>> i think you will with the threats that you have obviously isis. it kind of become more prominent the issue of war, the issue of spending. i think you will see them, particularly with john mccain and bob corker who are very vocal. >> does rubio fit in this discussion? >> yeah, i think so. i think you will see him. if you're running for president, you have to show that you have national security credentials and foreign policy credentials. you will see in particularly rubio try to assert himself here. >> if i may reference the rubio

would be certainly the likely candidate. but the other thing is perhaps -- there was a report a couple weeks ago about the potential lindsey graham for 2016. he was bored. but to the point of there will be sort of this jocking for a position on foreign policy matters. and senator graham from south carolina who david mentioned had really not erased for his own re-election. he's certainly in this camp with mccain,. rubio seems to be in that group. i'm interested to watch is what the senator from new hampshire is who is up in 2016. and new hampshire was the one

place on the senate map where there was a close contested race that was supposed to be a close contested race and the democrat held on. scott brown is not returning to the senate. senator shaheen won re-election. she's always with mccain or often with mccain and graham on that sort of thing and she'll be an interesting one to watch there to. >> the three amigos. > i think mccain tweeted out there will be a new member of he amigos. the isis threat has brought back putin m and vladimir national t has made security for republicans machine

like it was before the rise of the libertarian wing. if you look at who's coming into the senate or most likely dan sullivan you have more in the submit and there was one saying and it was evident on the campaign trail that house strategists were aware of was that the insecurity over the isis threat was palpable and that's why there were a lot of ads about it down the stretch you willnk will you -- find that carry over. the one thing in the voting for the authorization of military force is the republicans are going to want obama to lay out the strategy. if the request is you guys need to give me an authorization for use of military force they're going to laugh at him. they don't want to give him a blank check. they're going to say what am i authorizing tow do. lay it out.

let me see how i feel about it. but the votes i believe are there at least in spirit because republicans take this seriously. i think you will see a carryover in the 2016 campaign in the early stage where rand paul will have a lot more trouble trying to mod late -- modulate where he is on national defense. this will not be a replay of 2012. >> i'm going to make a segway nto another topic. what other global policy issue is more important over the long term? we have a new chairman over the enate environment committee. it has the word hoax in it.

the great hoax. >> it might be the greatest hoax. >> the new chairman of the senate environment committee believes that climate change is a hoax. just put it out there. >> this is a guy who -- it was not last year's know sform we had, built a snowman in his yard and had a sign and took a picture of it with a caption, this now what al gore and is true? so that is your new chairman of the endevelopment committee. >> are there any others out of the house or the senate who sort of are in this category and i won't even try to describe this category? i would probably get myself self in deeper trouble.

ing ink there's an overwhelm of scientific everyday that climate change is real, human beings is are part of that. if i'm offending somebody, approach me afterward. i'm going to take that and pivot off tv to the other half of what that committee does if i may. >> oh, public works. the relationship between senator inhofe who is perhaps the most conservative by voting record in the entire senate and senator barbara boxer from california who is one of the most liberal members of the u.s. senate and the two of them completely disagree on climate policy and always will. but when it comes to transportation, senator inhofe

says that there are a few things that the government should be doing and the government should be doing a lot of, one of them is national defense, another one is public works projects. and so we have a highway bill that is coming up and hitting its deadline here next year and it will be one of the projects that will be need to be done by the new congress. one of the things that the republicans in the white house -- and the white house will have to figure out and answer to is the funding and the operation of the highway programs. and on that one inhofe and boxer have written highway bills before. i have fairly good confidence that particularly if the amendment process is actually allowed to work in the senate that one of the big bills that the senate will do next year is the inhofe boxer highway bill and we'll probably have a couple weeks of debate on that at some point over the years.

>> i think that's an excellent point. every reporter and editor got assigned to write at least one new member profile. a freshman elect from georgia. he is a quiz senshal tea party time. he said the same thing which is the constitution says interstate commerce and highway bill. i want nothing more than to come to washington and be the first georgian on the transportation committee so i can steer pln back home to gentleman. i wrote this column this morning. i think a highway bill is one of the ones that's going to get done. probably with a little bit of funding mechanisms. so we've done our three quarters of the hour. jump in and ask some questions. i know somebody's got a

microphone out there. -- q and ome kq and a. >> hi. i'm a congressional correspondent with the hispanic outlook and cover mainly higher education and immigration. so immigration, it's interesting that now we have a lot of republicans on the house committee who were immigration lawyers. >> right. >> and have been very positive about certain pieces of immigration bill, including the kids act which would essentially legalize -- to me the whole controversy in the n congress has been comprehensive versus piecemeal. i think piecemeal will have some -- i would like to know what you all think.

>> he think it all depends on what the president does with his executive legalization moves that he says are coming. fter the election. unless he meant after the louisiana runoff. the crisis of the southern border with unaccompanied minors coming across i think has complicated things. and if you look at how the campaign went, being against legalization was a great campaign line and so i think that you can see piecemeal moves for security measures. i think you could see piecemeal moves possibly for making sure people you're hiring -- i'm forgetting the terminology here but making sure the people you're hiring are legally allowed to work in the united states, verification measures. and something like visas or

high skilled workers might be possible. i think though that anything right now that has to do with galizing any subset of the undocumented community that is currently in the united states is going to very -- be very difficult. and if the president does move ahead with an executive move to do this, you can just kiss it good biuntil the next administration and we'll see what they do. >> there are a lot of business groups including the u.s. chambers who really want to see a bigger immigration bill, something more than just a small measure here, maybe letting skilled workers come in. that's something that are a lot of groups want to see. i think that is going to be a compelling argument for a lot of the newcomers. looking toward 2016, mitt romney

lost hispanic vote by 27 -- more than -- he got maybe 27 of it. more than bush had lost it buy and that's going to be something that the presidential hopefuls are keeping in mind. there's going to have to be something, whether they say absolutely nothing but they're going to have to make some kind of statement on that issue. >> sir. >> hi. emily mentioned lamar alexander. there is a whole slew of education bills that are stacked f stacked up, the re-authorization of no child behind, etc. what's your prediction or sense of do you think we'll see any prog in this congress? and also, how do you see alexander and patty murray the -- demsew ranking demss

sort of dog? -- doing? the >> the thing i will miss the most about tom is the winter style. harkin is not only the house chairman but the chairman of appropriations committee. patty murray could do both of those also if she wanted. i don't think that she will. so i think that murray has been herself to beoven very willing to get things done at heart, she is a negotiator. she's a legislate lateor. she likes writing bills. i would not be surprised to see some alexander murray bills every few months. and the whole committee has a

long tradition of passing bills. i think when you're talking about no child left behind, doing a big re-authorization on that scale is going to be incredibly difficult to get through one chamber, much less both. i think you might see something on student loans. alexander has different priorities than harkin. i think early preschool, early education is a big thing of murray's. i think you might see some educational bills. i think you'll see some areas -- but i think these grand re-authorizations we've been waiting for for years, he don't expect to see them again. >> yes, sir. edward, sunshine press.

