currency threatens the future of europe." go to book tv.org for the complete we can schedule. >> on american history tv, university of akron political science professor daniel coffey talks about the importance of ohio in presidential election. she is the author of "-- he is the author of " buckeye battleground." the historical society in hudson, ohio posted this hour-long event. [applause] >> thank you for having me here. as you can tell from my voice, i have a bit of a cold. my voice is wearing thin. of course i have water so that should help. dan coffey from the university of akron. i am going to talk about the

role of ohio in the 2016 election. i have written a book with my colleagues called "buckeye battleground." it is not technically out-of-print but i think copies are hard to find by this point. although you can always go to amazon and get a copy. we started with this idea, why is ohio a battleground state? if you have paid attention this year, you may have heard now and then someone saying that ohio will not be the decisive state in this election. i'd like to have about what makes ohio a battleground state or not, and factors that will push the state one way or the other. hopefully at the end i will give some perspective of where the future lies with regard to ohio politics. let me get started here. --st i want to i understand

i want to identify four specific factors that are true in any election and any context. i am a social scientist so i am interested in looking at social human phenomena, seeing what factors we can identify that seem to cause outcomes to occur in multiple environments. the first thing i will talk about his fundamentals. as political scientist we use the word fundamental to describe the state of the economy, but it can be more than that. i will talk 18 event about campaign finance. it is not my expertise. it is important in terms of campaign effort. third item, how much effort are the campaigns putting on the ground? when you get these states like florida and ohio, iowa and

others, it can tip the balance between one state and the other and the candidates. that is number four in my list for the campaign. let me talk more about this. first off was talk about ohio being a battleground state. this is a figure from our book "buckeye battleground. " we start in 1856. many of you know that as an important here because it's the first time the republicans running candidate for president. the entire time of the two-party ohio -- this line is ohio and this is the u.s. -- the two have tracked incredibly well together. ohio is a very good brother for what is happening nationwide.

what isbarometer for happening nationwide. sticking with the rest of the country you will noticeflorida. we start to see with eisenhower, some changes occurring. are onehern states party, only the democrats are in power. below is slightly balanced and more republican. this changes by the 1960's and florida begins to overshoot the rest of the country.

florida very closely matches ohio and the rest of the nation. it is a good editor for being nation.meter the happening? why does florida look so good? think about the two races where it came down to a single seat. 2000 was florida and 2004 was ohio. there is something that makes them distinct from the other states. that ohioe explore is is multicultural. this is something that social scientists get a little uncomfortable with. it is hard to quantify culture. there is a way of thinking

of ohio has five states blended into one. talking about florida being demographically different or divided. there are some regional variations. but here in ohio we don't have the same demographic differences they have in florida, but we have an inborn, written into our dna differences. some historians could talk about it better than i could. but roots out of ohio in the last several hundred years have served to produce different cultures. if we trace interstate 90 across the top, and trace interstate 90, this is a travel route. it has been a travel route through most of ohio's history. not only moving goods and services, but from the east coast out to chicago. with that comes a more cosmopolitan population. a population that is not always stay rooted.

a higherion one of population of foreign-born citizens, different sets of ideas. this is true through pennsylvania into northern illinois up through wisconsin and milwaukee. route ofow the interstate 90. here we have a geological barrier making it difficult to get in and out of the state. this has an effect on the culture. it is hard to get in and hard to get out. and goingment here, through western virginia and parts of kentucky and north carolina -- these tend to be more rural. some know the history that west virginia was a part from virginia -- west virginia splits

apart from virginia. very different -- the geology can have political manifestations hundreds of years later. here this is sparsely populated. the economy is largely based in mining and extraction, not only in ohio but through the rest of the world, where there is little infrastructure and economic development. usually industries are only interested in pulling resources out, not in developing the area around them. that seems to play a role in the culture. central ohio, the land gets flatter in the western part of the state. here some historians and anthropologists could talk about is better than i could, but for many german-americans, because

culturere and throat -- ethnocentrism, they were pushed south, which produced different cultures in cincinnati that were different from toledo. we see a mixture of the automobile and industrial northern part, and a more rural farming part. a historically isolated farming part near a city in the middle. and a more southern culture compared to st. louis and missouri in the southwest of the state. in each of these cultures is not just demographically different, the people don't just look different -- but they live differently, come from different areas, and that should produce political outcomes that are more than the sum of their parts. will explain this

