or some economic or know what is interested in it, depending on how easy it is to get to, the harder it is to get you, the more money is going to take it as the price goes up there is more money available to get it. this whole chart can be summarized as an analogy in the oil and gas industry. the oil and gas found out is called unconventional. ..

lists of minerals and strategic and critical, they differ from time to time and because of economic conditions. they do infer a supply chain which marc is going to get into here a little while. they also, infer that there is foreign imports either partial or total. so that is of interest to us. and there could be severe economic repercussions if, for shortage of critical minerals and of course national security concerns tells you that mineral is strategic. this is, as i said, one of the best probably sources on the topic and again, the definitions are a little squishy but they say that there are minerals that actually dictate the economic health of the nation or strategic minerals will always

be critical, but critical minerals will not always be strategic, okay? now, here the different metals and element involved in both classes and you can read that. the books get into it in detail. i don't want to belabor too much today. notice strategic minerals include rare earths. fissionable materials as platinum and phosphorus displays in the military especially. speaking of which, national security is urgent, when we need a mineral we need it. basically if you look right here at what is required for two jet engines for a fighter aircraft, it's surprising how much and what but even more of a surprise how much of that we have to import and it is really something that gives us pause as far as our military requirements.

i want to go through now a series of maps and just to show you the geology behind critical minerals. you know, this is a generalization of polly metallic deposits worldwide. the mine locations, trading partners are fixed in space and time depending what country. the geology is fixed. they're there, whoever is in power whatever but the deposits are there. if we look, bore down and look at strategic and critical minerals like platinum, for example, rare others, there are much fewer deposits and they're scattered and pair that on this image to copper. you see it almost on every continent. the critical platinum and rare earth are the black squares and black dots. much, much, more restrictive. now, part of the reason we're

concerned is because over the last 60 years this is what happened. in the '50s, we were hardly reliant at all. if you see here in the lower left corner, number of minerals from other countries, many of them friendly. 30 years later in the '80s, we had more and more imports beginning with russia now and even china. and by the year 2014, 60 years later, we're importing dozen and dozens and dozens of minerals, a lot of them from china, many from canada and partner and other places in the world where we wished we didn't have to be. the countries who are most stable in the world are the best trading partners. the white house has come out, office of science and technology policy come out with a report which they give a stability index or governance index involving stability, economics,

political, what have you and basically the best countries are are in green. the most stable, the ones in red are to be avoided if possible. if that is only source of a mineral like cobalt from central africa, there is not much you can do about it. closer to home we have the polly metal i can minerals in the united states. h they're mainly in the united states. those are fixed by their geology. rare earth, there are little artisnal occurrences. there is one mine in mountain pass in california. the company that ran it declared bankruptcy. right now the united states has zero commercial rare earth production. the bear lodge, wyoming situation i will get to here in a bit.

that is our next best and only hope to produce rare earths that we need right now. i will end my section by showing you this. since there are no commercial mines in operation now, if i go to this slide, you can see, yes, there aren't any from the united states but look at the big 800-pound gorilla down there, we have 95 plus percent production from china and they basically cornered the market on rarers. japan knows. we know it. everybody knows it. this is something that although the price came way, way down, still, they have the market and it is something to be reckoned with. i now will bring up marc humphries. he will talk about supply and demand of critical minerals. >> thank you, ned, thank you pat for the intro.

i work for the congressional research service which is a research arm of congress. we do non-partisan, objective policy analysis for members, staff, for members and committee staff and i've been working on mineral issues for the past 28 years there. this is just a little repetitive here but this is a definition taken from the national research council's book. they tried to separate out the difference between critical and strategic, saying strategic may be more of the military focus where we know they have a national strategic stockpile. and the critical minerals may focus more on the economic and civilian needs. so a little repetitive but the

main thing with the national research council's report, they talked about was their framework. they established a framework that is widely used around the world to define what is criticality. what is the criticality of different minerals. and they try to use this matrix here to show supply risks on one axis and the importance of use and, let's say lack of substitutes on the other axis, further right you go, more critical the material might be. this is just an example of some of the minerals that they looked at to kind of classify. one of the key things that came out of this, this is a fluid or dynamic type of assessment. this was done around 2008 or 7. it was redone again by the department of energy which looked at using the same matrix

to try to classify where the minerals would fit on this matrix, whether they're critical, near critical, not critical. but as it is fluid, so this contains at anytime, contains year to year. what i've done is also highlight this import reliance chart and it is hard to read but there are 19 minerals that the u.s. is 100% import-reliant on at this point and if you go on down, there are many year that you're import reliant on but not 100%. i've taken several of these minerals and looked at them more closely to try to highlight the minerals that are being used in the high-tech world, the clean energy world, and to show where the supply and demand, what it looks like, what it looked like over the past 20 years.

the key thing here though is not so much that we're 100 or 90% or 75% import dependent but key thing to know where the minerals are coming from, what countries are supplying them, who are the companies involved in production. 100% import dependent on bauxite is not the same as 100% import on nyobium. meaning for bauxite you have several countries and several companies involved in production. most of the countries are friendly an allied countries. so there is less political risk and perhaps less financial risk involved in the production of some of the minerals that the we're 100% dependent on. the united states has a framework, they have a policy

framework and this just kind of spells it out here, that there is interest in method of exploration and production if possible but there is also interest in developing reliable trade partners, reliable supply of these minerals. so it is not just the emphasis on domestic production but also on securing supplies from around the world and to get the most reliable access as possible. there are some of the minerals that i'm looking at. these are not classified as strategic or critical minerals necessarily. this is just a list that's been looked at. these minerals have been looked at by the national research council, the department of energy, they have been looked at by the european union, because of their importance in the, as i mentioned earlier and high-tech and clean energy world.

also national security and defense applications as well. these are vitally important and they have been looked at more over the last eight or newspaper nine years, just as in the past we looked at supplies the platinum, cobalt, chromium, lead, zinc, minerals that were focused or produced primarily in africa and where the alternative supplier might have been russia or soviet union at the time this kind of analysis and assessments have been taking place for decades but the list of minerals has changed recently. this indicates where the united states is a pretty healthy consumer of these materials. they have gone up in most categories. most of these have gone up tremendously.

nyobium, rare others, vanadium the real story of consumption is not the united states but the china which consumption of these materials has gone through the earth. this is the drawing concern china is producing most of these. they have supply chains where they're refining, making metal alloys and end products, part end products and these are materials that the united states is heavily dependent on as well. this is where folks are looking generally for minerals over all. most of this money is involved in gold and other precious metals but this just gives you an idea where the money is being spent.

the united states is still a destination point even though it has 7% in 2014. remember that is 7% of $10 billion or $750 million. so the amount of money has gone up in the united states. it has been consistent where in 199it was about 350 million, we're now it is up $750 million. so, you can see where folks have been looking. it is just, many in cases, these high-tech metals are either not found or not found in economic quantities here and there are better or lower cost producers elsewhere in the world that we have trade relations with, okay? here is the snapshot of some of the world reserves of these

materials. this chart and the next chart really just let you know the concentration of where these minerals are located, where you can see almost half of the cobalt reserves are in the congo. lithium, two suppliers have well over half of the reserves of lithium. south africa and ukraine have more than half of the manganese. niobium almost all in one country. platinum, same thing almost all in south africa. the rare others are more dispersed but china is the main producer as we know, even though they have only about 42% of known reserves. they still are producing 85% of rare earth materials. tantium is a little odd. u.s. imports that but most of

the reserves are in australia and brazil. half the production is taken place in the rwanda and congo. they really don't know what is going on with it. antium. australia you is not producing any longer. they were where are the reserve numbers? a lot of the information is not available. here is the production picture here. the production side has really changed dramatically in 20 years. it has gone up tremendously. and this is where production has taken place again.

if the concentration of production. so when the united states is 100% dependent on niboium imports. you have 90% from one country. 95% of the reserves in one country, that is cause for some concern at least to assess the vulnerability of supply. how much we're importing. how vulnerable is the united states to disruptions. whether it be political instability, labor strikes, catastrophic disasters. if there is one source of supply, and there is no capacity, or little capacity elsewhere, that could be a concern. slip down the chart here where you see there is 50% coming from rwanda but no real assessment of reserves going on there.

