not so much of a divide anymore. seven years ago, folks who lived in the big cities, the suburbs, middle suburbs, exurbs they thought global warming was a problem at a 75% rate, and fast- forward to 2012, that divide is clearly present the between on the one hand big cities and urban suburbs and middle suburbs and exurbs. those are the trends that we think are partly explaining why urban suburbs are areas where democrats are doing increasingly better and they are resembling cities more and more. for those of you familiar with the d.c. area, we're talking about montgomery county. that would be an urban suburbs, and how people in montgomery county are probably much more like folks who live in d.c., rather than folks who live further out outside of the d.c. area. before i turn it over, i want to leave you with two questions that this raises, that this research raises that we did not

have an answer yet. one is we do not know yet whether this is an obama effect or a party effect. in 2014, and in 2016, once barack obama is off the ballot, will these trends continue or will they revert back to a pre- obama era? that is something we cannot answer right now. the second one, if it is true that urban suburbs are changing, the question that emerges from that is whether it is changing because new people are moving in and bringing with them a different set of ideological preferences and issue preferences, etc., or are those shifts occurring because people who have lived in those areas for a while are changing their minds, or they are looking at the political landscape, looking at politics at the national level in congress, and they are changing their mind when it comes to issues such as global warming, when it comes to issues such as gay marriage and abortion.

i will leave you with those questions and turn the microphone over to elizabeth. >> i suggest that maybe we sort of throw it open -- >> what we will do now is let the panel take a look, the three of you, and, elizabeth, you could start this, to look at what your reactions are to this, and then anybody else on the panel to look at it. i will start with elizabeth because we talked about loudoun county. yesterday i went out to the rural parts of loudoun county, bluemont. this is as far west as you could go. it used to be horse country. the bluemont arts festival was there, and when looking at the parking lot, there were far more

beemers than pickups. a lot of the people there came from the eastern part of loudoun county, like yours truly, but it was a symbol of what has happened there, and what has happened in the past 10 years. that is your kickoff. >> yes. loudoun county -- and i'm not sure how many folks in the room are from the d.c. region or if you're from elsewhere in the united states -- but loudoun county is the wealthiest county according to the last census in the nation. the d.c. area has eight of the 10 richest counties in the country, and loudoun is at the top of that heap. what you are seeing is a place that used to be just a green expanse of rural americana turning into some of these urban

suburbs that dante and antoine are describing. it is interesting to see how this plays out on the ground, because in cities like leesburg, which is the capital of loudoun, is a colonial town, it grew up in 1768, it was founded, and it first started to sprawl out into mcmansions and big-box stores and malls and shopping centers, office parks, and what is happening now is that whole landscape is changing because there is just a glide path of brains and money coming down 267 from the city and also from the dulles technology corridor and those people want to live in loudoun. but their characteristics are a lot different than the people who were living there when this whole process got underway about 15 years ago, and that is that they are younger, more highly educated, more affluent, and they do not just come from d.c. or some other area in the d.c.

region, they come from the nation, because they are drawn to the government, the universities. what they want is not a picket fence on a 1/3-acre lot. what they want to live over retail. they want to walk to transit. they want to live the way they lived in the college center they came from or the urban city they came from. this is really changed. as these guys are describing, it has changed the politics, too. they tend to be more democratic voters. loudoun was an entirely republican bastion 15 years ago. you see dual pressures. you see the demographic pressure and you see the influx of the different type of individual and the pressure that places on the

tax base, on development, on the retail mix, on housing. that is what is really fascinating, that it is not exclusive to loudoun. it happens all over the region. and that is what is driving this sort of slow shift that is happening in the urban suburbs, the fastest-growing communities in the country. >> michael? >> yeah, push the mike over. >> thank you for being here. i have worked with a lot of different folks here for many years. terrific programs. in 2004, george bush. 98 of the 100 fastest-growing counties.