for a minute. it looks confusing at first. this is a graph -- this is what people like me do -- i love graphing things and crunching numbers and making pictures of them. every bubble is a county, and the size corresponds to the size of the county, how many people lived or voted there. when i want to demonstrate is that in spite of the things i will be talking about tonight, there is a lot of stability and politics. in 2008, if i know that the county gave only 20% of its vote to president obama, and election that he won, i know that in 2010 i can spot on predict what percentage of the vote the county would give to obama for years later. years later. i can switch this to the congressional candidates, or senate candidates, or other

elections, and i will find a fairly stable pattern. orther in cuyahoga county franklin county, these largely urban counties, more likely to be blue and democratic, the rural more likely to be republican, the percentage they award to the democratic candidate is likely to be more stable over time. different context, different candidates. between he differences romney and obama, clinton and trump, when all of the pageantry of the campaign is done, where we end up they not look very different in terms of where we were four years ago in terms of election outcome. we see these patterns emerge in ohio. it is hard to see in the

shading. the blue counties are the most democratic. the red counties are the most republican. you can see there is a divide. generally speaking, the west of the state along the indiana border, we see the most republican areas. and generally speaking, the bluest areas are in the northern part of the state. however we see a lot of diversity in southeast ohio. that is based on how many people live their or the industries -- some should be solidly red, but they don't look like similar demographic counties over here. that tells me there is something culturally different about these areas. even though from a religious and identity perspective, how many people live in that area or the occupation, it is not all that different. . the other thing we should see is

that some of the other counties in the middle, cincinnati and columbus, are moving to become more democratic. part of what is driving that is the areas around them are becoming more republican overtime. the separation between urban areas which are becoming more and more heavily democratic, and rural and suburban areas becoming more republican. there is a sorting process occurring. please process are stable over time. if i go back to the ronald reagan election, i see consistent -- lining the counties from most democratic to most republican, the positions with state in order. the ordering, for example the lorain county and cuyahoga county will be the most democratic ones.

we know counties like warren county or adams county, augusta county -- these will be the most republican counties, no matter if it is ronald reagan or donald trump. think terms of what we will happen this year, it is important -- this is a graph of -- andunemployment rate is important to understand these are retrospective. elections are retrospective. this is true not only in the u.s., but in western democracies, elections for mayor, governor, and president. when the economy is good, the incumbent party holding office stands a better chance at winning the election. when the economy is bad, the incumbent party is more likely to lose the election.

you can see this is a change in the ohio unemployment rate. in 1980, jimmy carter, and the democrats are the incumbent party. unemployment rate has increased. this is going back 35-36 years now. the lowest percentage of the vote for any incumbent party. the highest total corresponds with the lotus -- with the lowest vote percentage. when times are good for years later, voters reward the incumbent. it is a bit of an outlier. slightly more than 50% of the vote. thanad ohio was closer what the economic model would have predicted alone. it seems that ohio is drifting a bit from the nation. that it is becoming a slightly

redder state over time, where that obama should have performed better than expected. we will talk about whether the state of economy will help hillary clinton or not. this is huge. i will try and sort through the clutter. this is that different people in different regions. we have demographic characteristics here. these fiveolumns are regions i identified. for example, if we look at racial diversity, the region that is physically hardest to of.in and out settlers got, when in, it was hard to get in and

out. it wasn't a very inviting place. i was just teaching at the university of akron. the 1930'story in was that a lot of people came from west virginia to work in the rubber factory. when you had industrial expansion, people flood in to work there. the same is true of places like florida and las vegas. there isn't a lot of attracting people to work in these industries in southeast ohio. it was not as racially diverse. but thinking about northeast ohio, there is a great migration of african-americans from the south in the 1920's and 1940's, and produces a more racially mixed area than the rest of the country. ohio,n see southwest cincinnati, northeast ohio because of cleveland, tended to be the most racially diverse. that wet a coincidence