china 85%. lithium, between two countries well over 50% here. same with cobalt. manganese, three countries dominating production of manganese. and vanadium. china, south africa. so this is, so, the production is only one side of it. there are costs and concern, when it comes to vulnerability. assessing vulnerability of sources of supply. but, that is own hely part of the picture. i put this slide up to show rest of the picture that has to be looked at. when you assess each mineral on its own, take each one, look at entire supply chain to see where the vulnerabilities might be along the way. not just in production. production may be bad enough,

when it comes to rare others supplies. but then, what about the separating, reduction to metal, forming alloys, magnets, manufacturing permanent magnets. all this is essential. where is the supply chain for each of these minerals we might consider possible critical minerals. and that i think needs to be an area that needs to be, you need to drill down on a little deeper, looking at each material that's possibly critical and where the supply chain is. and, there is a lot of concern about building our supply chain for rare others in the united states. a lot of interest on capitol hill ands elsewhere. and you know, the thing is, what has to happen is, to be able to have a reliable supply chain, wherever it is.

so if in fact a complete supply chain is not developed on domestic soil, it may be that with partnerships, with collaborations, between countries and companies, reliable supply chains can be built out around the world. as long as it is reliable, okay. that is the key and i think the concern here is that with rare earth elements this may not be a reliable supply chain for the united states that depends particularly on the permanent magnets for both the high-tech, clean energy and national security needs of the country. i think that's, that's about it. okay? >> all right.

okay. and final leg of the talk i'd like to get into some issues that place pressure on our u.s. mining industries such as it is right now. and i'm going through a four slides and we'll talk about them and you'll see i think four different types of pressure, experienced by the mining industry and then we'll get into what they're going to do about it because they do provide us critical minerals and if they're pressured and they can't, like molycorp, declare bankruptcy, then we've got a bigger issue on our hands. first i want to spotlight legal pressure. there are lawsuits, single issue, sometimes environmental issue lawsuits that can stop a company's progress in its tracks.

land use limitations fall under that. the costs for litigation are increasing. that's for sure. we see more and more of it here in the center for the study of science where companies are having to litigate their way toward the permit application they by law should have had a right to file for and it didn't happen. the case of the pebble mine in alaska comes, comes to the fore there. certain lands are legally off limits but as i said earlier the geology is fixed. you can't do anything about it. so you've got to work around that problem. some of these does pits can probably be, will never be accessed. that is also an issue and i will get to that in a minute. let's get to access. federal land withdrawals are one of the probably the worst ways to stymie access to federal

minerals. withdrawal federal lands often happens without accounting of the minerals, depending who is in charge minerals may not be a priority to them but deposits, once withdrawn can never be accessed. and that is something that maybe could be turned around but but you go back into the legal bin. new programs have to be initiated and relocated once you're going to withdraw lands. and without the exploration as marc pointed out here, we can't really fully assess the balance of our mineral deposit checkbook so to speak. we need to explore for even, if we're not going to mine, we need to know what it is that is in the ground. time is another pressure felt by the mining industry because if you look at these stats in the

last 16 years, including this year, only 14 major metal mines, remember those metallic mines i showed you, less than one a year were started. the time to obtain a permit to start those mines is increasing more and more each year. minimum is six years. maximum can be over two decades. this is documented, well-documented. the average is about 10 years. i will show you that, but basically those times don't even include the pre, the premining exploration and the environmental baseline studies that have to be done as well as feasibility studies. the fourth type of pressure is financial because when a company has a deposit, and the permit is not forthcoming, every month, year of delay the value of the

deposit goes down, down and down more, okay? that is very critical to companies. the other thing is that the price of the commodity over long periods of time is shifting. it is like a moving target and hard for them to plan. the declining value of the mine can be as much as a third, maybe even a half if the time delay is significant. and although marc showed pretty robust exploration dollars spent in the united united states the interest is waning with the increase of permit application time that is required. that is a fact. now, this isn't ned mamula's numbers. the gao came out with a report earlier this year, everything you've seen in these slides is pretty much documented in the report. let me highlight some of the things that they have come up with. first of all, three key findings, and i think it's important.

first, the quality of mine plans submit to the federal land management agency in charge is sometimes very substandard. you may have a junior mining partner submit a plan. they don't have any experience. maybe it's on the back of envelope type thing. no. homework needs to be done. regulations need to be followed and mine plan needs to be dutifully filled out and sent in. so there is some fault on the industry side. on the other side of the ledger, we know, for a fact, that gao has pointed out, and documented that poor allocation of land management agency resources, that's documented. and the way they did it, they looked specifically forest service and blm and they have these examples that i will show you in a minute. third agencies are not effective at managing the mine plan review process. it can be really get out -- it

has gotten out of control. i remember when i was with the usgs, we did all of the work out of the usgs conservation division. all mine plan permitting, approvals, review of the drilling plan, environmental plan, mine plan, everything. it was done promptly, usually got out the door on time. we had pretty good relationship with industry. things got done, environmental law, we were underneath the law, everything was handled. but as that was taken away and bureau of mines was dissolved, and the land management agencies don't have enough geologists to staff up, they get further and further behind despite their best efforts. the gao report main graphic is this one and it shows, during a four-year period of 2010 to 2014 they looked at about 60 mine plan permits submitted between forest service and blm. here is the allocation of those mine plan approvals, in terms of

the time it took to do the approval. two things about this chart. number one, it ends all the way to the right by saying, more than 48 months. all right, that is four years and you don't he see all the way up to the six, 10 and 20 figures that i gave you earlier. so that is sort of artificially truncated there. okay, we'll give them that. what you don't see here though and you wouldn't know if i didn't tell you, a lot of these plans, permits, ones approved quickly for minerals such as zelites, sand, gravel, materials not critical. they're more easily and quickly permitted whereas the other critical, pollymetallics take time. remember i said, since 2000 there have only been 14 mines approved. so that factors into this chart but not explained as such.

when you compare the united states to the rest of the world here's where we stand. we are in the seven to 10 up category for permitting. australia and canada have been mining longer than we have perhaps, and they really know how to handle it. their permitting time is short. chile, probably one of the world's largest copper producers is sort of right in the middle, between two and seven. they have, other countries around the world, you would be surprised are getting on board with environmental restrictions and that's a good thing and it is taking more time but we are probably by far the worst as far as the time taken that takes for permit to be issued. now, let's look, for example, at a case study. and this is called the bear lodge, high-grade, rare earth element deposit in eastern wyoming.

this is very, very important and no one here probably has the intimate knowledge of this. i spent some time with the officers of this company. here's what they told me and then i researched it on my own. when i melded everything together, this is what i found. these red dots here are the operating rare earth element mines on this planet. notice, most of them are in china. one or two in india. one or two in finland. the mountain pass mine in california, you see there, is no longer operating. so that's out of the, out of production. the next slide now you see, advanced rare earth projects worldwide. these are not mines now but these are projects where they're trying to become a mine. and you notice bear lodge is there in wyoming. they are working on that as best as they could.

australia is also trying to gear up as is south africa. even the, denmark is working on greenland. there are some deposits there. but the thing that makes bear lodge wyoming a, not only a critical mineral but a strategic mineral deposit part of the following. first of all, as marc indicated china produces most of the rarers, he also mentioned they consume 60% of what they produce. they are going, they themselves are going to have to import by 2020. so how is that going to happen? on top of that, we have the molycorp bankruptcy last year. no production. and we find china is buying up the best of the rest worldwide. that we know for a fact. the bear lodge deposit, right now, is classed as the richest rare earth deposit in the western hemisphere, maybe the world. it is so important to the

department of defense that they want the operation, they want the mine operating now. i will get to that in a minute. let's look at bear creek, bear lodge quickly. i am really surprised by the small, relatively small footprint of this operation being 900 acres. over 45-year lifespan. that's interesting to me. and, as i said, it is the most advanced project for rare others but it is not yet a mine and there is reason for that. i think you see where i'm going with this. there has been a whopping problem with the permitting process for bear lodge. let me walk you through this slide, try to explain why there is a problem. number one, they began work in 2004. so they have been up there for 14 years.

