the rest of the school is pretty close to other universities, but i would say it is balanced. that was a big attraction. >> host: working on another book? >> guest: i am. yes. this is another reason. started this book before i got a job offer at george mason, but this is an expert as they have the time that i was on the admissions committee at ucla, the faculty oversight committee for admissions and sauce and illegal behavior. this is to be a very controversial book. cheating, and insiders report on the use of race in admissions at ucla. you imagine i am not going to make friends with that but. so i think i am pretty certain the would have taken the george mason job anyway, but that definitely help. >> host: and we have been talking with tim groseclose, future george mason university professor to a left turn is the name of his book, a liberal

media bias towards the american mind. and you're watching book tv on c-span2. >> next professor lynn vavreck discusses her book "the gamble" in which she and her co-author evaluate the factors that impacted the top to toe presidential election. this interview, part of book tv pellets series is just over 20 minutes. >> host: the gamble is the name of the book. ucla professor lynn vavreck is a cut-author of this book. lynn vavreck, when you hear the term gained change in politics what does that mean to you? >> guest: it is a great question to start off talking about the 2012 election. it is something that happens during a campaign that fundamentally chefs the ways the election is headed. so if you are behind suddenly you have the chance of becoming at. if you're winning maybe now it really looks like you will start

losing. is something that shakes up the status quo. >> host: are there can changes in elections? >> guest: there certainly and can be. have there been any recently not so much. that does not mean that there are not ever or won't be a big one in the future. but in 2012, 2008, not too many game changes. >> host: let's go back to the first debate between mitt romney barack obama. >> guest: yes. >> host: boehner. >> guest: this is a great example of what can happen when you have unexpected events and cross sectional polling, which is what we get almost entirely from media organizations. let me tell you a little story. to understand the first day we have to back up to the 47% video which happened ten or so days before that. there we are in orange county. mitt romney is caught on tape saying that about 37 percent of the population

ever being in his capital. why should he care, why should he talked to them? and it got a tremendous amount of news coverage. we have panel data, which means that we were tracking the same people over different points of time throughout the whole year. will we saw happen after that 47 percent was that people who had supported kimberly heard about the comment and moved from being romney supporters to being undecided about who they would vote for. very few people are ever going to do that. they hung out there and sell that first debate and romney hit the home run. guess what happened? all of those undecided people who had just become undecided came back to bed romney. was a story you are in the news? tremendous groundswell of support moves to romney after first debate. it was really just the electorate, the people tipping back after 47%.

it was the most brilliant campaign movie ever made. screw up early and have this debate performance and bring everyone back, and look like you have momentum. i was teasing. it was not on purpose. it was an incredible example of how something looks like a game changer and isn't. >> host: were there any game changes in 2012? what moved the deal? >> guest: i have to say that on average than kneele did not move very much ever. that does not mean that there was no movement in the electorate. people are shifting, but those shifts cancel each other out. and so a good 3 percent or so of the electorate is moving around day today. they're not all moving in the same direction, and that keeps the topline result pretty steady. there were no moments that really nice to everyone in one direction or another. >> host: why did barack obama when? >> guest: he won the 2012

election because he was the incumbent president providing over a slowly growing economy with just enough growth that things were going to be -- things were set up for his advantage. not a huge amount of growth, but it was a good amount. slow, but not- >> host: is it always the economy? >> guest: it not always. the state of the nation's economy, not people's personal finances, but the state of the nation's economy does play a fundamental role. if he did not know anything else and he had the bed which party was hard to win a presidential election in the united states and you could know the change in the growth rate in the six months prior to the election he could do pretty well at predicting. he would be like 75 percent of the time. i fully admit that a monkey flipping a coin could be right 50 percent of the time. the we're going to do better than that. we will be right 75 percent

of the time. the economy is always important problem. in 2008 challengers who are not responsible for global financial crises will do very well. it does not always happen. there are some cases where the people who are not predicted to win, round and win the elections. but those elections are always very, very close, the closest and our nation's history. and that is actually quite hard to do. romney had his work cut out for him from the start. >> host: how do we view our president when we go into the booth? >> guest: okay. i think that there are a couple of different ways to think about how voters make decisions. i would say the most prominent theories of understanding voters go like this. party identification is a really loud and important

signal to voters. as a shortcut and in many ways a pretty efficient on the fine know that mostly i agree with democrats on these issues are republicans on these issues and the candidates shows up and says i'm a republican or i'm a democrat, instead of taking the time to learn about them and their issue positions i can use that signals a short cut. the second theory is slightly different. and that is why i like to call a janet jackson terry the voting. what have you done for me lately. people think about the presidential election and evaluate the incumbent party and say, what as the incumbent party done for me lately. if things are good, the economy is growing, not at war, they re-elect the incumbent, the reward performance. i would say those are the two biggest competing theories of how voters make decisions. >> host: lynn vavreck, what is your position at ucla? >> guest: a professor of computer science and communications studies.