after the 2004 election, the debate was about the problem facing the democratic party, because the fastest-growing parts of the country -- 98 out of a hundred is beyond the margin of error. of course we had a great recession since then, and those recessions have changed the counties, and that is something the partners have done a lot of work on. it is a cautionary tale, and over my long career i keep being asked at different times to look at long term party change, meaning whether or not there is alignment. i have been asked to do this several times in my career, and every time there is a predicted realignment, i keep saying, there are too many independents. those are conflicting views that restrict long-term realignment. but this work is very important. the other thing about data, and this is what is so powerful about the data set being created, is you can add test

data, with the test hypothesis. for example, this is why the exit polls are such a powerful database, it would be possible within sight the exit poll to look at whites and just whites in these kind of urban counties. my speculation would be the white vote did not shift that much, and that is what is happening in the urban counties is to answer the two questions posed, is we are watching what is the most important story in this country politically, which is the growth of the latino population. what you're seeing in the chart is that the urban counties to tip below 70% white, and in today's political terms, when you drop below 70% white, republicans lose. it speaks to republicans in my mind, either have to be competitive with latino votes, or they start getting this kind of pressure and it will happen

in other counties. my own thesis is this is less of a shift of the white vote and more of a shift in the changing demographics, of the latino population. one of the reasons it is important is the latino population is like 25% of all population, it is 21% of adults because they have so many kids, and of the 21% of adults, it is 18% of registered voters and 16% of the turnout. what we will see is latino percentages will start nearing the percentage of the registration. when that happens is republicans cannot lose three to one because there are no votes.

what you are watching here is a database that provides power to look at an answer those kinds of questions, a powerful tool. the last point is it is a tool that can be hard to use in polling because it is low for national survey, and it tells us to use a lot of merged data to apply this to real quick or analytical terms to a poll. >> [indiscernible] i will make a couple points.

first is what we see in the data, and there are two things we're looking at. i'm speaking to political demography, is this a shift in population or is it a battle or change in hearts and minds? antoine mentioned this, and the other thing is from a practical political perspective, some doing what i do and what bill does, trying to elect candidates. what does this data tell us? what is the challenge in looking at it? as we have heard over and over, obviously these different suburbs are growing, growing in a way that is good for democrats, increase in minority percentages there, followed by and probably connected to increase in poverty, and generally seeing more democrats there. at the same time, the question is, as we look at the battle for hearts and minds, and idea of what the issues shift is, is

this just because democrats are moving from the urban areas, moving from other areas, and making this more democratic, or is there something happening there, and i would pose and i hope is the case that there is. the climate change difference is what has become a big split in society about, and i do not mean to sound partisan, democrats saying we have to trust in science, republicans having a different view of that, and climate change is a bellwether of that. you mentioned evolution, but climate change is something were we are still in the middle, even in the suburbs, not a high issue. i will admit that, even though people are agreeing with the need to act. i do not put it at the top of the agenda. gay marriage has moved across the country, but in the suburbs, it is a leading indicator. my hope is i do not -- democrats

have an edge in the suburbs, or is it actually a more fertile ground for us to go out and change minds that are not necessarily open to our arguments? the other thing i want to raise here, speaking to someone who tries to elect candidates, how we can use this to elect democrats, and one of the things that is interesting about politics compared to this very detailed view is that despite all you hear about all the different types of communications, there are two basic ways we communicate and campaigns are all about communications. first message, figuring out what to say, but the next is how do we get that message out, how do we communicate with people, and we want to find out. even the obama campaign had limited resources. they are trying to do it efficiently. media markets. not only are we talking about bigger than suburbs, but if you look around, we are talking

about down to prince william county, alexandria, arlington, loudoun, then montgomery, p.g. county, and many counties that are very different. how can we go to that broad swath? cable and other things give us granularly, but still it is a different way of looking at things, almost opposite of what we would like to do, which is give us the individual hit. that is the other trend into indications, micro-targeting or modeling, and there we are doing something that cuts across all these counties. we are not saying we want to look at montgomery county or orange county in california.

what we are saying is we are modeling a voter profile or micro-targeting, and if there's five people in a rural county and fit our model of who we need to persuade, we will have mail go to them. mail still works. we can make sure it is in the zip code, and there are other ways to communicate that puts us on in some way beyond this, and i say, not beyond, but better, in that we are dealing different in these counties. then the question is then, what is the value here? we need political demography, and it ends up being we do it well in every campaign, even though there are limitations, the art of putting people into boxes they do not want to be in, and we know that the person in the tractor county, rural republicans in a tractor county .