they have run into a land management agency that does not exercise in a timely manner or in the spirit of nepa their authority as the lead agency. there also is an anti-project agency bias in the employees that has to do with the development of that deposit. and i'd like to point out that just this past weekend in the paper, there was a expose' about the foot-dragging and outside collusion of employees from the epa with regard to the pebble mine in alaska, and legal deposition has it dead to rights. the fact employee admitted it. so this is not just unique to pebble. it goes on, whether we like it or not. whether we think it doesn't, it does. additional time was lost by the

owners of the deposit because of the restrictions asked of them. for example, they were asked to put tailings back in the mine while they're mining. they were asked to build too steep, too long access roads across private property for which they could not obtain permission. there has been over a year-long delay in the final environmental statement. and in the end, this is what happened. rare earth resources corporation basically asked the federal government to suspend because they no longer had the cash to continue. dod is furious, absolutely furious and this is why. the virginia class ballistic missile submarine replacement from the ohio class to the virginia class is going to occur and it is going to occur by replacing the nuclear powered

mechanical drive in the ohio class with the rare earth magnet drive, stealthy drive in the virginia class. this is going to require so much rare earth element material, that, well, not so much, whatever, here's the point. that number is classified. the only source of that material on this planet for the virginia class ballistic missile subs is either from the australianss who are feverishly working to get up and running on their own or guess what? china. do you think for a minute china is going to sell rare earth elements to the department of defense for the virginia class? probably not. in fact, they're working on their own stealthy sub and that something that dod is also struggling with. considering the bear lodge

example we're going to wrap up here for questions. i want to talk to you briefly about how better we can secure our mineral future because something clearly has to be done. number one, we really need in this country to improve federal stewardship, we really do. in fact certain state do a magnificent job with stewardship. they know how to land manage. they know how to permit. they know how to collect royalty rental. they know how to lease. they understand reclamation and they understand the concept of multiple land use. if i have a quarry here and i'm done quarrying, i fill it with water, i have a body of water. i can stock it with fish, it has another life. multiple land use is over a century old and sometimes it would be better just to forget about it as far as the land management agency goes. a typical blm permit takes almost a year.

this isn't ned, these are statistics from gao and others. up in north dakota you can get a permit for drilling in about 10 days. now there is congressional legislation right now pending on this and we'll see how that happens but just, give you an idea, the legislation for minerals is inside of the energy bill. so the energy bill passed the senate and then of course it is in conference now and it's maybe going to be signed, maybe not but the hope of the mineral bill being passed depends on its host, the energy bill. we'll see how that goes. in the long term, what can we do to appreciate our reliance on critical minerals? and the first thing is, that we are reliant and portend to our

economic health and secondly, our high-tech standard of living, if i want these things, these gadgets, i've got to have those minerals, no way around them. there are no substitutes for them yet. we need also to map all of the domestic deposits. i remember when i started with the survey, their mission, from 1879 by president hayes was to go out and map all the lands and survey all the materials located therein. and that hasn't been done. they have trade a little bit, well, they trade from their mission and that needs to be corrected. we need to also consider disallowing more of these large, multimillion acre withdrawals. it does no one any good. we have taken the land out. we don't know what the minerals are. if there is crisis we don't know what our bank balance is in terms of mineral wealth. we need to identify geopolitical

imports. i shown how much we have grown in import dependence and so has mark, and we're going to do that. industries and universities can form partnerships. some of good ones, doe, penn state, my alma mater, partnered up and penn state is bringing up rare others out of coal dust or coal debris companies don't want. they are pulling out without any effort using eye ontic exchange personality. they are pulling half a percent. with no effort, almost no additional effort they're prepared to pull out 2% and on and on. so that's a coming. additional legislation would maybe support industry, university projects and leave the government out of it. i draw the analogy to you here in our closing minutes to the u.s. energy picture and

environmental stewardship. you know, ladies and gentlemen, we are the number one producer of oil and gas in the world right now. we clawed and scratched our way to top, and by analogy and our minerals and mining and critmineral industry can do the same thing. we can improve our ways to the top of the heap. mining is not the way it was done by your grandfather years and years ago. it is environmentally sensitive and i've seen some of these sites, so has dr. michaels. these companies do not want bad press when they mine and drill and produce resources. they want clean, nice, good media coverage for the good work they have tried to do. in summary, we need a better way to get a huge commitment to our industry, just like they have

given to us. we want to start with improved federal stewardship and i think what i'll do, ladies and gentlemen, is i'll leave it there and we'll take, marc and i, any questions. i thank you very much for your attention. [applause] >> when we get a question, please wait to be called on and wait for the microphone of the microphone is walking back there and walking toward you. do announce your name and affiliation. i don't know why we like that but we really do. i learned something at this talk and a new phrase which is geopolitically correct. i don't know where i use it. geopolitical correctness should be studied at a lot of universities very soon. so, let's have questions. mr. keeley.

>> all my life, terrance keeley here, cato. all my life -- >> you are with? >> you. science unit at cato. all my life i've been told that we're about to run out of copper, we're about to run out of this, or about to run out. are we actually running out of these or is this merely a strategic thing we don't want chinese controlling these resources? >> yeah, dr. keeley, remember back in the slide i showed you, the distinction between reserves and resources? okay. what really is hard to wrap your head around sometimes, is the more we produce of a commodity out of the ground the amount of reserves goes up because we, as we produce, we discover more and better and more ways to discover more. so it is like a squirrel cage. so for some of the commodities

like copper, we're in no real danger of running out, although we still do import some and you know, as marc said there are supply chains but for the more critical ones we haven't done enough exploration on federal lands because we can't get in there. remember i told you about access issues? until we start to really inventory more there is the possibility of running out. i hope that answers your question. >> down here. >> thank you. very interesting presentations. i'm gary merritt, ex-state department. i'm curious about two things. one, there has been no mention of the possibilities with recycleing.

it is no doubt, a small percentage but from critically strategic prespectives, recycling has to be on the table i should think. the second is, my confusion about if it's a critical, if rare earth resources are critical for virginia class propulsion systems, why is it that it has to be a private sector or private corporation? is that the only way we can think about it, if it is so critical. are there not federal options somehow that could be on the table? i know that is heretical in this setting to ask that question but a word or two i would appreciate. >> you want to take it?

you want to do it? and then i'll come back. >> on the recycling issue there are is effort now underway at the department of energy to look at recycling of possible critical minerals. >> we'll leave this discussion to go live now to panel of election experts as they share their thoughts on upcoming political elections. this is from the american enterprise institute. >> we have michael barone and norm ornstein. friends of john fortier from the bipartisan policy center and henry olson from the ethics in public policy center. yesterday indiana held it is first competitive and consequential primary in 40 years. little did we know how consequential it was. we'll be discussing the results and what we're watching going forward. there are 188 days until the general election. i should add 13 days until portions of the make kelly trump interviews will air.

i would like to step back to learn what the voters thus for. polls are the general election have some predictive value at some point but they're much more valuable as we get close toward campaign. last night donald trump cite ad recent "rasmussen poll" which he led hillary clinton by three points. what he didn't say, if the 60 most recent polls on "real clear politics" he led her in only three. henry olson will talk about the soul of the gop and the democratic parties in a few minutes but let me first talk quickly about what we've learned about republicans and democratic and primary/caucus voters. these numbers have been updated to include indiana results in every state vote remembers more conservative than they were in 2008. in every state voters in democratic contests have been more liberal than they were in 2008. in indiana 67% of the voters in the democratic contest describe

themselves as liberal. in 2008 there according to abc's ace analyst gary langer liberals were 39% of the voters there. in every state except vermont and new hampshire a majority or plurality of voters in democratic contests said the next president should continue obama's policies. in vermont and new hampshire more voters in those democratic contests wanted the next president to be more liberal than to continue his policies. still in all of these contest as significant chunk of democratic voters wanted the next president to be more liberal. in every democratic contest except one for which we have exit poll the economy has been the top issue. in vermont, not surprisingly the economy tied with income inequality. again on the democratic side, health care and inequality have been roughly tied for second place in most states. terrorism ranked behind each of these other issues for democrats everywhere. in 13 democratic contests where the exit poll consortium asked

the question, voters in democratic contests said that the economic system favs the rich. in new york, and a few other states, voters have been asked about wall street. in new york's democratic contest 63% said that wall street hurts the u.s. economy. only 30% says that it helped. 87% of those voters in new york side that they were worried about the direction of the u.s. economy in the next few years. that is fairly familiar finding in the polls that asked the question. voters in the new york gop primary also agreed wall street hurts the u.s. economy but more narrowly, 48% gave that response. on the gop side, in 18 contests where they have asked the question between 63 and 78% of those in the republican contests favored a temporary ban on muslims who are not u.s. citizens from entering the country. in only two of 19 states where the voters in gop contests were asked about illegal immigration,

did majorities favor deporting illegal immigrants working in the united states. in 18 states, solid pluralities or majorities of voters in gop contests said illegal immigrants should be offered a chance to apply for legal status. in 15 of 16 states where they asked the question, half or more of voters in gop contests said they felt betrayed by gop politicians and many of them were angry. cruz won the evangelical vote in eight of 25 states. trump won in the rest including indiana where they were 61% of all voters. cruz won the votes of very conservative voters in 14 of those 26 states where we have polls. the exit pollsters asked about trade in seven democratic contests with the exception of ohio, where a majority said takes away jobs, voters in these democratic contests were pretty evenly split. they asked about trade in six gop contests.