we've not seen much commentary what effect the elections would have on the democrats? do you see it moving farther to the left? how do you see it changing in each chamber? >> very quickly, i don't know. i don't think they're going to move to the senate. i think as you probably are aware, the last white male democrat from the deep south was defeated on tuesday. the house democratic caucus will not be majority. white male once again next year. it is arguably more demographically polarized itself than any of the other three caucuses. it's now house democrats are the parties of the cities. certainly they're keeping their

pelosi. p, i i >> i jumped on the senate side would have -- what happened is you've seen a similar effect. the sort of many members of the moderate wing of the democratic caucus in the senate were defeated on tuesday. come or will be defeated the beginning of december in the other particular case. and if that is the way it is, you're going to see that the democrats who are in the senate are more interested in more sort of liberal issues. so what i would expect and this is a guess that i have no real basis for, it's just speculating, but i would suspect hat they would be pushing more

liberal approaches in terms of or progressive approaches in terms of amendments and things as part of the process. but that doesn't mean they're not going to be deal making too. so they'll be pushing their own agenda, but i think at the end of the day the calculation is going to be -- going to have to be made and i think it's too early to know when the calculation will be. but when bills start getting on the floor and you've debated them for a week, do you then vote against it? the question for the democrats will be whether to do something that the republicans often did effectively, the minority and -- >> i think that's exactly what they're going to do because they're looking at a good 2016 senate match and they don't want the republicans to look like they're governing, the same way the republicans didn't want to do democrats any favors.

what do they get out of it? they get a republican majority that looks pretty responsible and it helps sell themselves in states like pennsylvania and florida and new hampshire and illinois just to name a few of the states where republicans are running for re-election to the senate. i think the overall thinking is going to be that hillary clinton is likely to be on the ballot for us and they've got nobody and we're going to kill them and we're going to be in the majority and lets just play this smart and we'll be back in control in two short years and there's no reason to look at this any other way. and if i were them at this moment i wouldn't look at it any other way, putting myself in their shoes. >> yes, ma'am. >> we've spoken a lot about the committee leadership turnover in the senate.

but as you mentioned before, there will be turnover in the house. so can you speak a little bit about that and do you think that the speaker will use the new chairmanmanship to kind of partisanship in deal making? that traditionally has been a fwaurn committee, they're one of the few committees that get a few bills done every single year. and it looks like max thorn berry will be the chairman of that committee, although he will have a challenge from randy forbes of virginia. thornberry, he's a hawk just like most democrats and republicans on that committee.

he will challenge obama on isis and operations overseas. you will kind of continue to see the committee operating in the same way it did as before. there's also some other -- there will be an intelligence committee. there's about four members who are in the mix for that. jeff miller could take it which would then open an opening on veterans affairs which will be a closely watched committee early on in the next congress with everything that happened in the last few months there. but i think you will continue to see those committees acting in the way they have been acting. kind of opposing the administration in areas that they can. >> i was going to say on the oversight committee we've got a four-person race on there to replace another division to build your reputation.

there are a few other guys trying to compete, turner, jordan, micah. also, if you watch ways and means committee, paul ryan is looking at heading ways and means. kevin brady is also interested in running that post. it's going to be a little bit of a race there too. i'll let david talk about who boehner would like to see in the chairman position. >> paul ryan will be the next chairman of the ways and means chairman. i think brady is trying to position himself if ryan runs for president. think that the speaker wants wants people in chairmanships that can govern and will not

cause unnecessary problems. and so he will tip the scales on steering committee where he needs to. i think all the names that were mentioned here are the right names and part of the right names because they can get the job done. they've done the work in terms of helping their colleagues and they're not going to go on tv .nd say anything stupid i don't think there will be any shocking chairmanship appointments or people winning races that you didn't expect. >> also, keep an eye on the appropriations committee because there's a lot of musical chairs happening there and a lot of subcommittees in both chambers. >> yes, including -- i was at another event and i was told that andy harris, the only

republican from maryland, a physician is the leadership's -- they're going to make him head of the labor h.s.s. subcommittee. that will be an interesting move. and it will be a good fit for him. >> hasn't been very lucky for the past two chairman of that subcommittee. >> we need to wrap it up here. i'm going to do one bit of logistics before i adjourn and say the next part of the program is you all are welcomed to grab a box lunch and make a phone call or two but please come back right at noon because we have a big finish. i'm sorry at 1:00, sorry, at 1:00. christina will be back to moderate the final panel of the day, two of the smartest names -- tom davis for the

republicans -- thank you all to the panelists. this was great. thank you. [applause] tonight on c-span post-election from the american inter-- enterprise institute. later more from the c.q. roll call conference on the midterm elections. on the next "wall street journal," analysis of the midterm elections and the future of the democratic party. john ublican strategist feehery. "wall street journal" begins ive at 7:00 eastern on c-span.

>> here are just a few of the comments we recently received from our viewers. >> just calling to tell you how much i enjoy q and a at 5:00 on sunday on the west coast everything stops in my house. i turn off my phone. i get my cup of coffee. it's the most enjoyable hour on television. >> it is very informative. i enjoy listening to him and the comments that was done today. me, myself, as being over in the middle east, he was very accurate and he was on point. he would not use his own personal innuendo. i greatly enjoyed it and i hope you have more guests like that. but he was right on target this morning. >> i'm calling to say that i -- i like many people,

have no criticisms. the reason i almost have none is i think you all do a tremendous job of showing just about every side of everything and the way people look at things in d.c. and elsewhere. i take my hat off to you. thank you very much. >> and continue to let us know about what you think about the programs you're watching. emails at 202-626-3400 or us. or you can send us a tweet at c-span #comments. join the c-span conversation, like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. >> at the american enterprise institute's review of the midterm elections panelists discuss what a republican takeover of the senate and its effect of the 2016 presidential

race. his is an hour and a half. >> good afternoon. my name i'm a senior fellow here and i'd like to welcome all of you to this election watch. i'd like to begin by thanking the staff. we're delighted to have such a big crowd. and i also like to extend a special thanks to heather simms our new assistant. she's been with us for a if you months. let me begin by congratulating my fellow panelists. we've been in the business of elections for a long time. election watch began in 1982. we do politics the old fashion fashioned way, studying individual races and historical patterns. i listened yesterday to our

election watch session from two weeks ago and although there were a few misses the panelists generally made very solid calls. we said we expected a big g.o.p. gains and state lectures and we learned this morning that republicans have the highest number of state legislative seats now in 100 years and democrats the lowest number since the civil war. let me say a few words about the polls. while most of them predicted that the g.o.p. would have a good night, many of the individual polls were wildly misleading. mark blumenthal and levi said this morning "the polls missed their mark nationwide by a mile." public polls consistently understated republican candidates in almost every statewide race including a remarkably high number of