>> some people are proud of it, but they do not like being called part the tractor vote. people do not like being called the volvo vote in montgomery county even though it may be true. it helps us explain what is happening, and it is the best way to examine what is happening. >> reactions? >> the first thing is bill said about the exit polls, i'm trying to get that data. it needs to be geo-tagged. it is broken out by the only tag by urban, suburban, rural, it is not terribly useful. if we can get it broken down by zips, i wonder about that as

well, because i think the white vote he have moved a bit since 2004. >> i know on the exit file they have the number of the precinct that collected the exit poll. collecting that would not be that hard. there is a geographic tag that may not be -- it would take a conversion, but it is not that hard. there is a little bit of issue about 2012 in terms of getting the raw data. apparently there has been some emotion -- anyway, that will get cleared up. when it does, i think it is a solvable problem because they you know exactly where this precinct was where the data was collected. >> we focus on loudoun for a

second, because that is a place where this is playing out, this change is playing out in sharp relief. the whole state of virginia is a really cool example of this test right now with the governor's race there, the only competitive race in the nation this year. it is a battleground, a purple state, both parties wanting it, and they are trying to test out what is in play here, why has virginia gone from conservative to leaning democrat? is it the composition of the people? i talked to tom davis, who was in the 11th district, which includes fairfax county, and that is a county where this whole process is largely complete. he managed to win seven terms.

he even won by 6% in 2006, which was a democratic sweep year in congress, just by focusing on local concerns. what he was explaining to me was a rino, a republican in name only, is what you have to be to be a republican and win in these urbanized areas. you have to focus on local concerns. bill was mentioning the hispanic immigrant population, which is large in fairfax county, so he focused on things that were important to his salvadorean constituents, korean constituents, but he focused on throwing his congressional weight on local projects, to the point where he was criticized for some of the things that the earmarks and directed spending that he did while a congressman. he points out is the national party has lost its way in a state like virginia as they are

focusing on divisive social issues, abortion, same-sex marriage, educational vouchers, things like that were people on on the ground in counties like fairfax are saying that is not my interest. i have to drive an hour and a half to get to work every day. what are you going to do about the roads? are we going to get the silver line in virginia, or are you going to block it? just on the silver line you can see this divide because you have cucinelli, who is opposed to the silver line, and you have mcauliffe backing it. maybe one reason would be for mcauliffe, those are his peeps, the people who want to be the silver line and want to use it

to get in, and cucinelli, this is something for the people who are out there, voting reliably for the republican party, are those people who do not want to live near public transport and do not use it as much. >> something michael said, and a lot of people have said this. the idea that getting beyond counties and getting to the zip code level, as a journalist, there are 50,000 of them, extremely difficult to do. counties, there are 3100 of them. they are micro-targeting, and getting down to the individual level. they do not matter that much because that decides not the race for presidency. it is not that big a deal. geography matters because it is true that if you are micro- targeting people, you will target people that are in-line

with your point of view. the thing is, what is happening is the way the country is split up, people tend to more live around people who are like them, so when you are targeting, i want to target these 1000 people in montgomery county, i need them, they will all live near each other. my answer to this is that the most liberal person in america may live in the middle of world -- rural nebraska. it does not really matter. the one thing i have seen, community matters in that you live around people like you, but you live around people when they are like you, you tend to talk and you tend to see the world more through their eyes, more persuaded by their arguments, and one of the reasons you chose

to live you there if you have money and can afford to live there, you wanted to live there because you'd like the same kinds of things. what is driving change? it is impossible to measure that. some people leave the persuadables and stay behind and fall in line with the dominant culture. >> the people that matter the most to us, republican or democrat, are the students right here. i would like you to queue up and line up for questions because i know some of you have classes coming up. please start standing up right there and we will go to questions right after the professor has a chance to make some remarks. >> i want to respond quickly, i agree with bill when you said that we have to be careful to characterize this as a realignment. if you will notice, i never mentioned realignment, and part of the reason is realignment is an interesting phenomenon where in political science, scientists

are thumbing their noses. it is like a recession. we will know a year from now if we are in a recession today. we will know 30 years from now if this is a realignment time or not. you look at the election results nationwide in the last decade, the margins are very tiny. bush v. gore was very close. obama's "landslide" election of 2008 was not really a landslide. when we are dealing with small vote changes from one election to the next, small changes at the community level tend to be magnified. a one-point difference nationwide in big cities or in urban suburbs is magnified when

we are dealing with a nation that michael baronne talked about a 49-49 nation. gaining one or two percentage points across the board a could make a huge impact nationwide. >> i have a question that relates to voter turnout in these suburban-urban areas, possibly an obama effect, but given the growing population, are we seeing an increase in voter turnout or is it staying level, it are changing the way they vote? >> we have not looked at turnout. i have looked at it, and hearing it, and looking at the wrong numbers over time. i have not compared turnout. the one thing about turnout is it varies so much election to election.