in every case, a majority of voters in gop contests said that it takes away jobs. in every case, more republicans than democrats said trade takes away jobs. thus far, hillary has won fewer total votes than she garnered that she lost in 2008. there are fascinating stories from the exit polls. we'll have full run of results in june issue of aei political report that comes out in late may. i should offer special thanks to heather sims and eleanor o'neill. eleanor is the delegate tracker throughout the campaign and kept us on top of convention rules and heather and eleanor are essential helping me put out aei's political report. a few final notes the exit poll in indiana had fascinating reports that point to problems for trump and clinton in the future. 26% of the voters who didn't vote for trump said they wouldn't support him.

59% of the gop voters wanted candidate outside establishment a key to trump's appeal yet 24% of the indiana gop voters said they would be scared if he won and 18% concerned. he won women by six points there but men by 26. the gender gap and marriage gap will be problems for him in the fall particularly among white women. hillary still has a big problem with men. bernie sanders did extremely well in indiana last night among young people. the indiana poll again pointed to hillary's weaknesses on honesty and integrity and on compassion, on caring about people like you and me. 3/4 of democrats said they expected her to win. that is just a quick summary of some of the interesting highlights from the exit poll. i'm now going to turn to michael barone and we would like you to just look back for a moment, how did trump do it? i looked back at polls this morning, may 2015, month before

he announced he was 3% in the republican field. michael. >> well, thank you very much karolyn we'll look back and progress of john fremont looking at winning first republican presidential nomination in 1886. mark shields was at that convention. he can remember that for you. i didn't make it until 1860. so this, it's, one of the interesting things here we've got, by my definition of presumptive nominee, that is to say one who has got a majority of delegates in hand, committed or is on the way to getting them without visible opposition, the republican party has got a presumptive nominee before the democratic party. donald trump meets that definition. hillary clinton doesn't. she certainly will within the next few weeks barring something utterly unbelievable but it's, nonetheless, she's still got

opposition from bernie sanders. she failed to carry indiana, a state that she carried eight years ago and so, we are going to have to wait i guess until june 7th for her to be presumptive nominee as donald trump is for the republican party. i think, one way you can look at the outcome of both parties races is that the, both parties would have been better served, at least from the point of view of their traditional leaders if they had adopted the other party's delegate allocation rules. [laughter]. well, you laugh. there is some people on both the democratic and republican parties that are crying about this. but, the trump, who spent much of the month of april complaining about rig the rules and so forth has been a huge beneficiary of the rules of the republican party which are designed for a party that has a solid core of supporters thought

would usually find plurality winners of early primaries to be acceptable. that has not been a description of the republican party this year. but it enabled donald trump to amass a very big delegate lead without winning a majority of voters in any state, any contest between february 1st and april 19th. he got 35% in new hampshire. that was a big win. 33% in the main caucus next door was a loss. got 32% of the vote in south carolina. that would have been a leadser next door in north carolina or virginia. he got 36 of% was a win in michigan. next door in ohio, 36% was a loss for donald trump. when he has combined opposition he had occasion to fail to win votes as he had in ohio or john kasich or ted cruz in wisconsin.

what we have seen is that in the month of april and time between april 5th and may 3rd you have a significant quantum of republican voters seemed to have been turned off by the idea of a contested convention, by the idea of a cruz-kasich deal to emphasize different states, by the idea of the cruz forces getting delegates support, second ballot delegate support in states where trump had one or gotten pluralities in the primaries. you see not only in the northeastern states, six northeastern states that voted april 19 and 26 where trump gets majority first time, majorities of the votes but does so in indiana in contrast to the surrounding states with somewhat similar demographics before that. i think that represents a clear change in opinion. i see certain eerie similarities

between the trump and clinton coalitions and the way they have won their nominations or clinton is on the way obviously to winning the nomination. they have gotten bedrock support from their parties more down scale constituency. blacks, southern blacks have provided hillary clinton's plurality of popular vote. for her, non-college educated white have provided bedrock support for donald trump. both candidates have run badly among people with high degrees of what robert putnam, or own charles murray calls, social connectedness, social capital. they, those areas have done very badly for donald trump. and for hillary clinton. both of them have done very poorly in caucuses and much worse in caucuses which require certain amount of participation by people that will bother to go than they have done in primaries.

both clinton and trump have run strongest in the northeast and the south and have run rather pallidly in the midwest, obviously with exception of trump on indiana but have not generally run well in the midwest or the west. what does that say about the general election? well, as karolyn pointed out, if you take national polling numbers, "real clear politics," recent polls, clinton is leading trump 47-40. but i, and you've got very high negatives. trump's running about 65% negatives. hillary clinton is running about 5% negatives. and -- 56% negatives. my own view this is not proven to be a good year to say things could never happen. [laughter]. i don't know, i mean norm may have been innocent of the offense of saying that something could never happen which happened this year but most of

the rest of us have fallen afoul of that. and looking at the general election, when you got two candidates entering the race who seem to be sort of universally known and have high negatives, how do you predict actually which negatives are going to be dispositive? and, i think that we've got a few recent polls. karolyn pointed to the "rasmussen poll" which seeps to show a lot of people as likely voters not voting. and that is not totally inconsistent. democratic, sort of idea in the land that democratic turnout has been surging among all these groups and so forth. democratic turnout has been going down since 2008. republican turnout hasn't been going up either but we saw in indiana the democratic turnout was 600,000. the republican turnout about a million 200,000. the opposite, if you contrast

indiana in democratic 2008, republican 2012 races where the numbers are other way around. and, you know, that hillary clinton doing very poorly with young voters in the primaries but she needs them to turn out in the general election. will they? so consequencely i think that, if trump, if people could change their minds in the five weeks between april 5th and may 3rd about donald trump among republican primariry voters, i wouldn't rule out the possibility, although it seems less likely of some people who currently say they would never for him in million years changing their minds between now and november. >> thank you very much, michael, for setting the stage. john, what should never trump forces do now and is there any reason for rubio and cruz to hold on to their delegates? you have -- >> great. thank you. it is really an amazing situation we find ourselves in.

a year ago none of us would have predicted this. there is talk of hair. there has been talk of bad things said back and forth and then with the sudden exit it is all over. comes at gop electorate with access that what confused us all. henry has a very fine book, four faces of republican party. i think you might add a fifth face. the reason donald trump cuts across categories especially with issue of immigration. that is what he talked about first. people described themselves as less conservative republicans,

evangelical republicans has resonance of all of them. found a way to activate majority in the party that is very different than what others had done. and this is, you know intentioned with a lot of what republicans had been thinking after the 2012 election. a thesis i generally agree with, demographic future of republican party has some challenges. reaching out to hispanics and other groups would be part after republican future. but i do think it makes us realize the republican party is moving this way a bit. a group of people that can be activated. if you look at europe, there are all sorts of arrangements in european countries with more parties worried about immigration and more center right parties either in coalition or playing with each other or having some disagreements but i think republican party will have to wrestle with these things. may be also they deal with demographic problems but finding a way to look forward i think will be the issue for republicans in the longer term. can trump win?