misses. for instance, none of them predicted what happened in west virginia where ed gillespie is still awaiting the output. polling statewide is treacherous. whether the business as we know it will be around in 2020 is not clear, but a lot of soul searching should be done and this is not a particularly introspective business. the exit polls had a good night and we can learn a great deal from them. let me goo over a few of the findings that struck me. we talked in the session before this one about the sour public mood. people don't trust this economic recovery and that was evident in so many of the questions on the exit poll ballot. only 1% said the economy was in excellent shape while 70% said

it was still in bad shape. nearly half of voters expected their life for the next generation would be worse. only 22% expected that it would be better. democrats have been counting on what they call the rising minority electorate to propel them to victory. the share of the youth vote this time was down and republicans made gains among those who did vote. the share of the non-white vote slimmed. greg abbott in texas, like george w. bush and rick perry did well with hispanics, capturing 44% of their vote. he gender gap was dwarfed by the marriage gap at 41 points. and an analyst said single women, another core democratic group, gave their party the smallest margin in exit polls going back to 1992. wilmington whole were more democratic than men but less so

than in the past. men were solidly republican. republicans won the women's vote in southern contests in kansas, arkansas, texas, maine, mississippi, in both south carolina races, west virginia and women split their vote in iowa. independents gave the g.o.p. a 12-point margin. a third of voters said they supported the tea party. i looked closely at the health care question on the exit poll ballot. voters in 18 senate contests were asked to check a box indicating whether they thought the law did not go far enough, was about right and went too far. in only two states, oregon and maine did more than 30% say it didn't go far enough. in all of the other states, 45% or more said that the health care law went too far. in 10 states more than 50% of voters said it went too far. the exit poll consortium asked

whether most illegal immigrants in the u.s. should be offered a chance to apply for legal status or deported to the country they came from. only in arkansas did more people say that they should be deported than given legal status. voters in 17 senate contests were asked if their state should legally recognize gay marriage. at the low end, 25% of louisiana said yes. at the high end, 70% of those in new hampshire did. this was the issue that produced more diverse responses than any others. voters in six senate contests were asked whether the use of marijuana should be made legal. voters in two states said yes. only a third of voters in texas said that ted cruz and separately rick perry would make a good president. 39% of our cans said that hillary clinton would.

50% said mike huckabee would make a good president. 28% in louisiana said bobby jindal would. 40% in florida said jeb bush would. in wisconsin, 46% said that paul rein would make a good president. that's a quick summary of some of the exit poll data. we have a piece up on the website that goes into these issues in more detail. now we're going to turn to our panelists and we're going to begin with michael broken to talk about house races. michael, you said, if i remember correctly that at the beginning of the obama administration, the republicans in the house had 179 seats. tell us where they are today. >> yeah, the republicans had 179 seats at the beginning of the

obama administration. they are up to, if you look at current leads, 25 1. some of those leads may evaporate as california in particular takes a lodge time to count its votes. they've taken as long as five weeks. a week ago sunday, brazil tabulates its votes in five hours. and california which believes to be a more advanced state, takes five weeks. in any case, it appears republicans have won more than they won in 2012, more than the 42 they won in 2010 and almost certainly more than the 246 they won in 1946 so you have to go back to the 1928 cycle to find a time when republicans did better in house elections. norm was covering that for cbs radio. [laughter] and that's there -- it's part of this is baked into the cake by

emographics. who many of t romney you will remember, carried 226 house districts. carried a majority of the house districts. demographic. democratic voters, as i've been writing for the last couple of years, particularly heavily democratic voters, blacks, his pan nicks some but not all states and gentry liberals, i think we know who we're talking look there. e're only two miles from georgetown, are heavily clustered in certain central cities from sympathetic suburbs, universities towns.

republican voters are spread more evenly around the rest of the country. romney carried 226 house districts for republicans. unfortunately that's not the way we choose presidents and in comparison, john kerry, who got a slightly higher percentage of the vote eight years before, kerry only won 80. so it's a basic demographic thing, nonetheless, i think it's interesting that republicans gained seats in this house cycle. looking at the exit poll it looks like the overall vote was 51-47 for republicans in terms of percentages. that may be off by a bit. we'll wait on california, they're out there on the beach or something not counting the votes, to see what's going on but that's their -- let me insert a word here about the polls.

i did a blog post for washington examiner.com on this. i looked at the seriously contested senate races. i don't know if that holds in governor or house races, which there isn't usually a lot of polling. what i found was that in incumbent democrats, the polls were pretty much spot on to the number of votes they got. interestingly, the two that increased were two female candidates, kay hagan and jeanne shaheen but basically the polls were pretty much spot on on democratic incumbents. among republican incumbents, of which there were only two in seriously contested races, the polls were about eight points low for mitch mcconnell, about 10 points low for pat roberts. republicans in polling are more likely than democrats to express dissatisfaction with anywhere party's politicians, with their party's members in congress, but

the rule that that suggests is that polling is pretty good at getting the party -- giving the percentage for the party that is doing badly in a wave election. it's not so good at projecting the party that is doing well from a wave election and yeah, this was a wave election, folks. >> got its starts in polling with peter hart many, many years ago. >> yes, that -- but it was after the 1928 cycle anyway. [laughter] my second point is that it's interesting that the republicans lost two seats with incumbents that had particular problems. florida, two, nebraska, two. they came close to losing another in west virginia, two, where a candidate was an out of stater in a state that doesn't have many out of staters, west virginia. but basically republicans gained r were ahead in 19 districts

currently and for what looks to be a 17-seat gain. a majority of these gains, and they came within 4% in another 10 district. a majority of these gains came with seats that democratic districting plans or very heavy democratic majorities. rizona, california especially, where you had a supposedly nonpartisan redistricting commissions in both those states but the democrats successfully gained they want. illinois, where republicans gained one seat in heavily upscale north shore suburbs of chicago and gained another seat n the rather downscale, more blue-collar part of the state opposite the mississippi river in and st. louis. maryland, where there's one near gain. john delaney, the democrats had to pour a lot of money into that race at the last minute.