would expect northeast ohio would be the most democratic. for example, looking at the lessgn european ancestry, than six out of 10 people on the 2000 census had claimed western european ancestry. in contrast, nearly 70% in northwest ohio and southeast ohio. based on the way we did it, we found northwest ohio, which is also industrial, had the highest percentage of citizens who claim western european ancestry. again that may play a role in to help people conceptualize politics. this gets a little muddled. the percentage of those identifying as evangelical protestant -- very high in central and southeastern ohio, lower in northeast ohio. and yet percent that is

catholic, which i don't consider to be office it, but different -- i don't consider to be opposite, but different from a cultural perspective, is centered in the cultural urban areas. these are demographically diverse areas. to some extent northeast ohio tends to mirror the demographic characteristics of other blue states like pennsylvania or new york or new jersey as far as ohio goes. i'm not saying any part of ohio looks like new jersey, but if there was a part that did, it would be northeast ohio. and the part that looks like the southwest would be the south and southwestern parts of the state. it is important to recognize the overall population density, which if i am remembering correctly in ohio, 277 people per square mile.

with that number. look, bigger that number is -- look at how big are the number is then the rest of the state. we can afford shopping pauses or areas like this. southeastf i move to ohio, much lower population density. that will affect how people conceptualize politics. demographics are important because they predict how people vote. we may not like this. you may say, i vote the way i want to. but these aggregate patterns emerge and are undeniable. we look at obama's 2012 vote share. you can see, where did he do poorly? is 75,urbs, men over age white citizens, rural citizens. notice that it is not all or nothing -- just that the odds

are if you come from a rural area, 2 in 3 chance you are going to vote republican. whereas if you are 18-29 or hispanic or african-american, you have almost a 100% chance you were going to vote for barack obama four years ago. i look at the demographic change, and this vote is different. cute is the concern the clinton campaign has in places like ohiom iowa, florida, north carolina. barack obama did worse four years ago across every group but not by the same amount. in some groups he did worse than he did four years ago, but particularly he underperformed those 18-29 years old. in the last 40 years or so, we

have come to terms with the idea that turnout is declining in america. that is actually not true. turnout has been increasing since 2000. it increased from 2000 from 1996, and from 2008 to 2004. in 2008, turnout is a ratio of those eligible to vote was the highest it has been the nixon election in 1968. the highest turnout in four years. then it came down. part of that is that it was not the most competitive election. and the vaunted obama election machine had trouble getting people turnout to vote. that is what the clinton convenes frustrated with, getting these groups to vote.

it becomes a habit. one of my little scientists iste an article, "voting habit forming." we should put warning signs on it. extragroups need incentive to go out to vote. that is not a criticism. campaigns have to work harder to get them to vote. only amongst this group, hispanic voters, to receiving percentage of the vote increase. this is a performance rate. african-americans, there is a slight drop. i think that is more of a statistical error than anything else. i think that obama holds his own amongst these groups. this is the group i think they are most concerned with. they figure they would do less well with his group then both elections. looking at the latest polling,

nationwide -- i put this crude graph together. clinton is beating donald trump 58 by 22 amongst urban voters. you think that is great, but it's slightly less well than obama did. there are different class locations of who is a urban or suburban voter. but generally most categorizations seeing obama winning 60-65% of this group, so this is doing less well. you can see that this does not add up to 100%, does it? there is a fair amount of undecided voters. rural area tend to back republican candidates.

that is know that uncommon. -- that is not all that uncommon. democrats do well in the cities that offsets the smaller counties. i take somewhat issue that there are these single bill whether counties. counties.bellweather that if i go to stark county, i will learn something about that county that only those people know. andink the mix of urban rural areas produces this next. it is ok if you win the statewide vote from a presidential level. that is what the democrats are thinking about. they need this group to turnout, and they need to win big to win ohio. and right now that number looks like a huge lead, but it is not as big as they want. do they get that group to turn out?