look, i think there's, there is going to be more coalescing around trump. john kasich i don't imagine staying in the race very much longer. ted cruz is out. there are people who put themselves on the record to be against trump very strongly. some of those will have a hard time walking that back. i think there will be a lot of coalescing around donald trump but what i think we should wait and see on match-up polls. i think we're very early. michael pointed to it as well. we're very early on these. our suspicion donald trump will get new voters, will get conservative democrats, white working class votes, typical republicans might not but he will also lose some votes. he has high negatives. looking ahead we would wonder whether it's a net gain or a net loss. i'm not convinced it's a disaster as many republicans in town are worried this will be a very bad loss for donald trump in general election but i do think that the mix of what he

gains and what he loses is a little bit to be seen. let me add two other topics. one i'm usually one to down play vice-presidential selection in terms of politics. it rarely has great effect on race. at best you can usually hope for a state to be helped maybe a point or two if you're lucky but i think it is interesting this time. a couple of reasons. we at bpc put out report on vice-presidential selection. encouraging candidates to be serious about it, take time to do it, find somebody who is substantial but i think there is couple dangers out there. hillary clinton, is she, because she is so experienced going to look to pick somebody inexperienced? that is not necessarily a good chance. balances you in a way. younger figure looks good. something for governing that might not be ideal. she will have to ask the question make her left, her bernie sanders supporters happy with her choice. i don't think elizabeth warren will take that position.

elizabeth warren or sherrod brown somebody leans more left or confident to pick somebody more in center of her party. on republican side i don't have an answer who donald trump will pick. i think this is opportunity for him to solidify himself in republican party. some will not want to run with him. i think there is opportunity for him to do that. leave it at that. my last point on delegate selection. what i was going to talk about convention scenarios an all sorts of things that could have happened. obviously events have overtaken us here. but, i do think in many ways the cat is out of the bag in terms of the small d democratic character of primaries. i'm not sure if we'll see a big rethinking on both sides how we select delegates because it depends on how comfortable nominees feel and who wins presidency, what parties are looking at but i think the very inside every processes, ones that trump was complaining

about, some of uncommitted delegates or conventions or some of the ways which the actual selection of delegates goes on in states, that many of us didn't pay a lot of attention to, really insider campaign people spent a lot of times going to the states figuring out how the delegates were, i think that will get more scrutiny. maybe superdelegates raised on democratic side. move towards some more democratization, the idea of party insiders having more power, bee light fact their options for stopping donald trump were not that great no matter what the situation was and some of these processes are getting some criticism. >> thank you very much, john. we'll turn to henry to talk about the soul of both political parties what we learned from the polls at this point and whether or not you think trump can unite the party, whether there will be a third party challenge? . .

>> john boehner appears in the week before ted cruz political test of his life compares into lucifer. lucifer in a flash he says which i understand has formed a scratch to file a defamation suit because who wants to be compared to ted cruz? but i think as the sjostrom republican party doesn't suffer from a cell deficit to sufferers, the republican party is suffering not from

soullessness or a pencil but multiple personality disorder. and you've got as any person who is this order because the multiple personalities they cannot coexist in the same body as the body currently understands itself. unless and until a choice is made by the different factions in the republican party that they must try and get along rather than via for dominance, the republican party will continue to descend into disorder and their relevance. but this is possible but it's harder than many would like to make it think. because i think what we see, i did my most recent piece in national review calls the trumpk faction the fifth face of the republican party are i going to watch it didn't replace the four phases but superimposed the real estate developer has not renovated the house but simply added an addition.

these voters ask different questions, want different things at the republican factions that in fighting each other for the past 40 years have wanted. but even within the factions that are fighting there are strong disagreements. one way to look at it is to look at the most pew poll and divided electorate into eight different groups, and you can very roughly say that what we see in race right now is three of those groups are vying for dominance. what you called the staunch conservatives and what they call the business conservatives in what they call the hard-pressed skeptics, skeptics being the downscale largely -- and in any situation where you have roughly three factions, the easiest thing to do is 211. then what happens to the third? if you look at the pew data, thank you on one temptation is very strong, that on trade and

immigration, the staunch conservatives and the heart of the press skeptics are largely in agreement and they are in strong disagreement with the business conservatives. this is what heritage action for america's proposing as a populist conservative allies. that's what mike wrote about recently. i view that as this alliance looks at trade and immigration as gateway drugs to conservatism. that if we give them immigration and trade they will come over to our side, entitlement cuts and strong tax cuts and robust social conservatism. but the problem is you look at the voters to out you don't want those things and this is where the business conservatives and the staunch conservatives have agreed it is about over 87% of the business conservatives and 90% of the staunch conservatives agree with the question that government is doing too much. it's hard to skeptics on the other side over majority government is doing too little

that's impact of the heart of the trunk of you is not that government needs to shrink and get out of the way, but the problem is it's not standing up for the people it ought to stand up for. the problem of government and the trump u.s. government should be serving the average person who deserves a something because of their citizenship and that the government has abandoned citizens in favor of non-citizen. that's what unites all of the planks he talks about. i call it a form of nationalism but not expansionary nationalism. it's a sense that citizenship matters that have been an american and titles you not to a check but consideration. and that was the elites of both parties in this view have failed to do is give consideration to the plight of people who are being hurt by policies that both parties have pursued. that makes this a swing group which is one reason i think

you've seen turnout in 2008 was up and the democrats. it's up here. what we see in places like europe is that people eventually settled in the right wing populist parties try out the establishment parties first. the uk promoter to someone who voted labour in 2005, tour in 2010 and is now convinced neither side cares about him. to task for the republicans going forward is one of to quote the american revolution whether you want to hang together or you want to hang separately. each of these groups have something more in common with each other than they have with the other groups. but if they don't get along they will all hang separately because it's the natural democratic advantage of the democratic coalition has. it is impossible to put this group together without incorporating some idea of citizenship and nationality as a central obligating factor.

this is not unusual. every successful conservative party in europe and in english there eventually comes around to the idea that some form of citizenship and nationalism is, in fact, essential to going from a minority of well-off individualist to the majority that appeals to people throughout the class structure. this approach also will help us as republicans deal with the demographic question. if one wants to try to appeal to latinos one must deal with latinos as you have them, and they are people who because of their socioeconomic structure and because of where they come from, expect an active role from government. they do not expect socialism. they do expect that getting government out of the way and letting the private sector work will not help in the benefit of adopting some form of id of of nationalism and obligatory citizenship as a couple but to the existing republican structure will unite these three groups. it will do what lincoln did in

1960, putting people together disagreed with each other on tariffs and and immigration but could agree that slavery was wrong. it will do what nixon did after the debacle of 1964, take a modulated approach to what goldwater race can discard the things that divided them included the things that united and that the republican part on a path that culminated with reagan who was reaching the same conclusion, made the republican party relevant and the dominant party for 36 years. it's republican party views this as an opportunity to unite, then the republican party will surprise virtually everybody in this town and once again become a dominant, more class-based, more secure party in control that it has been since the great depression which was the last time it adopts across class economic message. if it fails to do this, well, we should expect a democratic party that will pursue what it

believes its natural course, that we should expect a 16-20 year reign of the democratic party until the republican party remakes itself in its image. and we should expect many conservative intellectuals to discover the wonderful seafood of auckland, new zealand. last night. >> -- [laughter] >> if a host or a democrat -- the democrats have the their own patients. i think the soul of the democratic party is less acutely in play right now precisely because their decisions have worked out in previous election but their day of reckoning is coming as well, which is to say that there are elements in the democratic party that, within congress rottweiler-ish as the republicans to borrow from norma are equally irredentist and equally irreconcilable sort of

people who say that barack obama is a sellout, the people never be satisfied with anything except purity. that day won't come right now but that is coming for the democrats. >> henry, thank you very much. norm, tell us about what the trump we need for all the down ballot races. let me ask you what donald trump said last day. he said ted cruz as a great future. eu+3? >> said ted cruz yesterday called donald trump a topological liar, utterly immoral, a serial adulterer and then pull the venereal disease card which leads one to think that there is any meaning for the phrase feel the burn -- [laughter] one server has to think of what happens if trump loses and there is a struggle for the soul of

the party that henry is talking about. and i think you're going to see a number of factions. the fact that cruz lost so badly in india and had to pull out immediately reduces his traction as the leader of the goldwater wing with a theme of course that he had pursued before this. we keep losing because we have nominated these moderates right mccain and romney. and now we nominated a liberal like trump. but somebody's got to pick up the baton. the freedom caucus wing of the party. if trump loses, especially if we see this movement, which i think is likely to fall apart, of having an independent candidate, the theory being that if you have a real conservative running out there, at least republicans will turn out and vote down ballot, if that happens within trump is going to say another

conspiracy of the elites destroyed the. i would've won otherwise. and the populist forces will have some traction. and the third force what you think may be the weakest is the establishment leaders in congress and in the party as a whole who have failed so badly at this point. and i say, would say nobody should take any comfort in this kind of struggle. democracy doesn't work unless you have two vibrant parties who can compete. it's just not a very healthy thing. i will say now you have republican party that is donald trump's party. given his ear i could maybe should change the name to the whig party last night with that -- [laughter] with that, let me make one observation to those of you listen to my colleagues should compare it to the simplistic and shallow drivel that dominates most cable television dialogue. and i just want to give a shout out to carlin, to have the, who

worked like hell to put the thee sessions together, put the materials together and decide what we're going to talk about. we are very proud to be a part of this election watch series. so with that, what's going to happen down ballot but this is a real difficult year for republicans in the senate. we know the rhythm of senate elections. it's who was up six years ago, the numbers work very much against republicans this time, 24 senate seats, 10 democrats. because of the wave that occurred six years ago that means you've got a lot of republicans who are naturally vulnerable. they are in blue states. there are seven of them and then there are others. and it means the democrats survived a difficult election and you're not going to find many vulnerable they are.