and a new york state. and it's -- one of the phenomena we see is that when a wave is working against a party, the house seats will be at risk in states where they redistricted. because a lot of times you create 53% districts and when things are bad for your party you're down to 47 in those seats. e saw in the previous census cycle, republicans lost seats in states where anywhere redistricted in 2006, 2008. so redistricting doesn't lock in everything forever. when opinion is going against you, the tide can run out on those things. people who predict the republicans will inevitably hold the house until 2022, look at the returns for 2006 and 2008 before you make that prediction. they're doing well now. the number of split congressional districts voted for president in one party, congressman for another was 26

in the 2012 election, the lowest number since 1920. we had nine democratic congressmen representing districts carried by mitt romney. republicans won six of those nine seats. so we don't have very much -- we have -- republicans captured a few democratic districts or are ahead of them in districts that were more than 55% for obama but very few. although you have odd results like louise slaughter almost losing, been in the house for 30 years. senior democrat in upstate new york. let me look at a couple of demographic groups off the house exit poll. millennials -- this group was --

they're the wave of the future. the republicans missed their chance to pass a constitutional amendment barring the vote to anybody born after 1980. and -- [laughter] the democrats' advantage is down to 54-43, in points. in 2008, barack obama won 13% more among millennials than he won among voters generally. that differential margin was 9% in 2012. it's 7% in this election. it's -- you know, it becomes much less important in the thing -- obama's popular vote margin in 2008 almost entirely came from millennials. it was equivalent to 7% of the whole electorate. the democrats' margin was a lowest turnout in the off year from younger voters as was

typical, is about 1.5% of the total electorate. that would be a little higher in a presidential year with the same measures of support but what it says to me is the millennials at this point, white millennials voting republican on ballots are a mildly more than average democratic group rather than a wave of the future that will vote 2-1 democratic forever and make the republicans a permanent minority party. they're up for grabs by both parties. asians. one of the most interesting things here, the asian folk came in at 50-49. not sure this is as of much national significance. it was 67% for obama. remember that we're talking about house races. asians are clustered. a majority of people who come in as asians in the sense us definition are in hawaii and california.

you had a close republican nearly winning the hawaii first congressional district. that's an asian majority istrict. that would inflate the asian nationwide percentage in a way that may not be indicative of anything outside of the particular individuals involved in that hawaii race. i noted also in california districts like california 27, the democratic nominee, no serious opposition, got 57% in a 63% obama district. one of the issues in california that's come up that affects asians is that the democratic super majorities in the legislature wanted to put on the ballot a proposition to repeal the ban on racial quota preferences in higher education in california that was voted in the 1990's. this was -- if you analyze the electorate in terms of whites and nonwhites as the very able analyst ron brownstein does you

would expect non-whites to have solidarity. then the asian members with a lot of asian constituents started getting hundreds and thousands of phone calls. these people want their kids to go to u.c. berkeley and ucla. they don't want the places they know that quotas of preference will work heavily against them. and that ballot proposition didn't get on the ballot. i would like to know the asian percentages in maryland and massachusetts with governorships -- no exit poll in maryland or massachusetts. i would like to know what the asian percentage was in the close senate race in virginia. again, we don't have numbers on that. hispanics, we mentioned hispanics briefly. 63-35 democratic nationwide, down from 71% from obama against

mitt romney but they're very different in different states. california, where there were no serious statewide contests except nonpartisan rails for summit of public instruction. 76% democratic, 69% in new york and those two states although to about 1/3 of voters registered in the country. down in texas, john cornyn won hispanics. 49-48. greg abbott run for governor, 44% hispanics. that was a state where a lot of liberals hoped that the "non-white" vote was going to put them over the top. the hispanics there are not behaving like black voters in texas or other states. you see them getting 41% for david purdue in georgia. 52% for pat roberts in kansas and i did a little interpolation from the exit poll in colorado

mark udall dare carried ispanics by less than 10%. that figure is very dicey but what it does tell me that the democratic candidate was not winning by the numbers the exit polls showed in colorado. so that's the overall setup. legislatures. the hispanic votes is up for grabs in a lot of places and it varies substantially by state and the attitude they're in. legislatures, as carlin said, the numbers are not entirely tabulated but it's the highest republican number in 100 years. it appears that the last democratic legislature in what i call the 14 southern states is the kentucky house with a tie

in, i believe, the west virginia senate, but i think it's interesting here. democrats are disadvantaged in many states, including those carried twice by obama like florida, pennsylvania, ohio, by clustering. they win the gentry and black districts and lose almost everywhere else and that pattern continues to flow in the elections. by my count currently, democrats re in control with the governorship majority in both houses of the legislature in only seven of the 50 states. they started off the obama era in control of 27. those states and basically those states amount to only 16% of the u.s. population. 12% is in california. 6% are in other eastern -- otherwise you have hawaii, regon, connecticut, delaware

and rhode island and vermont. so the strength of the democratic coalition, the obama coalition, it elected and re-elected president obama. the weakness we see on display last night. >> thank you very much, michael. before turning to our former colleagues -- throwing john fournier, we're live tweeting the event from our handle. use the hashtag electionlaunch14. jon, the governors' races? >> thank you. i'd like to start out a bit just to show some contrast with the house races. much of what michael said was correct, the republican wave was strong and it washed over especially red states and swing states, washing out democrats who were holding those seats. the governors' wave was stronger than we thought and actually got nto some very blue states.

first, the senate. the seven most republican seats went to republicans. they were all held by democrats. six very deep red states plus north carolina and then two swing states, iowa and colorado. looking at that, susan collins did win re-election. she's in a state that president obama won by a significant amount but you have very few people left in the senate sitting in states that are not of their party. susan collins and mark kirk in illinois are in very significantly democratic states. john tester, joe mansion and heidi high camp sit in republican states. in the house, michael mentioned that six of the nine democrats that held obama seats lost. the top four were really dramatically republican districts. that leaves colin peterson as the most republican seat that

the democrats hold. just by comparison, not so long ago, 1992, there were about 90 democrats who met that definition in very significantly in republican states. there were probably 15 republicans who sat in very democratic districts. did republicans do well in swing districts and red districts? yes, they edged into some districts which are significantly democratic, maybe not quite as democratic as the jim mathison seats. but dan matthews, bruce brailley seats. maybe jim costner waiting on a recount. the snyder district in illinois. those are pretty democratic districts but we don't see the dramatic ability to hold seats that belong to another party. what we saw in the governors' races were a little different. i think they were the most uncertain. there were a lot of significantly close races that were within the margin of error in the polling and i you would

say, probably looked like ecause governorships were held much more by republicans that you weren't likely to see many gains. coming into the election we had 29 governorships that were republican. nationwide, 21 for democrats and 22 of the republican seats were up for re-election as well as 14 democratic seats. the republicans gained a couple of seats here. we knew they were going to lose in pennsylvania. that was a case of a particularly unpopular republican governor. it looks like and maybe henry has been following the last election results in alaska but looks like in alaska the republican governor will lose to an independent but not of the ordinary sort. one who ran with a democrat on the ticket but also was endorsed by sarah palin. you can make of that what you want. but republicans did really quite well and the three states that they broke into with varying degrees of enterprise that are

dramatically democratic. of course they took the massachusetts governorship, the illinois governorship and probably the greatest surprise for all of us -- we're showing some closing but the polls certainly weren't showing this level -- under our nose. several races in our backyard that we didn't watch as closely as we might have in maryland where the republican larry hogan is going to be the next governor. those seats, just to give you a sense of where they stand. massachusetts voted for barack obama by 23 points, maryland by 26 points and now held by republican governors. governorships in general have the ability to find themselves more locally against the national trend. it can be more about personalities or state policies but i think there was a very significant push in both parties, partly because of we've