>> host: what are you currently teaching? >> guest: i just finished teaching the very large and direction to american politics. i teach a course on the 1960's, american in the 1960's that is interdisciplinary with some folks in the humanities. >> host: what did you call your book "the gamble"? >> guest: great question. tear a great title for the book because there were several bets being placed at the start of the 2012 election. we wrote the book in real time and we published electronically as each chapter's as the campaign will run. we did not actually know how the book would end when we began writing and publishing it. it was only after the election we corrected it into the physical but the church of the inner and. we needed a title that would be somewhat flexible not matter what the outcome was. without there was the gamble that bark obama faced growing the slowly growing

economy. there was a gamble that that romney faced. what should he talk about. should he point out that obama had not restore the economy to its full levels prior to the financial crisis, or should we talk about something else entirely. then there was a gamble that voters faced. should they return an incumbent president to the white house who only brought slow-growth back to the united states economy are should they take their chances of a challenger who claims that he can do better then, of course, the obvious gamble that it was for us to my couple of political scientists trying to enter the conversation with journalists writing election into history. >> did mitt romney ever have a chance of winning? >> absolutely. yes. he had a chance. you know, but it was going to be hard for him always. >> host: we heard a lot about barack obama's field strategy, getting out the

vote, field offices. you covered that. >> guest: we do. we went end of of the addresses of the romney in the obama field offices before the campaign ended. a new way the campaign said that they had local field staff. i went and visited some field offices in color of the county in ohio and the bank county. and in lake county. we get a sense of the operations of both obama and romney field offices. and here is one of the important takeaways of the book. to the well-financed and highly professional, capable candid it's running presidential campaigns, lot of what they do is going to cancel out. we see that over and over again, not only in the field operation but in the advertising. they have a lot of money. in the groups supporting them have a lot of money.

and so when barack obama has an advantage in the field operation that is not as if that happens in a vacuum. the rummy field staff is in the county somewhere. cell at the end of the day the obama field operation probably had a beer affect whether romney fill operation, but they needed to mobilize more voters than the republicans needed. so baker sometimes does not necessarily mean better investment of dollars provoked. >> host: at the same time you said even a problem but didn't have this field operation he still would have one. >> guest: that's right. the effect that we think he got advantage over romney. the extra votes were smaller than the margin, the overall margin in most faiths. maybe not in all states, but in most states. and not in enough states for it to affect the electoral

college. >> host: could make romney had increases elaboration toe with the election? >> guest: we don't think that's possible. we think that the romney campaign actually made a lot of great strategic decisions and invested a lot of money in late advertising. if they were going to make up any of the advantage that barack obama had from just being the incumbent president, having a fully grown economy was worth a little bit. he was going to make it up in those last couple of weeks by just being on the air everywhere. and they really did that. they could not have purchased enough advertising to close at initial gap, that benefit that obama had from being the incumbent in a growing economy. >> host: you have some mathematical analysis in here, but then you conclude by saying that if they had run the hands the day before the election rather than eight days before the election and would have made

a difference. >> well, a couple of things. advertising decays quickly. that is one of the interesting takeaways. yes, there is an impact, a natural but it does not last forever. it goes away fast. so late advertising makes the difference. but the romney campaign could not have advertise enough of the end to close the gap as it existed coming into that last week. it would have been impossible. >> host: are voters really undecided? >> guest: well, yes is the answer. there certainly are undecided voters, and there certainly are, you know, 40 percent of the voting eligible population who don't shop. i think need to not make too much of that. people a busy. working two jobs, raising children. they don't necessarily have

the time to actually go to the poll, figure out where the polling places to buy go there and vote. i try not to make too much out of the fact that turnout is now 100 percent of america. the campaign's a doing a great job of trying to reach out to lower propensity voters and get them to the polls, both side of the political spectrum. and to the extent that we care about a full electorate, i think that is commendable. but there are undecided voters. people move into and out of that undecided category one out of every ten people to that a couple of times during the campaign. and in the last couple six weeks people without a party identification really are moving around a lot. >> host: lynn vavreck, as you know, the news media loves the horse race and the numbers. and a while back there was an early 2016 poll, hillary clinton 53 to budget bush