what happened now with trump and with the discord inside the republican party is that the number of seats that are now in play on the republican side has expanded. and it has expanded for a number of reasons. it was striking to me yesterday that mark salter who has been a close adviser to john mccain for many decades, co-author of the books, the best selling books that mccain has done, said that's it for me, i'm voting for her. and for john mccain, we have a republican candidate who said waterboarding, that's not enough, that namby-pamby stuff. we are going to go for real torture and we are going to kill their families at the same time. this has to be a very difficult moment. and in a state where arizona itself may well be in play, and you have a guy who's been around for a long time and there's plenty of enemies inside his own party, you have to say arizona is in play right now.

grassley in iowa having taken the stance that has as chairman of the judiciary committee of the merrick garland nomination has seen his support declined significantly, and all of a sudden iowa is simply. and if you put that together with the seats as you can see on the chart, those of you in the room have in front of you, where we know which seats are very much in the tossup category. the open seat in florida that marco rubio is giving up. mark kirk seats in eleanor. rob portman in ohio, pat toomey of pennsylvania, ron johnson in wisconsin. you've got a whole lot of seats that could potentially change hands. and on the democratic side you only have metadata, which is -- nevada which is harry reid open seat. given what may well be a very significant uptick in hispanic turnout there, i think the odds are recently did a democrat to

take a majority in the senate. but then we just have to point out that the worm turned very sharply in 2018 as the chart shows. you have 24 democrats up the next time. a lot of them in very vulnerable places. if hillary clinton wins the white house, then there's likely to be as there almost always is a set of headwinds for democrats to begin with. of the democratic tenure in the majority in the senate is likely to be a relatively short one. now the house of representatives, it is striking, we have a chart that shows all the seats that you could potentially a look at this point put in the tossup category. you always end up with one or two or three that are not that into thing upsets. 13 democrats, 45 republicans. now, you look at that and you could say all of a sudden if everything falls apart for republicans, and i have to say i am not sure it's going to work that way.

our politics have become so tribal that in the end i think we're going to see a lot of people come back. i mean, i'm waiting to see how ted cruz makes the pivot from pathological liar to i'm going to support this guy -- >> their wives could have lunch together. [laughter] >> that's right. exactly the you're going to have all the ex-wives and we can actually have a unity lunch. but we see marco rubio already perhaps giving him a template for how you can make that david what a whole lot of people are going to be making that pivot. and it may not turn out to be quite as dire as it looks right now. and then there's another factor that we have to keep in mind. the koch brothers and allies a massive war chest between 800-$900 million. they have already spent some of the of building the most sophisticated voter identification operation that we

have out there, if they have more troops on the ground than the republican national committee. my guess is a whole lot of that money goes into the house and senate races and identify republican voters, making sure the turnout at the polls and telling them in many cases do whatever you want at the presidential level, just be sure you protect our last lines of defense. that's going to be a lot of money and a sophisticated effort. i would say getting back to henry's point it raises another interesting and somewhat troubling element, which is donald trump is now going to pick is chairman of the republican national committee. he's not going to have complete control over the members of the rnc, most of them will not be be terribly warm towards be terribly warm torture you will have on going through the fall a structure struggle the enemy to know that there will structure that is already being billed outside. those forces that use the short term, the coke brothers and their allies, have been going

out recruiting candidates in primaries. they are doing what he party organization does. to our a number of fronts including more than we've seen before. let me just say that the democrats some uphold off a stunning upset and won a majority in the house, and winning 30 seats is still a very serious uphill battle, and if they win the house and the sake of anybody who thinks that that will lead to a wave of legislation is missing the boat. first of all democrats when the, that means they are going to have 25 new members who won in dishes that are much more republican, and in the midterms they are in deep trouble. the idea that they're going to go out on a long lens to vote for sweeping legislation given what w we know is that history f members of the house will immediately run away from their own party will be a challenge, and republicans are going to unite in opposition. i would add whether they win a

house or don't come if republicans hold onto the majority, that smaller majority, if you look at the republican seats that are being vacated and those that are most in jeopardy are the remaining somewhat conservative in today's congressional context which is very conservative generally at a path context. budget but because people like erik paulsen of minnesota, lee zeldin of new york, a list of vancsik, these are the people who are going. the freedom caucus foresaw could have a higher proportion and more leverage in the house of representatives. paul ryan who you'll recall at a trump rally in wisconsin near janesville had people yelling out paul ryno which tells you about the challenge that the speaker faces, the idea that the most conservative speaker life are in history of the house is viewed by some as a rhino comp dedicated appropriations or a budget through even now is going to have an easy time of it next time. with all these other challenges

if they lose the white house means that congress is going to be a very interesting and not terribly edifying place, whether it's for the next president or for the rest of us. >> thank you very much. terrific summary. i'm going to turn to john and the second to talk about the governor's races but norman mentioned how proud we are of this election series and this is a bittersweet moment for norm and for me because this is the last time we will meet industry. we've been meeting every two years for election watch, almost 100 sessions since 1982 in this very room. aei is moving to 1789 massachusetts avenue so we will have our first session at we were are hopeful the upper first in the new building in the fall session. norm and i were children when it started but it's been a very long run. >> we should note 1789 is not a year we really want to have as a model but we are stuck with it.

>> good point. >> we can get george washington sworn and april 30. >> french revolution. >> john, the governors. >> i just have a few words to say about the governors and i want to ask nor a quick follow-up. so governors come to our not so many covers of issue. it's like the class of cicadas to the big class is on the other two years. there are only 12 governor ships of issue. most of them come many of them are safe. overall republicans have an enormous advantage from 31 republicans, 18 democrats and one independent. in this class the are only for republicans and eight democrats up. a number of them are safe. if you are looking for change, all things being equal, assuming not a blow with a donald trump losing badly but a relatively neutral environment, there are slightly more democrats in trouble, three really, west

virginia in particular, open new hampshire seat which is competitive and and open missouri governorship which is competitive. and then on the republican side you've got a couple, north carolina where the race is shaping up to be close and potential an outside chance of indiana i guess i will focus on north carolina. it looks like a mild republican pickup in a field or a group that already have a big advantage in. what i did want to ask was on the congressional question, i think we all agree that if there were a big win for hillary clinton over donald trump a lot of those features will fall. but what if donald trump does very well what he went about his in he's in the race but has different characteristics. needlelike rob portman at pat toomey and kelly ayotte for various reasons the part of them will want to run towards a trump and part of them will want to run against him. what did you say to the people are going to be conflicted? they might benefit but also be troubled by part of --

>> you are absolutely right. i do think that we are going to find a lot of republicans who will come back into the fold. it may get closer than it would otherwise be. we are not going to see i think the kind of blowout of a goldwater losing 45 states or a mondale or a mcgovern losing 49 states. the states are more firmly red and blue now, although some of those red states may be in play. but if you've got lawmakers in states that are still swing and could turn close they have a huge dilemma on their hands. and how do you embrace a train one where you know in the process -- i trump -- link to him for minority voters or others might turn out a more substantial numbers. but if you get distance from and you will create a backlash among a lot of others who see you as betraying the cause. so i think there's no easy way

out of it. and my guess is you're going to find some people who handled it in a very clumsy fashion, and others who may be a little more adept. in the house they are a little more used to running away from their presidential candidate and try to run as individual lawmakers. but so much of this is going to depend on the turn the. one point i didn't make that showed. for those of you who thought that indiana wasn't upset. out of from what was a really good political scientist at emory was the -- a model to look at the democrats is that has three components to it. it is the region, is this a state in the south are outside the south. what's the percentage of minorities of african-americans voting? and what is the percentage of democrats who voted in the democratic primary in 2008?