i would be very careful with any comment i would make about. >> dante was involved with an earlier system that had fewer county breaks, and we use that working with dante. one of my interests was to look at whether or not those counties helped explain any shift in what happened in 2012 in terms of composition of the electorate. we looked at those counties at a percent of the total vote, and it is consistent the between 2004, 2008, and 2012. you can see obama increasing, in response to these counties, and we went out to two decimal points. you're almost talking about no change in the composition of electorate from 2008 to 2012. that is one of the major findings to me, how stable 2012

was compared to 2008 compared to 2004. >> looking at that data, correct that the composition of the electorate has not changed, although if you look at different subgroups, like youth turnout between 2004 and 2008, it went up by a significant margin, but the youth vote is usually quite small compared to the country. it does not change the makeup of the electorate. in recent years what you have seen is greater mobilization among racial minorities. that might be an obama effect. in the last election, the first election when african-american turnout was higher than white turnout, if i'm not mistaken. whether that is persistent in the future, we don't know.

i suspect it may not be, given that obama will not be on the ticket. that is something we have seen in the last two elections. >> question on the side. >> i'm assistant professor at george mason university. i want to congratulate you on your work. i have a comment. i think both of you wished or individual data. there is the national suburban poll conducted by the national center at hofstra every other year. they have conducted this poll three or four times now. i would be happy to talk with you after this. thank you. >> we will talk. >> my name is jose. my question -- the first one in the data that was inferring the increase of hispanic people in suburban areas, that vote was going to the democratic party alone. is that the case, because i was under the impression that the latino vote, because of

religious beliefs, that they often voted with the republican party, or is it because republicans stance against immigration? who are they voting for? if it is true the democratic party really gets the minority vote, it is unfortunate for the republican party, so for mr. bloomfield and mr. mcintuff, what advice could you give the republican party to help them rebrand themselves so they can start getting young, black women to vote for them, for example. >> mike is not going to offer any help. [laughter] >> it is unfortunate, but i do not think there is a republican message to the african-american community.

there is an historic split that occurred over time, and if you look at african-american attitudes on a number of issues about the role of government versus republicans, there is not a match. at the margins there is stuff you can do, but i do not think -- in a political context, when you run campaigns, it is a difficult vote. my recollection is the latino vote, romney was down to 27%. that is an unsustainable margin for a political party. if the latino votes drifted the way of the african-american vote, whites have dropped 2% every election since 1988, and so some of that can speak

to immigration, but there are other splits between latinos based on the country of origin, how long they have been in the country, whether they speak spanish or not, their level of acclamation, and as a party, there's this fundamental sort of umbrella. do you seem to be welcome in that party? and you can have a policy debate in a way that makes people feel welcome, and you can have a debate that makes people feel excluded. doesn't matter where else you agree. they don't feel like they've been particularly welcomed. we worked -- i did not do the work, but governor purdue at georgia, we tested a bunch of commercials after the first round of immigration to test republican commercials on the topic of immigration. so we looked at some stuff that was running republican primaries and how that was tested, and we

looked at governor purdue's stuff. he did a commercial where he said, hey, you've got to obey the law. but if you're here illegally, this state wants to offer you an open hand and a welcoming hello, and here's what we can do for people who are here. and the difference between that commercial and that line versus the way it was presented by a different republican candidate was massive in terms of how people reacted to that spot. and as a party, i'm just saying that that has to be the challenge. it also means as a republican, by the way, having worked on this, you have to build up state, legislative and a lot of other folks who are part of your party and culture, and you have to have candidates to learn to speak spanish. and the last thing is, and this is the trouble, we've had two cycles, the democrats are the primary, but you're desperately