i am not convinced that independents are floating out to make a decision and will be the end all of the election. the main study political scientists have been doing since 1948, a panel study found that independents maintained the same candidate preference over this five-month period, including 90% of independents who leaned toward one-party." what we mean by those last, are you a republican or democrat? some say neither, i am an independent. do you lean democrat or republican? 95% of people would take sides in that second follow-up question. it's only the first question that people tell us independent. it is in the second where they

tell us, yeah, i kind of lean this or that way. are the same party preference or not, this this is ohio party identification. i would argue this exaggerates the number of independents. finally, it stops in 2012. analyze these surveys through 2014, the number of republicans catches up in ohio. there is some movement overtime. the state for the most part is fairly balanced. i was trying to get some of the latest data at midnight or so i was putting together this graph. --se numbers are campaign they don't always give away the information, so you have to dig.

these are the number of field offices that each of the campaigns have. a physical location from which the conduct their ground game, making phone calls and handing out stickers and things like that. all across the rest of the nation in 2012, the obama campaign had something like 750 national field offices compared to 250 for mitt romney. that is the number coming to mind, a 3 to 1 advantage. it was huge. big, right? [laughter] i think i am listening to trump too much. the obama campaign insisted this is why they won in 2012. i would say that the economy and other things had more to do with it. but all of the phone calls, doorknocking, having this advantage in field offices --

this is in ohio by the way. you can see they have 140, the romney campaign had about 43. that is a tremendous advantage. we can ignore a phone call, we can throw a piece of mail, garbage, but when somebody knocks on your door, it is harder to ignore. you learn more about what stores to -- which doors to knock on and which ones to ignore. in 2000 for the bush campaign had more field offices than the kerry campaign. depending on what you would call a field office, they had almost doubled the number of field offices. even those from the kerry campaign would admit that the bush operation on the ground was 527rior to the kerry and

operations run. ground games matter. what most consultants say is a good ground game can produce an additional 3-7% of the vote. that is assuming that your campaign's ground game is that much better than your opponent. it can lesser persuade who those voters are equities persuaded with additional contact. we do know in social science that context matters. if you have a favorite coffee shop, if you have a church, a school, contact with that thing makes you are likely to be engaged with it. and campaigns know this. a good field effort can only increase turnout. right now you can see that this finishedicial and not -- they will be adding more field offices. right now clinton has an

advantage over trump. the clinton campaign feels good over this, but it lacks -- it lags well behind the obama campaign. for the most part even republican insiders would say that the trump grand cayman is game0-- the trump ground is poor at this moment. in terms of advertising, you can see that ohio is ground zero of a presidential election. where were the ads placed by the campaign? columbus fromedo, september 24. you can see florida is at the top, wisconsin -- but ohio is ground zero. notice what happens in 2008, it is just cleveland. the map spread out. democrats realized they could compete in indiana, virginia,

and all over. they pulled out of ohio to some extent. it was not that important. going back to 2012, they returned to ohio. we expect we will see both ground games and advertising campaigns. this is where the finance comes in. some of you know from direct experience that certain local tv stations fund themselves for four years based on the advertising spent in a residential election. -- in a presidential election. but some of them are nervous and are having a windfall under not quite sure what to make of that. you know that the next few weeks are going to get more intense in ohio. because of this slide, i think the relative weakness indicates we will see it made up. some of them from raising figures, or is a lot of money

out there. and it will be dumped into campaign commercials, especially since the campaign is getting closer. the bush campaign into the forehead most ground operations ahead of april 2004. you can't set up a good ground game in february the election year. you have to set up months in advance. i will skip through this. the regions are culturally and demographically different from each other. the percentage of african-american citizens in verse to the candidate percentage of those who self identify as evangelical protestant. one of the reasons that makes ohio regionally competitive is that the regions are drawing from distinct populations. to some extent, this is why clinton's message sounds great here. and you go to another region, and somebody likes trump's

gore's. or romney's or i can skim through the slides. i look at all the precincts in cuyahoga county. inook at the average turnout 2008. and one of the problems the obama campaign faces is that the urban heavily populated counties tended to be lower. and yet that is where obama performed better. in wealthier, more middle-class precincts, that turnout is higher, and obama performed worse in those areas. the campaign effort is concentrated in these areas. but certainly the obama and democratic campaigns do better when turnout goes

we can see in terms of the difference in the african-american vote in ohio. each of these is a different community and northeastern ohio. the turnout rate decreased in 2010 for every area. it is a uniform decrease. in midterm elections in the united states, turnout falls. it goes from the 60% to 35% and that tends to produce republican victories because in those areas where turnout is higher, turnout doesn't drop quite as much intonations of but little bit here. essentiallye areas,

, you can see a closing of the cap. gap. , dailylly for democrats more heavily on a good field operation. same thing with poverty, the poverty rate increases more dramatically -- as poverty increases, the turnout differential was bigger. areas with higher poverty rate in 2010gger drop compared to areas with lower poverty rate. income and race, the more contact with the campaign, is a green line is those with the highest income. you can see a large cap. --gap.