he has been just done in accurate within a point or two in every contest. a week ago he said hillary clinton county projected would get 47% in indiana. now, he's also looked ahead and it looks like bernie sanders will win in oregon but very possibly lose in kentucky and west virginia is a toss up not to any of this matters and in your shoe still going to win the nomination but we tend to look at the tea leaves a lot of this. this is what happened, the campaign moved in that direction. a lot of it and that includes a lot of our politics more generally is, doesn't have quite as much as we think the events in the campaign suggest. >> michael? >> we have been through a period of very high persistent full partisan with roughly equal size blocks on both sides and very persistent voting patterns. we had in 2012 only 26 congressional districts out of 435 devoted to split tickets,

that is vote majority president in on one party, elected congressmen of both parties. lowest number since 1920. i do think americans are capable of splitting tickets. it's not that hard. if you want to do it. they just haven't been in the habit of doing lately because george w. bush for a long time defined the republican party. bill clinton and then now barack obama defined the democratic party and people kind of voted accordingly. norm suggested the problems of the difficulties, doesn't donald trump defined the republican party of the republican party for every candidate? we may be backward into the territory we were in in the 1960s, '70s and its win over some republicans wanted not to be identified with the party leader. and many democrats in public office did not want to be identified with their party leader. when richard nixon was reelected

in 1972, he carried i think 389 congressional districts against george mcgovern. half of them voted for democratic congressmen. so americans are capable of splitting tickets if they want to. and in this context i think turnout is going to be imported we had surged turnout during the george w. bush presidency including the 2006 and eight elections which were a repudiation of the bush presidency. we've had declining turnout during the obama presidency, particularly democrats but not in a surge of republican turnout. i have been of the view that the fact of republican turnout was a lot bigger in the primaries this year and caucuses that democratic turnout has perhaps some significance for the general election. and others in the 538.com

website, for example, have pooh-poohed that and said in 1976 it didn't get i don't think that's relevant. i think, i think it may still have something by simply don't feel like i have any confidence. one more point i should make him a initial presentation. i mentioned the rules working for both parties. if you look at the democrats had rules like republicans, which include winner-take-all primaries, hillary clinton with the ahead two on one. the santos campaign would've disappeared almost just as effectively as they case the campaign is disappeared sometime ago. >> henry, quick comment. >> with respect to the turnout, i've been looking at purple states turn out, and with the exception of ohio, the democratic and also with the exception of albania.

republican turnout has vastly exceeded democratic turnout. we have two competitive races, and if everyone who cast the republican ballot in the primary cast a republican ballot in the fall, the democrats would need to win between 53-60% of the remaining voters in order to carry each of those states by one vote. i think that's the promise and the pitfall of the republican party is that, of course to put that coalition together means put those three factions i talked about together in a coherent way. the reason why trump may not win is precisely his inability to do that. i think it indicates where a unified republican party could go, which is extremely hard for a democratic party to respond when you've got 50% of the general election voters in the state who are actively considering themselves republicans. we have never dealt with that in our lifetime. lifetime. >> now we are going to turn to your questions.

cnn has just come out with its first matchup of the trump clinton contest. it is 54, clinton, 41, troll. double-digit lead. i should point out that had up was not at your place but will have it available for you eat outside and we can e-mail it to anyone. we'll be updating it throughout the summer. >> joshua myers. could this be the year the libertarian party breaks 5% becomes eligible for federal matching funds in the next election? could have any long-term consequences? >> my initial answer is no. and why would libertarians want government money? [laughter] >> okay. other questions? right here. >> thank you very much. we are talking about the soul of the republican party, and it's my opinion and i may speak for

some of us around the table that the real issue is out is the party going to coalesce around this person, or are we going to coalesce around america? i think this, this is not a condition where we should be, the party is second to the country and i think most of us agree to that. i would just like to know, policies if it was going to be some coalescing around this meant even though this is very negative things about him in the past. what can we see for the party if that becomes the norm? >> another question, what should the never trunk movement be doing now? >> your point of view is pretty clear from the question. they shouldn't call around donald trump, make that argument. i think we are going to see, i mean, i think he's going to get

less coalescing around in the other republican candidates have gotten but i think you will get more than the tenor of your question suggests. we the people like bill kristol talking about a third party as a kind of basis on which, for republicans to vote for and to come out to vote for. so that there will come out and vote for republican candidates for the senate and the house and so forth. i think, i suspect not a whole lot is going to come out that. and so forth. you know, it's obviously a different situation from which we faced we are both parties have nominated candidates in recent cycles who have been widely acceptable to the party's constituency. the question is how much of the party's constituency considers trump not acceptable, and the trump add some people in contest, you know, to compensate

for that. my view is he is probably unacceptable to fewer, the tenor of your question suggests, and the number of new people he brings in is fewer than the tenor of trump peoples comments would suggest. >> i guess i agree that there will be a fair amount of coalescing. i think it will happen now until the convention, a lot of it. anti-trump forces do have a lot of places to go. i do think the danger is that thomas several dangerous, but if after the convention there are some coalescing and i don't really put much state and the national polls at this point but if the matchup polls are really showing trump down by a lot, the lack of enthusiasm for the republican party might be very strong. i don't think it's a great third party option, the natural tendency is to come together. but if it's not enough i think

that will show in late summer, early fall. >> i think you're going to see a lot of pivoting. newt gingrich who has said many nice things about trump and who is on the short list for vice president of nomination has one part of the mantra. we cannot allow hillary clinton to transform the supreme court into a radical court that will change america for decades, and others are just going to be using the mantra, anything would be better than hillary clinton. my guess is a whole lot of people going to coalesce around that. there would be some like ben sasse who will not and that's true of a lot of people outside the political arena. but i would bet that the vast majority are going to fall in line and then you have to live with the consequences. and, of course, one part of this is when they do the second autopsy, and decided will be a real dead body most likely, it will be back to the same set of issues.

how do we expand a base be on angry white working-class voters? and if you have an immigration position that has taken you so far away from that, and a rhetoric that is going to so alienate the growing force in the electorate, you are in trouble. that's going to be a battle that will follow them but those who fall in like a going to make it much harder to have that battle won by those who think you need to broaden your base spirit we have a question in the back and then we will move to the front. >> i was when if we could return back to the discussion about split ticket those. for example, there was a poll where 15% of clinton voters in ohio are still going to vote for portman. i was wondering if you could try to speak of a bit about how can the gop target these the gop target these split ticket voters the gop target is split to get voters to want to shut it should be involved to kind of mobilize them to vote for gop senators?

>> split ticket. >> if you're running rob portman's campaign you talk about his campaign, his legislation against opioid abuse, which is a real problem in parts of ohio, in southern ohio. you talk about his record you do the kinds of things that candidatecandidate s of both parties have done for senate and congress over the last 40 years when they sense that the party is not strong, or maybe unpopular with significant parts of their electorate. you emphasize the specifics of those issues, the character of the candidate and things of that nature. voters are capable of splitting tickets. they just haven't felt the need to do so lately. given the choices before us, it's quite possible they will need more added don't think they really need a mechanism of a third party which is not going to be compared anywhere to bring out voters to vote for down

ballot people if they want to down ballot people to earn the votes for, they will get them. >> one of the challenges, and this will be a real challenge for mitch mcconnell, the expectation was that they would have a robust record to run on and they could say see, keep us apart from the coveted act legislatively. this is a congress that left without eating with the zika virus which is now becoming potentially huge epidemic -- dealing with -- left without dealing with puerto rico which is now defaulted on another bond, which is a very gone way past the deadline for a budget of which is not going to do a budget, which appears to difficulty doing a single operations bill and which has not acted as a congress on the opioid legislation. if they can't get much done and that is a very slender reed i'm afraid for people to run on. >> i think what you will see is, this is unfortunate a party that

remains tired anyways in the past and you see people moving to a repeat of the 1996 campaign when it was clear goal was going to lose and republicans ran, don't give them a polite check. poker in the white house but don't give her a polite check for republican down ballot. >> i'm going to put three questions on the table from the site of the room and anyone can answer them. >> my question is how likely do you think is the possibility of unifying this different factions of the party? adjuvanted immigration and nationalism but there is one strong message of trump which is anti-trade and anti-group message. how do we put it together with business conservative coalition?

