatives from any regulatory oversight. the result was a vast market operating behind an opaque curtain whose transactions were not visible to regulators or other market participants. the gap in regulation allowed a fundamental tenet of thriving markets, namely transparency. not only to be ignored, but to be actively rejected. unfortunately, as we found during the financial crisis, firms have entered into otc derivative frank actions to reduce their market risk had simply swapped one risk for

another. .. has the ability to greatly magnify the systemic shocks of the significant defaults by any single firm. according to the financial crisis inquiry commission during the crisis there was a real possibility that the default of a single large counterparty that set off a chain reaction that would spread through many

interconnected institutions. traders and the commission's words rush to the exits to assets values fell, risk management and the absence of liquid derivative markets became vastly more collocated, and credit dried up. title vii of dodd-frank addresses challenges in the otc derivatives market by closing the gaps that were greeted by the commodity futures modernization act. and bring the otc derivatives market into the daylight. and working with the commodity futures trading commission, we have been writing rolls that fill out an entirely new regulatory regime, one that strengthens stability of our financial system. these rules do this by improving transparency and facilitating the centralized clearing of swaps, helping among other things to reduce that counterparty risk, enhancing investment protection through increased disclosure regarding security-based swap transactio transactions.

and mitigating conflicts of interest of dealers and other major participants involved in security-based swaps. by promoting transparency, efficiency and stability, these frameworks in intended to foster a more nimble and competitive market, and enhance regulatory oversight and monitoring by facilitating improved access to comprehensive data on the security-based swap market. a report released by a major market participants -- purchase but lester underscores the benefits of bringing financial fundamentals into this market. it predicts the market for interest rate and credit default swaps will grow by more than 10% i 2013. quote, notional values and derivatives are expected to rise due to increase transparency and counterparty risk mitigation. instead of transacting business behind closed doors, this new system will require certain transactions to be conducted on a public trading platform.

once the transaction has occurred, the rules were require information about the trade to be reported to a daily repository, and in turn that information will be shared with the public. many of the traits will be handled by a clearing house, essentially a middleman steps in place of the original counterparties and effectively assumes the risk, should there be a default. despite being handed the lion's share of the role baking under dodd-frank, i'm pleased that the sec has now proposed substantially all of the rules that create this new regulatory regime for derivatives within our jurisdiction, and in some cases has adopted the final ru rule. this spring and summer joined with the cftc, the sec adopted key definitional rules and interpretations on which this entire new regime will be built. we also recently adopted rules regarding our clearing infrastructure, that group of middlemen, that are critical to achieving the goals of title vii. in june of this year we adopted

rules specified have clearing agencies to submit information to the sec, so we can decide which types of security-based swaps must be cleared. and just this week we adopted rules outlined standards for the risk management and operation of clearing agencies. even without the regulatory regime fully in place, more and more swaps are already been cleared, a trend that reduces risk and should accelerate as the rules come online. to help ensure the system comes online in an orderly fashion, we have drawn a roadmap setting for the anticipated sequencing of compliance dates for when the rules will take effect. our goal is to avoid the cost and disruption that could result in compliance with all the rules are required simultaneously, or haphazardly. market participants have provided comment on this roadmap, and we look forward to competing -- completing the rules already proposed but not yet final. building a comprehensive regular

derision from the ground up in closed coordination with the cftc and in consultation with numerous other domestic and overseas regulators, is an immense task, involving uncounted actions and details, not to mention hundreds of meetings with and thousands of comment letters from stakeholders. but we will not lose sight of the big picture. if the new marketplace is truly transparent, it will work better and more efficiently for all parties. if we close the regulatory gap, financial markets will be safer for investors, and for economies around the world. the market participants focus on title vii, generally speaking, our large players. airlines that want to hedge the price of a years worth of jet fuel, hedge funds to want to take a bit of a billion dollars on the direction of the euro. but the provisions of title nine, unlike title vii, are much more likely to direct the -- touch the lives of you and me.