80% of voting with no contact from the campaign. if nobody from the campaign context you, you have a 50% chance of voting and even this is overestimating. once i increase the number of context up to 10, those differences are gone. education, income, race, the more contact you have, the more everybody starts to vote at the same rate. back, other factors become more predictable. , bigger difference here, my difference at the other end.

2012 was the first presidential year in which african-american turnout rates exceeded white compared since 1965, african-american rates have been lower but in 2012 for the first time, the rate of turnout was higher for african-americans and a lot of is how often -- a lot of this had do with how often they recontacted. this is a group voting at the same rate in that plays a role in how elections turnout. i want to talk a little bit about early voting. early voting is one of those things that in different states, there are different rules. study a few years ago and we saw a difference between those who voted early in those who did not. from 2012me data indicating this, minority voters

are more likely to vote early. those differences are sometimes bigger than in others. , lots of people say, this is a convenient way to vote. i can just vote when i want to. if i eliminate certain things ,ike the ability to register you can expect that would have a negative impact on minority rates. in northme court carolina was more hostile than their legislature because they said, you were trying to find information on minority voters and change the accordingly. -- manyarly voting law lawyers said they expected that.

the supreme court decided not to get involved. it is not as generous as democrats would like it to be. finally, all of the different counties put together, northeast rates --the turnout excuse me, the number of early votes cast. the democratic versus republican vote, almost every county is giving us more democratic votes through early voting procedures and only a few are slightly more republican. in conclusion, it is going to be close. i would say that nationally,

most political scientists expect that clinton is going to win a narrow victory. i would not be surprised if this is one of those elections in which ohio is red while the rest of the nation is blue. a couple weeks ago, the wisdom was, the democrats will win the senate. recently,gly, very some analysts think that the republicans may hold onto the u.s. senate. almost everybody thinks that rob .ortman is going to hold thank you. i think we have some time for questions while i catch my breath. [applause]

>> how much did your education among role in turnout higher turnout -- highly educated people? prof. coffey: in the primary? i did not look at some of the exit poll data. here is what we can say in general. the more highly educated you are , the more likely you are to vote. in a breakdown of the democratic primary, it tended to be marred of the case that there were other age factors dividing clinton and sanders but honestly, i am drawing a blank. we would tend to associate -- often, in the democratic -- the different parties are made of

differently. the democrats have had a college or postgraduate wing of the party. this will attract candidates like michael dukakis, george mcgovern, bobby kennedy, bill bradley. bernie sanders tended to do better among that group, people who have a college degree, upper-middle-class backgrounds. to way clinton intended more blue-collar democrats. there was a modeling this year. addling -- there was a muddling this year. some of the democrats are more skeptical now. we saw stronger divide among income lines and generational lines within the party that

tended to be older voters backing clinton had i going to have to go back and look at the data to know for sure. what is your guess on the being of the candidate the only time there has been to genders as opposed to the genders of the voters which is really, the two. will that swing some of the assumptions? most of the time, the gender of the candidate -- the gender of the voter matters more, believe it or not good we tend to think of -- it is the candidate that wins the vote -- two they look like me? you know, think of who voted for bernie sanders -- young people, right? case, we might think

some people -- there is a couple things that can happen. in racial voting if you had an african-american candidate, polls would overestimate support , douglasection day , these people did worse than expected because of their race. that in totally certain this day and age that that is going to happen in part because the political polarization -- i did not talk about this -- we have a data tracking over time that the differences between democrats and republicans is so powerful that it does not matter who you nominate. people who said i would never vote for trump are going to vote for trump because there is a republican.