trying to win the primary and you wake up and you say, let's talk to latinos. there's five months left. it's too late. you cannot start that effort with five months left in the campaign. it has to be an ongoing part of what you do, or it's not successful. >> i spent time talking to people there. and there is a divide. it's not just something you're seeing at the top the republican party. when you go to places that are much more conservative, there is anxiety about immigration. i went to southern -- the community in the southwestern part of missouri, which is a big evangelical enclave. the assembly of god church is

based around there. and they brought up to me -- i said let's talk about your community. several people brought up immigration to me. i did not raise the issue to them. it came up, and the issue was, why are those labels at the store? i don't like that the stores are printed in spanish as well. what's up with that? so there's a problem that runs deep through the party at not just -- the establishment is something they're going to have to deal with down further within the ranks of the party. >> another question here. >> i'm a graduate student at george washington university. my question was for dante. i'm interested in the starbucks theory. thomas friedman presents the golden arches theory. that's two assassinations that have simultaneously had mcdonald's and never engaged in a war against one another. that suggests a resolve economically, that a consumer is more interested in a certain service, rather than pursuing conflict. so does the starbucks theory per

100,000 occupants or inhabitants, does that suggest something about political consumer preferences as well? i wonder if you could expound upon that. >> this is an area that's of great interest to me, and i have access to all the experian data now, which i'm trying to figure out what to do with. it's a massive catalog of stuff . to me, what's happened with the consumer preferences is, what it's done is created communities that are more and more like terrariums because of niche marketing. a guy opens a store on your corner because he's trying to make some money or whatever, if starbucks or chick-fil-a or whole foods -- my god, if you look at the data on whole foods, it's really clear what's going on. they trend like the index for whole foods, it's 186 for liberals and like 80-something for conservatives. so, you know, what's happened is niche marketing has become very adept at saying i need to maximize my profits.

i know the people that shop at my store. they live there. i'm putting this store there. and other stores that are like that, that cater to the same people cluster around it and you end up creating an effect that is something like a little terrarium. i live in upper northwest. it's one of these places. upper northwest d.c. is full of a certain kind of person, and i'm one of them, who want a certain kind of thing, and we live where we live because that's what we want. you know something? that's great as a consumer, it's terrific as a consumer. because my life -- my consumer life is so full. [laughter] but all the places that target me because i live there, and that's wonderful, but what it also means -- maybe it's a little different for me, because my job is to try to look at the country outside of where i live. for other people, what it means is it creates blinders. this consumer culture and the niche marketing is helping to create blinders that really makes it more and more difficult to see people that don't live

like you. and just quickly, because this is something i'm doing a lot of work on. ultimately that has become detrimental for the functioning of american democracy when we all have to come together when we increasingly live in a consumer world and it's becoming more and more problematic. >> i have a fun example from whole foods from my reporting when i was at "the washington post." i was covering the environment for a time, and i wrote about how rockfish in the chesapeake had developed a disease that was killing them. now, all the experts said we have no evidence to show that this affects the quality of the fish, how edible it is, whether it's toxic or whatever. the next day the governor -- then governor of maryland, bob ehrlich, a republican, held a rockfish-eating lunch in the governor's mansion to show, yum, i love this. the watermen were up in arms and people were upset.

whole foods went the other way. they took all the rockfish out of the store. they put up signs letting everyone know. and you could argue, is this a reaction to the quality of the food, or is it a reaction to the politics of the consumer who shops at whole foods? i thought it was such a fascinating example, because in the sort of republican swath of maryland among the watermen and the fishermen and the people in the industry, they were furious, and they just demonstrated that they wanted to eat this fish. and on the other side you had whole foods in the upper northwest side saying we're on it, we're on it. >> we have another question. >> i'm a graduate student at f.p.a. one of interesting parts of this panel for me was talking about trying to predict voter share in terms of, i guess, both demographic variability, such as the increase in the latino population. but you mentioned the obama effect, which i would assume represents the change on the political side of who your representative is, right?