41. as a political scientist, i interpret that for us. >> guest: the first thing i would say is that it's way too early to think that that is actually meaningful for those two people. it may be meaningful for their party, but at this point in 2007 and thinks client everyone was sure. we ended up with was barack obama and john mccain. it's way too early. said to the extent that people a drug dealer glenn and jeb bush, that's telling . the thing to watch for 2016 is help the economy is doing, the democratic party,

if we see more of a high level of growth it will be the democrats' election to lose. >> host: when we look back, will the health care debate make a difference? >> guest: this is a great question. people often think that those kinds of pivotal issues, immigration, health care, taxing the rich, these must. the fact is that most of the people to -- the war on women is not a great example. most of the people who are going to vote for barack obama because he stood up to rush limbaugh, those people were already in his camp. and so these kinds of key focal issues actually sway very few voters to switch sides. there is very little

switching between the parties during a presidential election. maybe four or 5 percent of the people who will do that once. i have to say that think it's unlikely that things like immigration and health care are going to reshuffle the electorate. >> host: we often hear that voters like us but government, the light congress and one party in the president. to people think about that when they go to the polls? >> guest: they think about party edification. i know i sound like a broken record. i think that is a little bit of an exaggeration at this point to say that it's important for people to have divided government. that may have been more true in previous decades, but what has happened, like it or not, is that both political parties now are very well sorted into the kinds of interest groups that they are made up of and

the kind of issues that they support. and so that is great if you're a voter because you know what it means now and say, but democrat or a more republican. provides a little bit less flexibility. all little less overlap between the parties. so very few voters are going to make their choice about who to vote for in the senate or the house based on the fact that they have voted for one party for the president and what the other party to be in one of the chamber's. most of those elections are all about incumbency, party identification. the people who split their tickets tend to be less informed of politics and less aware of politics in general. so it is a less sophisticated voter, not a more sophisticated voters with the ticket. >> host: added you get interested in this? >> guest: i became interested in politics when i was very young and when on

vacation with my mom and dad to mexico. end when we thought about the condition of some of the villages that i had seen, it just made a comment to my dad that the next president can help the people of mexico. my father made webster a thought was the very offhanded comment, it's not a real election. as in eight year-old it really struck me. what to you mean it's not a reelection? can i thought it was terrible thing. i just became very interested in making sure that there were good campaigns and that people got the information they needed to make the best possible choice to help improve their lives. >> why did he say that? >> it was one party and it was not really going to the competition. you know, it was not the kind of election that i thought it was being a young american child.

>> host: ways you go to school? >> guest: i grew up in cleveland and went to arizona state on a scholarship. went to graduate school at the university of rochester in western new york. >> host: how long have you been at ucla? >> guest: i been here 12 years. .. >> i want to do it, and let's write this book in realtime. so it really was a gamble. >> host: is it hard to write a

book coast to coast? >> guest: it is at the same time incredibly hard, but if you're trying to write the book quickly and in less than a year, it's actually brilliant because there were weeks where we worked every hour of the clock, you know? the time change in that case really works for you, and when i would go to bed at three in the morning, he was getting up at six in the morning, and he could pick the project back up and work on it until i finished teaching, and i could pick it up. so it's not ideal, you can't do it forever, but you can do it for nine months. >> host: how important are the republican national committee and the democratic national committee? >> guest: they are becoming, i think, important collectors of tools and data for parties. and both parties are doing this. they understand the value of knowing who the voters are in the various states and how often they vote and how many times they've been touched by a

campaign. and being a clearinghouse for that kind of information and for institutionalizing the kinds of things that the obama campaign did in '08 and '12. so whoever their nominee is in 16 will reap some of those benefits for the infrastructure that they built and put in. and i think that is not only a benefit for candidates and is voters, but also for scholars and reporters and people who are interested in chronicling these things. so i think it really is moving in a good direction. >> host: just a little bit from "the gamble." ucla professor lynn vavreck. this is book telephone of c-span d booktv on c-span2. >> you're watching booktv on c-span2, 48 hours of nonfiction authors and bookses every weekend. booktv, television for serious readers. >> now on booktv, juan cole looks at the impact of millennials in the middle east and the role