people who said i will never vote for clinton, they are going to vote for clinton because she is a democrat. it will be interesting. i hate to say this, we will have to wait and see. if you look at germany, great britain, other major powers with female heads of state and that would not be an important characteristic but it is a hidden variable. affect the think the clinton's care is going to have over the last week? prof. coffey: a lot of people are talking about that. a few things i will say about this. they to stay away from talking heads. it is not all that different from sunday morning football shows where the predict who is going to win.

democrats, she is ok, everybody gets sick. the republicans say, we knew they were onto something. it reinforces pre-existing attitudes. for that unicorn group of independence, it is the kind of thing that we know that character evaluations matter and it could make some people diverse about casting a vote for her. environment, if marco rubio was running against her you might say, i just feel better without person going into the oval office. as some of you know, ronald reagan in 1984 had a difficult debate and voters got nervous. this guide is not seem like he is up for the job anymore and that he had a strong performance after that -- it certainly

helped that he did well. we have survey data about john mccain. age matters as a variable for voters. it is negated to some extent that donald trump is actually older. in a different environment, had it been a younger republican, this would be a bigger issue. one voters care about -- party loyalty is such an important factor. confidence -- do i trust that the person can do the job? especially in the executive elections. is that person confident? her concern is the health care shaking confidence in her. it has a marginal impact. if it comes to a close election,

it will matter. this is the kind of thing that could shift a fraction of the percent of the vote. in 2000, that is what matters. most campaign events, six weeks later, you cannot even remember what happened. >> in this election, we are told that these of the most unpopular candidates. in your opinion, how does that of, i into the psychology have got to go vote. it is an anti-vote. prof. coffey: that is a great point. i would love to have a psychologist to turn this over -- most studies indicate when

,ou look at voter psychology voters are motivated by fear and enthusiasm . enthusiasm gets me excited. but i lock my doors because i am afraid. both of these things lead to action. there is a depression on the democratic side of enthusiasm for hillary compared to obama. from the perspective of the voter, she is a letdown compared to obama and those younger , she is a harry truman to franklin roosevelt. clinton is not barack obama. believe hows i do

many republicans are going to skip the presidential vote -- [indiscernible] i will vote for portland -- i will not -- especially here in ohio, when the institutional party is not backing trump. i do -- i think, from an organizational standpoint, that is meaningful. it is hard to see that candidate winning. there is a great documentary on ohio and it follows the 2004 campaign, people working at the grassroots level in ohio and just getss -- and it to the army of people who are mobilized to get people to vote. it shows, why was ohio so close? if you take away the foremost a party organization, it is hard

to see that you are going to lose votes as a result of that -- i think, both of them, lower turnout. my best prediction is we will see the lowest turnout in a long time. i could be wrong. >> [inaudible] he doesn't seem to be stumping for hillary. are they going to stay home? prof. coffey: i think some of them will stay home. -- we often hear this in elections. know, hillary clinton, or -- they -- her supporters will never back barack obama. of course they went around -- you know?

however, for a lot of these voters who are newly mobilized, there is that kind of, wait a second -- you know? i am going to vote for the green party candidate. some of them are going to become democrats but she is going to lose some portion of them. we shows up is a loss of enthusiasm. where campaigns matter a lot is, it's saturday, it's sunny, it's beautiful, you can work at the campaign office, or you can go hiking, you know? i am 22 years old, i want to go hiking, you know he? or, you will do anything -- you will walk in the rain canvassing and i think that we are going to lose the enthusiasm of those people knocking on doors, handing out letters.

do you see, this year, the third parties having any more effect than they have in the past? they have to because they are going to get more of a percentage of the vote but the best example is in 1992 and 2000 in 1992 most republicans think ross perot cost bush the election. . am not sure that that's true he brought new people into the electorate. in 2000, we can definitely say that ralph nader cost al gore the election. it was only 3% of the vote but it was enough. in this election, the odds would wouldthat gary johnson draw more votes from hillary

clinton -- excuse me, from donald trump then hillary clinton. republicans could feel uncomfortable with donald trump and more comfortable with a libertarian. the green party candidate is only drawing 2% of the vote right now. you would expect that sanders would have a bigger role -- nineon is getting about percent but it seems to be largely disaffected republicans. hadnything, it shows that the republicans nominated somebody else they might be in a stronger position. whoever. whoever they would have nominated, that person would be in a very strong position against clinton. think we have to consider that some fraction of the gary thaton phenomenon is libertarians have been trying to

get their message out and some voters might be more receptive to write. if you took johnson off the ballot, they would stay home. i have heard people say that our current political system or the voters are more divided than since the civil war. what would it take to get us to start talking to each other and working together? prof. coffey: that is a good question. i would win a nobel prize if i knew. let me highlight a few things. we are separated into different areas. cities are rebounding, populations are increasing.