and so, but do you refer to the obama effect in trying to predict what -- i guess in terms of trying to predict what the obama effect is, do you think that's going to go down as in some aberration, or what i've seen in the political news now is hillary is starting to put her name out, rubio, other candidates who might have their own obama effect in some sort of way, if that makes sense. to basically sum up, how do you think the variability, how important is it? >> anyone want to start that one? >> it is hard to transfer popularity to any other candidate of either party. what his legacy vote is worth is even harder to figure out

because you're talking about what's going to happen over the next year or so. he was an extraordinarily strong candidate in 2008 and then ran a strong race, did well in 2012. a lot of that, though, as we've been hearing, is that the democratic party has been stronger in those two presidential elections. going back to bill's points, hard to say you're going to have a re-alignment when in the off year between those goes the exact opposite direction. so there's always the case when you're looking at all the data, that there is to some extent, while you're trying to find outliers, but where trends are exaggerated, but in general -- and i looked at eight or nine random suburban counties, bill clinton was here, bush, who was here -- and we're talking about for democrats -- and kept it here, and then when obama wins, he puts it up here again. so there is a little bit of an effect of following the national popularity.

and it's hard to predict that right now. >> question on this side. >> go ahead. >> i think it's an important story. part of what i look at when you look at the composition of electors, the percent that the electorate represents, they present the representative of the vote. we've had two cycles where african-americans were above census in terms of their level of census in terms of turnout. that may be and probably is a consequence of the president and it might also be due to white democrats. but it's a point. we're talking about points that matter, but it's a point. the point i would say to my party, which can be somewhat resistant is there are longer- term trends. 18, 20-year-olds are a bigger part of the electorate, latinos are a bigger part of the electorate. you're kidding yourselves if you think this is a function of barack obama. this is underlying dynamics and demographics in the country and this is going to continue. and the second thing is, and this is also for people to kind

of get, is most of the political science is based on a certain kind of presidential race based on a certain amount of money. and all of this mechanical stuff was based on this sort of big presidential race. the last presidential race was $2 trillion to $4 trillion. $4 billion.n to how do we measure that? nbc "wall street journal," we asked you, if you lived in a swing state, have you been contacted by a presidential race. it was 32%. 2004 it was like considered, oh my god, it was exceptional. that was the hugest race ever. 2008 it was like 50%. this year in mid october, 73%. so if you were living in a swing state, three out of four people said, yeah, i've been contacted personally. the money went to $2 billion. so my other point is, what we

think about in terms of composition of the electorate is going to be radically changed when running $2 billion to this united election. so underlying demographic changes are what drives composition now, not interest in the electorate, the candidate. with $2 billion, you get them to vote and that's how big the vote is and it will not stop because obama is not the nominee. >> dante? >> just to point out quickly on money and turnout, if you look at the turnout in states that are not battlegrounds, turnout is low. texas is a big state. their turnout is very low, and that's because they don't really consider -- they don't think their votes matter and people don't spend money there. i think the turnout numbers that you see and the demographics that you see, these numbers will change if a state starts to become in play because of a demographic shift, there could be a quick change in what the vote looks like because of turnout changes, because of ad spending. that's one thing. the other thing really quick, i'll talk about re-alignments. i don't believe in that, and i'm

glad that antoine said there was voodoo in that. i don't believe in it either. what i think the numbers show is it requires a change in tack to reach some of these places if you're the democratic party. -- the republican party. >> go ahead and ask your question. >> i'm an undergraduate student in the school of public affairs. i just wanted to ask about how the focus on social conservatism in the republican party has definitely alienating voters. i'm wondering if you think that the republican party has been shifting more libertarian, where is it shifting? and if it does shift in the future, where will those ultra conservatives -- socially conservative voters go? >> those are great questions. they're not the topic of the panel. so i'm going to skip answering it, because i don't think it's what the panel is dealing with here in terms of the topic.

>> antoine, you had something to say to the previous question request, if i'm not mistaken. >> regarding turnout, that's one area -- i mean, if you were to stack every political science study on turnout. you probably could go to the moon and back a couple of times. we know quite a bit about turnout. some of the recent studies on turnout show that it's a habitual behavior. so it's hard to get people to vote sometimes. but once you get them to vote, especially at an early age, in their 20's, that behavior then tends to perpetuate itself. so if it's true that obama was able to mobilize -- we know it's true. we've seen the data. he was able to mobilize sort of college-aged and young adults at a higher rate than previous candidates and if it's correct that turnout is habitual, then one would expect future elections to still reflect some