seen unified government in a lot of states. red states are trying red-state policies, blue states are trying blue-state policies and there was some big argument about this, especially on taxes. on the democratic side, certainly the tax issue was significant in maryland, massachusetts, and illinois. didn't put the republican over the top in connecticut but certainly that issue was strong for republicans. and then on the flip side, democrats believed that they would find some way to pin overtax cutting on democrats in places like kansas. i would say in the north carolina senate race, which was not a governor's race but certainly tom tillis was pinned with the policies that he'd been involved with and enacting when he was in the legislature and in wisconsin as well where both collective bargaining and taxes were there. all those states had on the ballot republican policies and republicans prevailing. a couple of other points, very large wins for two hispanic

republican governors, in nevada and in new mexico, and again, as carlin mentioned, more consolidation of gains in state legislative races. republicans gained both portions of the house in nevada. arkansas got a larger majority and republicans will again have full control and really across a board, a number of these governors who are re-elected are going to have stronger majorities in legislature. wisconsin, michigan, ohio, kansas, texas, and the list goes on. and a number of democrats who are reelected will face divide legislatures because republicans have taken parts of the legislature or legislatures in colorado and minnesota. the last point about governors is to talk about governor ed gillespie.

he, of course, did lose his senate race but many people have noted that he is well setup to run again. i think he would have been had he lost by five points or seven points. running a good race, i think people felt he was one of the more policy oriented substantive candidates on the stump. but also, ed gillespie also a student of norm warrenstein and part of a fraternity which might run turned pan banner of the political spawn of norm. with that, i will turn it to back -- >> jon, one or two other the vermont governor's race. >> the vermont governor's race is going to stay in democratic

hands. it was much closer than we anticipated. it was a little bit less than a 2% margin. vermont also has a strange practice. i think you need practice in america where if you do not get 50% of the vote, the legislature decides. hey will likely select him again. all throughout new england, they fell short in some places but they did quite well. on early and absentee voting, we don't have all the numbers in, i've alls been someone who's overpredicting. one state are democrats doing better? some of the results are selective. sometimes it's true that a party really gets motivated to spend more of its resources on

bringing voters to the poll. i'm always skeptical about that. we don't know -- i don't know the final outcome of how much early and absentee voting there was. we think turnout is down. i feel more comfortable to wait for the california numbers to come in. it is likely to be lower broadly. to give you an exact number, you've got to give us a couple more weeks. >> thank you very much. now we'll turn to henry olsen who is going to talk about what interested him most in the enate contest. >> so the senate didn't surprise me very much. i missed two submit races compared to my preelection prediction, one was kansas which was simply a polling fail across the board. the other was north carolina which was pretty close and went down to the wire.

did some bad math and jury estimated the republican wave. it was clear going in that this was going to be yet another election where senate seats were dependent variables. which was to say people across the board was not considering whether person x was better than person y. nevertheless, there are some interesting things that i think we want to take a look at, and that relays in part to the polling fail question. i want to spend on a little bit of time on what this means for 2016. with respect to the polling fail, my mean for this is democrats, it's kind of the old clint east wood spaghetti western, it was the good, the bad and the ugly that they're only a couple of races you'd put

in the good but from the republican's perspective, it's the city mouse versus the country mouse. if you take a look at the final average on the polls, whether the r or the d, and the key senate states, and compared it to the actual margin, the polls actually weren't that bad in a lot of states. new hampshire, the final r margin was in favor of shaheen by .8. it actually was shaheen by 3.2. in georgia, even though they underestimated the amount, the margin was pretty right. they had purdue winning by 3%. he won by 4.9. in alaska, they're still counting votes that are likely to tilt democratic. but the final margin was sullivan by 2.4. even virginia was not an epic polling fail. the final percentage for warner was 48.5. as far as the polls prediction. the margin was 49.2 for that.

my guess is there were a lot of people who never heard of ed gillespie, who simply voted for the republican, because that would account for the wave and accuracy of the warner prediction. where you find big errors are four states really. see if you can figure out what the difference is and why i might have put it in that category. iowa, a 6.2% difference. it was 2.3 in the final poll. ernst wins by 8.5. kansas, the final polls had orman up by one. kentucky, mcconnell ahead by 7.2. he ended up winning by 15.5. arkansas, where cotton was supposedly ahead by 7, he won by 17. city mouse versus country mouse. the states where you had the biggest polling errors also have incredibly small populations in what we would consider metropolitan areas. take a look at colorado, where

the polling fail was virtually none. it had gardner up by 2.5. right to you he's up by 2.9. more democratic votes are still coming in, because even though they're not california-esque, they're slow in democratic countings. 85% of the vote in colorado is cast in metropolitan areas. contrast that with kansas, where less than 50% of the vote is cast in what we would consider to be metropolitan areas. and that's including topeka as a metropolitan area, considered to be a small area outside of kansas. iowa, 50% of the vote, and that includes a lot of places that we would not consider, based on our experience, metropolitan areas, like butte or sioux city. you go even further. arkansas, the total, it's 50,000 votes or more, less than 30% of the vote is cast there. kentucky, if you include cincinnati suburbs, it's around

33% of the vote, 34% of the vote. where there were significant rural populations, the pollsters completely failed. and that raises a question of whether or not the differential response is not r versus d but city versus country. take new hampshire. that's both a more urban state -- 61.5% of the votes were cast in the three areas considered to be part of manchester or boston metropolitan areas, but unlike every other state, the rural counties tend to be more democratic. the strength for the republicans is in the metro area. the strength for the democrats, in the rural counties. and that is a state where you saw the margin switch in favor of the democrats rather in favor of the republican. i'd like to throw that out as a possible explanation for the polling fail. if you take a look, the swing was much greater for republicans in the nonmetro areas than the metro areas.

colorado i've divided into different areas. you've got denver and boulder. and there's still more democratic votes coming in. but right now, gardner only gained over romney in 2012 by about 2%. if that had been extrapolated statewide, it would have been a 50/50 race. outside of that, in the nondenver metro area, he gained over 3.3%. rural areas, even more. in ski bunny, colorado, on the other hand, there are seven counties, and if i told you the names of the ski resorts, you would recognize them. the counties, you never would. gardner ran behind. it was a rural issue, not an across-the-board issue. the same thing is true in other places as well. iowa, it's less obvious but the same distinction prevails. then the question is, what does this mean for 2016 if what we're seeing is not a uniform

swing but a localized swing? and is this a turnout question? well, i've done two states, colorado and iowa, and colorado keeps moving up. but the differential, if you compare 2014 turnout to the 2012 turnout, is not very great. it's slightly higher as far as the percentage of people voting in rural areas versus urban reas, in 2014 versus 2012, but not enough to explain the difference. the reason joni ernst won is not because republicans were an unusual share of the electorate. the reason why cory gardner is the new senator from colorado is because he won persuadables and a few of them within the denver metro area, not because of massive turnout differentials. if that plays out in other states, that would suggest that the democratic argument that they lost because their voters didn't show up is kind of like the republican -- you know, the flip side of the republican