designated the consumer protection section, it is, in fact, also full of systemic safeguards. designed to limit practices which at first seemed only to affect individual investors or specific kinds of participants in the financial system. but these practices cumulatively shipped the financial system to its foundation. and despite the difference of the size in the nature of the players engaged by title ix the need of the playing field defined by the same sort of fundamentals remain. let's take home mortgages. persuading potential homebuyers to assume a mortgage they have no ability to repay sounds like a classic consumer protection problem. but when millions of bad mortgages were written, bundles and security, the financial system as a whole shattered. it's impossible of course to pin point exact moment the financial crisis began. but clearly a major turning point was when bear stearns collapsed in march 2008, dragged

down by the billions of dollars in toxic mortgage-backed securities, two of its affiliate hedge funds had acquired. but the problem with the mortgages underlying these securities began long before they found a way into the portfolios of the high-grade structured credit fund, and the high-grade structured credit enhanced leverage fund. again, a fundamental principal financial regulation would be circumvented. institutions which profited from the origination and bundling of subprime mortgages had found a way to do so with little or no risk to themselves. during the housing bubble, companies found they could write mortgages and then sell them off, pocketing the origination fee and passing the risk down the securitization chain. some originators bore no risk, since originators bore no risk at every incentive to let underwriting standards slide. in the air of interest on,

option a.r.m. and liar loans, mortgage originators pushed loans out the door with little or no consideration of whether mortgages, mortgage ease would be able to pay. even before the dodd-frank act passed the sec proposed regulations to bring reform to this market. by requiring that securitizers of a because provide investors with a dated and the time needed to analyze independent of the soundness of risk offered, the sounds of the investment or the risk offered by the assets underlying insecurities. bringing as were working to do with title vii greater transparency to an important financial product. this sort of regulation would've given investors insight into the quality of the subprime loan underlying insecurities they purchased. giving them the opportunity to discover just how much risk they were assuming, and it would have required some risk retention as well. title ix attacks a problem even

more broadly. this provision attempts to incentivize high quality origination by requiring that securitizers retain at least 5% of the credit risk of any asset itself. it also prohibits the securitizers from directly or indirectly hedging or otherwise transferring a way that credit risk. using risk retention to provide the -- with investors, minimizes the moral hazard that contributed to the mortgage crisis. the commission jointly with the banking agencies has proposed rules that are designed to improve the quality of underwriting and research by originators and securitizers, and it does so as much but ensuring that market forces are in place as it does the regulatory prescription. it protects investors and the financial system as a whole. the commission has also adopted for the rule to asset-backed securities pursuant to title ix. in january 2011, we adopted

rules that require securitizers to conduct due diligence on asset to their securitizing, and that require them to disclose that's a representation demand, repurchase and replacement history. and again, this will help to protect investors and the financial system as a whole. but this was just a start. and negligence and sometimes outright fraud that too often marked bob litt error mortgage underwriting was compounded by excessive investor reliance on fatally flawed ratings of securities built on top of these loans. as late as january 2008, 64,000 asset-backed securities were rated aaa. unfortunately, as an investigation stated and was found over 90% of the aaa ratings gave into subprime rmbs, originated in 2000, 2006 and 2007 were later downgraded by

the credit rating agencies to junk status. as i mentioned a moment ago the sec begun rule-making designed to lessen investors dependence on breaking agencies in the abs market by dramatically increasing visibility and into the underlying assets. but dodd-frank further that effort. for instance, january 2011, the commission adopted the first approximately dozen required rule-making related to nationally recognized statistical rating organizations, or an srs owns, and rating agencies. and in may 2011, the commission published for public comment a series of proposed rules that would further strengthen the integrity of credit ratings including improving their transparency. additionally the sec has acted to end regulator reliance and reduced investor reliance on credit ratings and to ensure that ratings are produced independently of client

influence yielding more accurate data for investors to analyze. for instance, we removed reference to credit ratings in 18 of our rules and about half of those were removed it for dodd-frank was even passed. and earlier this year as required by the act, will establish the office of credit ratings within the sec which a play key role as we move to finalize rules, including among other things proposals designed to prevent sales and marketing activities from influencing the production of ratings. proposals to make the actual performance of nrsro ratings visible to investors, proposals that would require certification by third parties retain for the purpose of conducting due diligence related to asset-backed securities, proposals that would establish standards for rating and was training experience and competence, as well as putting in place a testing program and proposes to require nrsro is to report on the internal controls. in addition we are also

considering proposing regulations that would require rating agencies to, among other things can be required to protect against any conflicts of interest, even more effectively, provide along with the publication of any credit rating enhanced disclosure about the methodology used to determine that rating come and remove yet further provisions as to credit ratings from our rules. a commitment to fundamental as the basis of reform carries into areas with the connection may seem somewhat less obvious. so-called say on pay regulations which give shareholders regular, non-buying up or down vote on executive compensation packages and golden parachutes is one such case. the sec, of course expresses no opinion regarding the level of executive compensation at a particular company. rather, our interest is in ensuring that in this matter as in other areas of corporate