of that, and some of that mobilization among population that traditionally have not voted at such a high rate. >> i have a remark on, again, going back to virginia, which is really my jones lately, the ad spending there is just unbelievable because it's seen as a sort of national test of who is going to carry the message in 2016, who has an edge. but the ad spending there is really remarkable for this gubernatorial race because you have mcauliffe, he's brought in $19 million. of those numbers only about 1/4 of that for mcauliffe and 1/3 of that from the opposing

candidate is from virginians. it's all national money, superpack money and it's people who see virginia as a microcosm of the united states and they're trying to see which way they can poll a race that will be decided by turnout. >> i don't like to leave a question hanging that the panel can't answer. we didn't talk about the makeups of the parties or tactics. but to the lady who asked the question about where social conservatives go, here's one way of looking at it, just as a citizen looking at it. it comes from that great politician, pope francis, who all of a sudden decided -- and it's not so all of a sudden if you look at his background -- decided it just might be healthy for the church to begin thinking about social justice and poverty, the things that bring the flock together, as opposed to some of the other things that seems to be moving the flock apart. it seems to me, social conservatives have a lot to share with other people in the electorate when they move away from some of the hot-button issues. and for republicans, there may be a lesson in that. that's just an opinion. >> any other questions we have? paul, you got one? >> sure, here.

>> my name is john, i'm an ex- suburban voter. >> recovering. >> in terms of geography, what about factors aside from messaging, factors such as gerrymandering districts and, as dante said about likes living together, does that make it easier to, in essence, restructure voting so that you could have what happened in 2012, where more voters, i think, voted democratic for the house, but the house is overwhelmingly republican? can that be a forward-going function? and on the other side, does that also make it easier in terms of voter suppression tactics, where you can use structural factors to affect the election? i think the focus on messaging is interesting.

but sometimes you get the republicans associated, knowing how to play the structure, and the democrats, in essence, playing football on a baseball field and leaving that open, so you end up with more voters voting for one party, yet the other party getting elected. >> well, some of this is not strategy, or maybe a lack of strategy. but it's just the idea that democrats, unfortunately, have lost the elections that lead up to redistricting. we've had bad years, just like we had a bad 2010. we had the same thing happen the decade before, and that gives us the districts which we don't like and the republicans put together. and yes, what they do is -- one of the key things to you who asked about the idea of reaching out to the minority vote, one of the things that happens, which bill can talk about it more, but why republicans are always reaching out naturally is because they have packed all the black voters and minority voters

in general into a district to say that the democrats can have that one district and try to win off all the others. so, yes, there's probably a change in messaging for them. for us, it puts us much more outside the urban areas, suburban and ex-suburban area. they are not like montgomery county. when that county or the top county in georgia is not like looking at montgomery, or alexandria. these are different areas. i'd say they're both suburban. it's harder and harder to win, but it pushes us have to a message that's a little bit farther reaching. >> quickly, just on the difference between republican and house, just the makeups of the constituents, because we looked at this actually in the journal. in the 113th congress, and this is looking at the hispanic vote in terms of immigration, the hispanic population of

republican districts is about 12.5%. that's the constituency in republican districts, 12.5%. in democratic, it's 22.5%. there's a lot of things that make a place what it is, but that hispanic population mirrors circa 1994. and the democratic hispanic, that's what america is supposed to look like in about 2025. they really are -- they're representing very different constituencies. i think both sides play the game about trying to get as much as they can. but the republicans are in the position to draw the districts they want and they've done a good job of it. >> that's an exciting contrast, to the 1950's, 1960's, 1970's, and 1980's. so i wrote an article in the -- after the last election using

that line from the baseball movie, there's no crying in redistricting. we had two generations where republicans would get 48%, 49% of the vote and 44% of the seats. like in 1980, during the reagan sweep, republicans essentially had 49% of the vote, 44% of the districts. so there was about a five-point gap between the votes cast and the districts. that's what happened to democrats this time. because of the 2010 redistricting, we had so many republicans. this crosses parties, meaning we had all those decades where we had democrats do the same thing, this is where incumbents share an interest with members of congress, which is to give me the most partisan district possible. if someone has worked in redistricting for a large part of my career, the trouble is that if you go to the average member of congress, you can have a safer partisan seat for you, or you can be a good soldier for the party. they say thanks for my bipartisan seat. what it also means -- people ask me, how do we stop the