argument of vote fraud, that it's a convenient excuse to mask a message failure with persuadables rather than an actual explanation. what does this mean for 2016, well, to win the popular vote, republicans need to get about 2% better than romney, minus two, plus two to romney. that's about a narrow popular vote win. in the senate seats, only three states met or exceeded that. brown ran exactly 2% ahead of romney in new hampshire. gardner right now is 2.6 ahead in colorado, as i mentioned, as more democratic votes come in. that will go down by a couple of points. and only in iowa did joni ernst run comfortably ahead of that margin, running six points ahead of romney. even worse, to win the electoral college, you need about a 2.5% jump, because the marginal state that would put a republican over -- of those, only two of those states, in

the senate race, do you equal or exceed the shift in the popular vote that is needed to elect a republican president. the only places in the country where you see that are in the governors races that john talked about. schneider runs about six points ahead of romney. and maryland, hogan runs, i think, seven or eight points ahead of romney. and with joni ernst. so the difference between what governors were running on and what joni ernst was doing versus what the standard republican playbook is might be really important to look at, if you are a republican strategist trying to win in 2016 and might be very good for democratic strategists who look at if you're trying to take the win out of the -- the wind out of the republican sails.

>> now, norm, what does it mean for the lame duck and the next congress? >> thanks, carlin. i spent much of election eve following henry olson's twitter feed. i would suggest to all of you who are here and who are watching, if you really are an election maven, follow henry. a couple of comments on the house. as michael said, republicans are going to have the largest margin since the 1928 election. their new slogan is we're going to party like it's 1929. [laughter] [laughter] my favorite house race that i watch closely was statin island. the question was, would michael grimm's margin exceed the counts of his indictment? [laughter] and the answer is he fell short. he won by 13, 20 counts in the indictment, so... so much for the anti-incumbent wave that we

have out there. for the stunned democrats coming back to washington, the one bright spot, now they can get legal marijuana in the district. [laughter] a couple of just bullet points. we talked the last time about the democratic turnout machine. we reflected on it last time. i think it's just worth repeating here. turnout machines can be very sophisticated and very great. but you still have to get voters who want to turn out. and i mentioned the old joke about the company that did the most dazzling advertising campaign ever for a dog food. and it flopped completely. when they analyzed it, it was because the dogs didn't like it. [laughter] if your voters do not see a reason to vote, you can call them. you can offer them transportation to the polls. you can tell them you'll take

the mail-in ballot and stick it in the mailbox, and it will not matter very much. that's what happened this time. and of course the turnout for democrats was, in almost every category, lower than it was in 2010 when they suffered a drubbing that was quite historic as well. now, turning to the future, one of the things about a big wave and a victory that exceeds expectations, and that is incredible across the board, is that it poses an additional chang to you for -- challenge to you for governing. the conservative, activist base believes that everything they stand for, every way in which they approach the process has been vindicated. they are now in the driver's seat. and the idea that now you will dilute your product, compromise, give anything to a president who has been forced to the canvas is treasonous. so it poses a real challenge to leaders who are talking about reaching out and compromising,

but the word compromise actually didn't come into the lexicon in the soon-to-be majority leader's mitch mcconnell's statements. he's going to have to give in, because now we're on top. and that's going to be a little difficult to deal with. at the same time, we have an even more starkly polarized ideologically-driven congress than we had before. another house race of great interest was in georgia. the most conservative democrat who has managed to escape more near-death situations than every indiana jones movie combined, but didn't this time. and that will also tell you something about the broader nature of our politics. not a single white democrat from the south left standing in the house of

representatives. and, of course, it reflects even the broader trend over the last three contests, that the robust blue dog coalition that as there before the 2010 elections is down to not quite but close to a trace element. and on the republican side, you've lost a group of boehner loyalists, like tim of isconsin, and if you look at the replacements, they are much more over to the tea party side. and they're not starting with any sense of affection or loyalty towards boehner. he will have a larger caucus. he's already working to make sure he can head off a chang. he will be the -- a challenge. he will be the speaker next time. it's a question of how many votes there are on the floor against him, but he will win comfortably. but he is not going to have any more leeway than he had before to tell his republican caucus, you know, we're bringing this

to the floor even though a very substantial number of you do not like it. so that's going to make for some difficulty. of course, on the senate side, the losers are most of the democrats who would be accommodating to compromises and working across the board. they're not all gone. mark warner likely will be back. we have joe mansion, angus king, who once again will caucus with the democrats but will try very hard to provide a bridge for some of those bipartisan bills moving forward. but they're going to be fairly few and far between. and always keep in mind the old saw that used to be repeated all the time of the young house member coming to one of his older colleagues and pointing to a member from the other party and saying, there's the enemy. and the answer was, they're not the enemy. they're the adversaries. the senate is the enemy.

the house and senate have very different cultures, very different rhythms, very different rules. and when newt gingrich and bob dole took the reins of power in 1994 and had very much the notion they were going to work together in sync and force bill clinton to his knees, within three months, it was gingrich saying privately and then publicly that he had far more trouble with bob dole than he did with clinton and called dole the tax collector of the welfare state, which improved relations, as you can imagine. we're not going to see the same name calling between boehner and mcconnell, but it's not going to be that much easier for things to move smoothly through the house and then through the senate, including many of those bills that passed the house the last time. one comment -- we haven't talked much about presidential consequences. this election was very good for hillary clinton, if she decides

to run, not only because it uts a crimp in the potential campaign of my former student, martin o'malley, who isn't going to be helped by the fact that it was his administration and lieutenant governor who were repudiated in a big way in that state, but i think democrats now are shocked enough that winning the presidency in 2016 takes a higher priority in this unprecedented effort to unite behind a candidate. e also see a significant boost for scott walker, for john kasich, who now becomes at least a factor on the national stage. and keep your eye, not as a presidential prospect but as a serious potential running mate, brian sandoval, who won handily in nevada and is probably a more attractive in many ways hispanic american candidate, i think, than susanna martinez,

who will be governor but who has a few issues, including some of these tapes that have been released of her comments. so a lot of interesting dynamics out there. now, in terms of looking ahead, kevin mccarthy said before the election, anticipating the republican majority in the senate, we've got to show we're not the party of no. we want to come back in the lame duck session, take the budget issues off the table. we're going to pass a long-term continuing resolution. and at the same time, before the election, we had mcconnell telling poa lit koa, as he had told many of his funders at one of the koch brothers enclaves, we're going to use the budget process and especially reconciliation and appropriations bills where we can, in effect, to bring obama to his knees. he repeated this in more gentle terms yesterday at the press conference. we're going to use the appropriations and budget process and especially reconciliation, where you only

need 51 votes to pare back on obamacare, to cut back on the consumer protection bureau, to ring back coal and do a number of other things. those don't go together very well. you've got mccarthy against mcconnell. and mcconnell, who said no shutdowns. mcconnell against mcconnell. you can only imagine that if a budget reconciliation bill gets passed through on a partisan basis, that does more than flesh wounds to obamacare, that basically defunds the consumer financial protection bureau and maybe does other damage to the sec and dodd frank and that blocks the epa from issuing regulations on climate change, barack obama will veto it. now, they may pass something else and send it to him. but if he keeps vetoing it, what do you get? a shutdown. so we're not past that

particular hump, even if the leaders know intellectually that it would be a catastrophic thing to do. there's another factor here that is important on the money front as well. we will see, i think, a continuing resolution that will probably take the current year's funding through to the end of the year, in december. that will be controversial. but with the numbers that are there now, they'll get it through, and the argument will be this is not the time to pick a fight. but remember that starting october 1, that two-year budget deal that deferred sequesters ends. and the sequesters come back. you're going to have congressional republicans determined to negate it on defense. but some are going to be saying, well, we can't add the budget deficits now. so let's just take an additional amount out of discretionary domestic spending. and that's not going to fly.