they are tending to increase with populations that are blue in the suburbs which used to be where everybody -- you had a good job, a family. there is more selection in terms millennials,s, for i don't want to live there as opposed to my wife's family who intentionally moved out to get out of boston. that generation was the generation who said, get out of the city and go to the suburbs. two generations later, going back to the cities. some of that is selection bias in the sense of the differences i talked a little bit about about where people live, what they do, how they experience everyday life, and those experiences are so different that it is hard for people to talk to each other.

the social services that people are accustomed to in cities are totally foreign to somebody who goes hunting on the weekends. thoseharder to overcome because some sociologists say it is because politics is more about who we are, our expression of ourselves, and also about our income and it is less about saying, you know, i am irish catholic and i'm a democrat. whoever you are, i will vote this because my party has nominated dwight eisenhower. because of some of these social differences, the candidates are more strongly representative of that whereas the parties tended to be more coalitions with the coalition's conflicting and so they had to

nominate people who were more compromise candidates. now you have to nominate somebody who is not a compromise candidate. that person will -- they say -- how do you win the primary? it is a problem. ands not as easy as drawing redistricting especially when people have economically and socially clustered themselves into different areas. anticipate any changes to the electoral college system? prof. coffey: no. a couple of reasons for that. , this comes at of economics and social sciences, what is the best alternative? the best alternative has to be the current alternative by a lot of people who have a stake in the system. right now the best alternative is if there are several different and none of them

appeal to the people who need to make the change. let's take the national party vote, the popular vote. almost all the states say, no way. some of them are just purely materialistic. iowa loves having people come to the primary. attention.ets they are not going to give that up but the smaller states feel that it is part of a representation going back to the constitutional convention. we are one of the few industrialized countries that maintains an upper house legislator that is regionally is, look,art of that the senate and the electoral college, these things are bound together. you cannot extract one.

most of the time, it works. this is a bad example but abraham lincoln wins 38% of the vote but he wins a pretty clear electoral college majority. most candidates do not get 50% of the vote. i am not sure you were going to get enough people to buy into alternative systems. if we do the congressional , awarding electoral votes on the basis of congressional district, that system tends to powerful areas because you will have more votes -- democrats say, no way. republican say, no way you are doing the popular vote. occur change does not because it is the best of the

worst alternatives. that would be my realistic answer. thank you again for having me. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] weekend, thiss , the history of hate speech and censorship in america, examining irish and african-americans in america. philadelphia, a large group of african americans gathered outside the walnut klansmeneatre when the were scheduled to appear. one report estimated that 2000 african-americans came to whites and another 1000

came to observe. at the start, one man threwerican something from the gallery and somebody shouted, we want know atlanta here. announcer: man sunday morning, o to the white house, the second 1988 presidential debate. i want to bring a sense of fiscal responsibility to build a foundation under which this country can grow. >> i wish he would join me in appealing to the american people. i would like to have that line item veto for the president. announcer: a tour of the uss

wisconsin, launched in 1943. about theto talk citadel. in the front, we have a door which is closed during combat. >> madeleine albright receives the great american award from the national museum of american history. the national journal said, a woman walks into the cocktail party and is immediately surrounded by men. for our complete schedule, go to c-span.org. announcer: kristopher white talks about james longstreet's counterattacked during the intle of the wilderness

virginia. he describes the aims of both armies at the start of the fighting and the impact of the battle on the landscape. he also argues that long street's injury affected command during the civil war. chris: starting things off, we talking at spotsylvania about the overland campaign and i am pleased to introduce a man who has shown me the ins and outs of the wilderness battle. familiarity is ed