partisanship in correct me if congress, we have no competitive house seats to speak of by any historic standard. right now we have 26 seats where a person got elected that's different how they voted for president. when i started during the reagan years we had literally 130 seats like that. we've gone from 130 seats to 26 seats where you cross party. this happens on both sides. the average member of congress is acting rationally, which is, how do i not lose a primary? if you had court-drawn seats, we can draw seats incredibly precisely. it was done by neutral political criteria. a member of congress would be looking for how to survive a general election. and so this is something both parties share in terms of wanting to keep what they have, but it has had extraordinary

public policy consequence, and we're getting the public policy consequence of rational acting, which is don't lose a primary on both sides. those seats elect very, very liberal democrats who -- and by the way, here's my other point. when people say, gee, you know, your party doesn't represent this, this, and this, you should look at the districts they represent. they're very, very effective spokespeople for what the district believes, so are the democratic members. but lots of them are majority- minority seats and they're passionate for what their constituents want. my former wife was the grandmother of romanian democracy. she helped write the constitution, and republicans and democrats that go, we train all these people. so the romanians were very excited at their first election. they had their first year the parliamentary system. the american delegation flew back and said how is it going? they said they were very

excited. we only have one question for you american experts. are we supposed to vote for what we think is right or what the people who elected us want? and the american delegation broke out laughing and said, ok, that will be the next chapter. good luck. but that's the point i'm saying, is if it looks like we have paralysis, we have very effective members of congress who are representing their districts. we've just drawn them to be very partisan. >> antoine, if i may, i mean, the statistic that shows they got more house votes than house seats in terms of percentage, it's often mentioned as sort of a sign that the system is unfair. you know, i have this -- it's kind of a pet peeve of mine, but that number is more or less meaningless. we have 435 individual elections. so the aggregation of votes at

the local level, to say that democrats got fewer votes -- or got more votes and fewer seats, part of that is simply a function of the fact that if you were to erase seats from most competitive to least competitive, most of the lopsided seats are democratic seats. i mean, the seats that are won with literally 80% to 90% to sometimes 100% of the votes, they tend to be democratic seats because those tend to be urban seats, seats where republicans don't feel the candidate. so you get this lopsided distribution where democrats can rack up millions and millions of votes in those districts that have no competition and then the few districts that are competitive, some of them are red, some of them are blue, so once you aggregate those, democrats get more votes. but that's simply a function of the fact that a lot of the non- competitive seats happen to be democratic seats. so i would not use the national vote as an indication of sort of

the national mood of the country if only because, you know, what you really have are 435 local elections. >> we are almost out of time. and before we have closing statement here, was there anybody who wanted to say something that has not had a chance to? is there a final question from anyone? you know, we started out asking questions about the electorate and how it's changing, and we've gotten into at least one answer to the question of why the government may shut down. because we have partisan-drawn districts in which members are voting the way their districts want them to vote, and if they don't agree, it's because that's what their constituents want. it seems to me that's a very interesting question to probe at another time, perhaps on redistricting and partisanship. nevertheless, i would like to thank bill mcintuff, michael bloomfield, elizabeth, and the rest of the panel for this

presentation about suburbia. thank you all. [applause] and everybody can go to class! >> today, the senate health committee looks at the effect of health-care associated infections to the economy and the health care system. see it live at 10:00 a.m. eastern. c-span student cam, titian is underway. we are doubling the number of winners and prize money. most a documentary on the

important issue you think congress should consider in 2014. they are due by january 20, 2014. visit studentcam.org. >> washington journal. at 1010 -- at 10:10, president -- addresses the united nations assembly. >> in 45 minutes on "washington journal, quote senator ron johnson of wisconsin, a member of the budget committee, discusses the health-care law and efforts to avert a government shutdown. , congressman jim moran of virginia, appropriations committee member, also discusses the health-care law and the debate over the federal budget.

the effects the current budget debate could have on future political campaigns. our guest is josh kraushaar. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] host: good morning, this is forhington journal" september 24. the president heads to the united nations today to deliver a speech expected to address specific international concerns such as syria, iran, and the middle east and you can see it on c-span at 10:00 today. with the speech as background, several stories in the paper this morning, we want to give your opinion on the role of the united nations, especially as it plays out in international affairs. you can get your thoughts on the role of the u.n., especially in