and it's not at all clear that it's going to fly even to deferred defense, with a base that said we came here to cut government, not to keep it going. so as we move towards a budget, which now will be a budget that's more than a talking point, that will have to be in sync with the house and senate, which is not going to be an easy thing to do. then as you move towards individual appropriations bills and you're talking about across-the-board cuts on top of what we've had before, that means more cuts in emergency preparedness, the cdc, n.i.h. funding and medical research, the faa and air traffic control, not to mention the cuts in basic research and cuts in defense as we ramp up against isis and with other crises around the world. this is not going to be an easy time to govern or to pass

bills, even with just republican votes. and those bills will very likely be vetoed or, in many instances, filibustered in the senate. the filibuster will be turned around and used in a different fashion. a couple other observations, at least one on foreign policy. we have all seen this extraordinarily embarrassingly public pissing match between the obama administration and the netanyahu administration. some of it reflects a belief on the part of netanyahu that he can rely on congress, which will give him unquestioned backing. and that's true in both parties. but it's especially true with republicans. and remember, netanyahu was almost public with his support for mitt romney in 2012, which has added to some of the problems here. this new republican majority in the senate and the more robust majority in the house is likely to lead the israeli government to be even more dismissive of he obama administration.

and i suspect we're going to see more tensions there and more friction before we're done, as we know we're going to see frictions ahead, including with the use of the budget rocess as the administration moves forward with negotiations with iran, possibly towards a deal. and we'll see all kinds of efforts to try and put a crimp in that. we will probably see a newly empowered republican senate move with the house to provide more sophisticated weapons or push to do so to the ukrainian government in kiev. and we're going to see, i think, more frictions there. and at the same time, john kerry is going to be hauled in to testify in both houses, in multiple committees, on benghazi and on all of these foreign policy questions, at a time when his challenges will be dramatically greater. one of my reasons, in my column, it's about the geopolitical implications of plummeting oil prices.

if oil prices stabilize, you're going to see fracking drop off pretty dramatically, because the cost and benefits don't match. you're also going to see some of the drilling decline. that, by the way, will have economic implications for places like north dakota and louisiana, very good implications for california, among other things. it may change some of the political dynamics that we're dealing with as well. just two other points. we are going to see enormous frictions between the senate and the president on confirmations. one of the questions is whether, in this lame duck session, harry reid recognizing that judicial confirmation also ry up. there will be some district court nominees that have lready been basically approved by republican senators that may go through, but mostly nothing will happen. and most of the executive nominations will die as well. if you're worried about obama

using his executive authority, one of the ways in which you can hinder that and hamper it is to keep people from moving nto vacancies in those executive positions where they can act. and we are going to see a lot of investigations. one of the most interesting people to watch will be ron johnson of wisconsin, who will take over the subcommittee on investigations. he has said multiple times, i'm gonna go back to the old style of doing it in a bipartisan way, doing real oversight instead of investigations. that will probably last a couple of weeks, maybe a month. but the pressure on him to do all of these gotcha investigations will be very, very great. we will see some things done. we will see trade agreements. that's a slam dunk for republicans. it's below the radar for tea party activists. they don't much care if you get that done. business likes it. democrats are divided. you'll anger labor, heading towards 2016.

why not? there will be interesting possibilities for prison and sentencing reform. and for nsa reform where you'll see very unusual coalitions. rand paul and mike lee joining with widen and franken, for example. but john mccain and lindsey graham and others, we'll see tensions there on both of those issues. there is a chance for a corporate tax reform. but we have to keep in mind, businesses ideas is dramatically cut the marginal rates and leave all the preferences alone. and any reform that is not revenue neutral is simply not going to happen. whether you can work some deal out will be interesting to watch. i do think there's a real possibility of infrastructure reform. john delaney has a bipartisan bill in the house, actually

pretty strongly bipartisan, to create an infrastructure bank funded through 50-year bonds that now basically are almost cost-free. and they have repatriated profits from companies used with an incentive to buy a portion of those. so you don't have a lot of additional government funding directly. and that could happen. but, again, you're going to see substantial tea party opposition to anything that looks like it's expanding government. and we are going to get a crisis on the highway trust fund again because of the refusal to raise gasoline taxes or to consider any other revenue source unless you can do something innovative like that. on the bigger issues, forget about it. we did not break the fever or move towards a new or restored era of bipartisan policy making. tribalism is greater. and with three to five republican senators, absent without leave most of the time,

out there raising money and building support in the primary and caucus states with basically the appeals being far ore to that, even narrower version or slice of the electorate, and you can see where we're going with that when you have a marco rubio basically denouncing his own immigration bill as we head towards that campaign. and a bobby jindal saying common core is the greatest thing ever to common core is the biggest threat to the american way of life. that kind of tells you what direction and approach we're going to see. that's like an electoral magnet pulling mitch mcconnell's caucus away from the idea of working out deals where you give a little and you get a little. >> thank you very much, norman. thanks to the rest of the panelists. i'm sure there have been disagreements. but i'd like to turn to your questions. we have, i think, about a half hour left.

if you could just wait for the microphone and ask your questions as a question. we'll take two questions from this table. the mic? >> i can speak loudly. >> well, okay. >> you have got to wait for the mic. right here. right here. >> my question is a simple one for the panel. no one has spoken to what the election results mean for brand clinton. i wonder if you might speak to that. >> let's get this second question on the table at the same time. >> thanks very much. garrett mitchell, from the mitchell report. norm, i was looking for my black armband, which i didn't think i was going to have to wear, but i'm going to put it back on now, thinking about the prospects for the next two years.

your characterization of the mind-set of the republican ajorities, particularly in the house but in both chambers, suggests that there will be a preference for sticking it to the president and saying, you know, we had this wave because we stuck to our principles, so the prospect of there being some cooperation between the white house and the congress is not good. on the other hand, it seems to me that one of the ways to characterize this election is that the republicans had better candidates and that one of the reasons that the republicans had better candidates is because whatever the term