>> and mike gonzalez right here has a question and then in the front. >> actually very similar to the question you just asked. i'm mike dunn those with the heritage foundation. henrico i completely agree with you that a yearning for national identity, not nationalism, it's the important thing right now and i would say that the inheritance of eight years of obama. that could be the theme around which a different fractions built. how does that take place? how does the reckoning happen? let's say of trump wins then the populace will be a sin and everyone else left to hang onto their. let's say trump loses. there's been so much self recrimination, how does the shakeout look and maybe michael will want to weigh in as well. >> and this question right in front. >> do you think the republican leadership in the senate might reconsider its opposition to obama's nominee to the supreme court now that the alternative

is a nominee by hillary clinton or donald trump and the possibility of a democratic senate doing the confirmation? >> three good questions. >> possibility of unifying the gop. that's a matter of choice that i think that if people want to find peace and want to hang together, they will find a way to do so. if they think that it is better to try and continue the warfare to engage and have your faction be dominant on this misguidedly for some that you can put together a national majority by having only two prongs of the stool rather than three, then we will not unify the gop. gop. but it's not a choice of all the different factions. and i can't say what the probability is of that, but as far as the possibility i think you have to have a unifying

message that focuses around national identity but not a weak national identity, one that embraces a limited but active role for government to care about people like me. that's essentially what the trump voter is, that you would not care about a person like me for decades. and that's always been the weakness of the republican party. republicans do well sank we care about people, but have a hard time saying people like me. with respect to how do you do this, i think what you need to do is you need to do an immigration policy that's more like australia and canada that says we need immigrants but we are going to decide who they are and bring them in. canada has a larger share of foreign population than we do, but they do it by choice and you don't have immigration boiling their issue.

australia is conservatives dealt with immigration by saying if you are a refugee who is coming here by boat to try and land on our territories, you will not be admitted to australia. we will have immigrants by choice and they have a very large immigrant population but it's not one that places the foreigner ahead of the citizen. i think with respect to trade, what you need to do is stop treating people or indirectly harmed by trade as collateral damage in the willy-nilly pursuit of globalization. what that means is a tony blair view. you need to support foreign trade but we need to have accommodations of people who are dislocated by. that means a more robust income support system and attempt to bring people to work. i think we need to rethink our social safety net, that on the margins says that if you are of

low skillow skilled you get a lt steady hand out if you remove yourself from work or stay in job deserts, we will do nothing to help you get really back on your feet again and support you to help recover some of the income that you lost because of the jobs we've encouraged south koreans or burmese to have. a republican party that is portrayed before a serious way of accommodating the people dislocated by trade, the republican party that is what immigrants we need but only immigrants do we need is what i think can unite those but it requires choice and compromise and that maybe something that there is elements o of the republican party are willing to do right now. after the debacle of 64 it was not just the party leaders like nixon realized we have to accommodate the goldwater rights in some ways, it was the goldwater rights realized that they needed to stop trying to overturn the establishment and that was when fusionism came

into being to incorporate other non-individualistic strands of conservatism and its when buckley moved away from the confrontation is the most electable conservative model. spirit the supreme court tries to to say on immigration, it will be interesting if this scenario democrats had matured and both house of congress and the president, whether they would bring forward immigration legislation as they did not do when they had votes to pass the so-called comprehensive bill in 2009 and 2010. input from a democratic point of view, you have the potential to legalize three or 4 million net democratic votes and maybe they would want to do that. maybe they would be fearful of blowback. i fear they would not do what i think henry pointed do what you think the country should do which is have a system, emphasizing high-skilled

immigrants like australia and canada. the democratic party is totally hypocritical. the idea that a democratic congress in the eighth year of a republican president would confirm a republican appointee to a democratic appointed supreme court justice is absurd. they would not do that in a million years. and the republicans are not go to do it. if hillary clinton is elected and particularly if democrats get a majority in the senate i would expect judge garland to be confirmed by republican senator would have to eat a certain amount of words in order to do that. but i think they would do the judge garland is obviously a highly competent and personally decent sort of judge. he is unlikely to rule the way republicans would like on a lot of issues. >> i suspect you disagreed. >> first of all i think they are in a box right now. if you noticed jerry moran, very

conservative senator from kansas who is up for reelection, when he said not to hold a hearing, the club for growth and americans for prosperity at a lot of radio talk show host came down hard on him and said that it's time for a primary challenge. the next day it was jerry moran saying, not osha would not hold a hearing but this guy is a dangerous socialist leftists will take away our guns and we can't even tell us that. that's a problem. it's problem mitch mcconnell has but having said that if we get to october and the cnn result of pretty much we still have, a double-digit lead that will be a debacle, and republicans are looking out and believing that very possibly the day after the election, president obama will say you said the voters should choose so i'm withdrawing this nomination we will next the next president hillary clinton pick a nominee who will be younger and more liberal. they may well in october especially if chuck grassley is

underwater in iowa decide to go ahead and confirm. if not entity kept the nomination, i think it may well happen in the lame duck. but what we are also seeing now is republicans in the senate saying, having said that the next president and we should let that go, saying that doesn't mean we wouldn't filibuster for an extended period of time in a nominee from a hillary clinton. so we could well end up with a split supreme court for a significant period of time and that's a big danger. what we could have before long and i can see this playing out through much of 2017 is yet another change in the filibuster rules to move it to a simple majority to i don't think that would happen until we get eight or 10 months of a filibuster. that would be unfortunate. >> i do want to disagree on the merrick garland issue with both normal and my. i think it's unlikely republicans will go back on this

no matter how badly they are doing. confirming some in the lame duck out early on before the election. parley i agree on this that there will be opposition to a new nominee by hillary clinton or perhaps more than one nominee. i think that the other thing. you have the potential for other nominations either from resignations especially on the democratic side who might reside in a democratic administration and there will be intense pressure to fight that i think the filibuster is always under stress and so the chance, some pressure to get rid of the filibuster as they have for lower court judges will be there but i think the guard and nomination will probably not happen. >> we have time for one more like a questioner. in the meantime we will be having some special events this summer but in september we will be back in october on the thursday after the november election as we usually are. there is one question i think right back, yes.

>> can you please explain why the system allows different level of social and let to vote? the other class system of which middle-class and poor. why would every level of social intellect from every level of criminal activity be allowed to vote? >> i'm not aware that whatever level of criminal activity vote spent my definition of -- >> proposals would do so and executive action in virginia that's perhaps a dutiful ago that two of convicted felons who served their sentences vote. i think arguments can be made both for and against that as a public policy, but we have sort of gone for manhood suffrage which meant wiping basically come and as far back as -- white man basically. the 18 tens, toys and 30 we moved in that direction in our

american elections. i think despite some lamentable results in recent years come and each of us perhaps has are different list of lamentable results, we are not going to go back on that. >> you know, i have long been a supporter of something that will never happen in this country which is bringing us the australian system of mandatory -- you can vote for none of the above but you have to show up and if you don't hear subject to a small fun. that brings 90% turnout or more. belgium and other countries have this as well. it has not brought great disaster. there are always questions about whether the least informed should be out there voting. the fact is most of the people who vote are very little informed. and it becomes a question of what you mean by a republican

form of democracies. i believe in enhancing the elected. we had a literacy test at one point, which i'm not sure what to turn into an iq test and, frankly, we are plenty of people we know with very high iqs but i would just as soon not vote. [laughter] speak we add to the list of mandatory voting countries, brazil which is now in the process of engaging as president. so of course we have impeached presidents are in this country, to spirit we are out of time. join me in thanking the panelists. [applause] >> the handout is at the reception desk and we'll be here for a few more minutes to answer any special questions you have. [inaudible conversations]

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.. >> voters in england will decide whether to remain part of the european union-- union. david cameron is leading that campaign to remain in the eu and today he will go before the british liaison committee about the upcoming referendum. you will be able to watch that live starting at 11:30 a.m. eastern on our companion network c-span. here on c-spano