"mainstream republicans" paid greater attention to getting a higher equality of candidate than they've had in prior years, which would lead you to believe that there will be pressure in the republican party at large not to be the party of "no" but to be the party that wants to get some stuff done so that when you get to 2016, the republicans can run on some sort of message. and i just wonder if you can speak to that. >> team hillary and the next two years. >> yes. norm said the election will be good for hillary clinton. i think in some respects that's right. the martin o'malley candidacy seems to be over. the warner candidacy was over some time ago and is not going to happen now. i think she's got problems as a candidate.

the energy on the party increasingly is on the left. you have the party's wingers get discontented in a second term of a presidency. that happened with the george w. bush administration. it's happening now. and it's hard to picture hillary as the new face. i mean, the clintons' theme song is "don't stop thinking about tomorrow." that was released in 1977. [laughter] that's 39 years before the 2016 lection. another area where i would disagree with norm somewhat is i think that after the government shutdown, the mood changed among house republicans. you had fewer house republican members saying we've got to go to confrontation, we've got to defund obamacare and so forth. that lost appeal because they could read the polls, and it threatened disaster for the republican party. and republican primary voters, as gary suggested, i think have tended not to opt for the candidate who is the one that

is loudest when he stands up on the chair and yells "hell no." that may have an effect. it will be interesting to see if that plays out in the 2016 election. you can imagine people reaching for the wings, as norm suggested. you can also imagine people campaigning the way i would argue cory gardner did and some of the other republican candidates. the republican candidates being newer to the scene, you know, starting off unknown with the problems, you also have an option of framing their candidacy in future oriented terms to an extent which is going to be difficult for a hillary clinton, who was involved in her first election in 1970 and became a national figure in 1991 and is now, you know, sort of on the moderate wing of a party, arguably, which is moving left, which poses more problems for her. and that shows -- those are

problems for her. there's challenges for republicans. it's not clear that any of the republican presidential candidates will be able to do hat. >> norm, a quick response. then we're going to take two questions over here. if somebody could bring the mic right up here. >> first, gary, let me say, there were candidates who did not make a big splash this time, like todd akin did. but when you have a joni ernst, who basically has bought into the agenda 21 conspiracy theory and said that the united nations was plotting to take away private property and cars from iowans so they couldn't live in their houses and travel says she packs her gun and if government challenges her right, she'll use it. and there are a whole string of other things. when you have a tom cotton who said that mexican drug lords are conspiring with terrorists to bring them over the border to kill people in arkansas, that doesn't suggest to me that you have candidates right smack

in the center of the process. cory gardner, who is an establishment republican in a lot of ways, was also one of the 20 most conservative republicans in terms of votes in the house. that's not a moderate group to begin with. so you've got that factor. there is no doubt that you have an establishment that doesn't want to appear as the party of no. there are two ways to avoid that. one way is to say we're going to compromise and give a little bit. the other way is to try and frame it so that he's the party of no, and the obstructionist. and i think you're going to see more of a push on the latter front. just one other point. mitch mcconnell said, election eve, you know, we're not going to repeal obamacare. it takes 60 votes in the senate. there was enormous pushback from the base. what did mitch mcconnell say the next day? of course we're going to do everything we can to repeal obamacare. so what you want to do, and that includes shutting down the government, even if you don't want to, if you end up with a confrontation where you're

using the budget as leverage and you have enormous demands to use it to force the president to his knees, and he says, no, you have a couple of choices. you dilute your product and take the flak from your base, or -- and ted cruz will be right out there, pounding you if you give a millimeter, much less an inch -- or you stick to your guns and what results is a shutdown. so like it or not, there's some things where the dynamics may pull you away from what prag matically would be sensible positions. >> two questions here. then we're going to turn to that table. >> thank you. it's my personal opinion that. >> who are you? >> sorry. i'm berk rosen. i'm really addressing what you said, norm, and that was not much is going to happen in the sense of compromise. and it seems to me that what

tructurally needs to be done is the leadership needs to divest the power down into the committees, which has been the problem now for the last 20 years. and that would be the seeds of bipartisanship, because when committees start marking up bills, by nature, by definition, there are amendments and compromises and there's a much better chance of coming up with solutions that, by the time they get to the floor, are bipartisan. so as i say, it's my view that the real solution to this is to just simply turn to your committee chairman and say, get to work. give us an energy policy. give us a tax policy. give us a health policy. and instead of the top-down. now, is that -- would you agree with that, as the first part of the question, and the second is, can you see that happening? >> let's put this other question. >> the question is directed

towards michael. largely around self-described independence. i was struck on the first wave of the exits that showed the party id question was 34% republican, 37% democrat, 29% independent. and all those correlated into the ballot test trends early on. and my question, michael, is, have you seen a tick or swing where independents contributed to a wave in second midterms and how long did that carry over in the corresponding presidential year? >> committee structure and independence. >> burt, i certainly agree that we should have policy making start at the committee and subcommittee level and take it to the floor. in the senate, despite the polarization, you've got a lot of problem solvers. that is irrespective of ideology. eff blake, corker, lamar alexander, lots of them.

you are going to get republics coming out of senate committees that are going to get bipartisan support on the floor. most of them will go nowhere in the house, and that's a good part of the problem, because you're not going to see bipartisan policy making emerge in the house. it's not in the current dna of the house. it wasn't there when democrats were in the majority. it's there even less now. that's a good part of the problem. if it were the senate alone, you'd have possibilities here, again, with issues that are a little bit below the radar of the big, tough national issues. but there's a big problem getting them to the president for signature or veto. >> john and michael? >> look, i'll fundamentally agree with norm, when we have divided government, it's still going to be hard, at the end of the day, to get a lot of these things through. but there is a constituency out there, and to some extent in the house, for a broadly speaking regular order.

that is because, and if you look at democrats and harry reid and trying to keep a lid on there being controversial votes, it didn't really do democrats a lot of good. a lot of the democrats who are in tough seats, who didn't have to take votes, were then getting tagged on the campaign trail as having 99% voting records with the president. so it may not solve everything. i think, at the end of the day, you've got to get something through both chambers and the agreement of the president. but i think there will be a lot of good will, both on the majority and minority side. something that mcconnell has emphasized, also an emphasis on a freer amendment process, at least to an extent, where his side as well as democrats will have a little bit more chance to play on the amendment side. >> michael? >> i think norm is right, in that the senate has got people, and i would name some democrats as well as republicans, inclined towards bipartisanship. they have been kept in -- we all it joni ernst's position

by senate majority leader harry reid over the last four years, basically prohibited from engaging in that. you've got people like current finance chairman, future ranking member ron widen, for example, who really hasn't been allowed to bring things. you've got trial lawyers who tell harry reid to not put it on the floor and it doesn't come on the floor. one person we haven't mentioned is the president, who we could see in his press conference yesterday, continues to have an apparent disinclination as well as a demonstrated inability to do bipartisan reforms. that is a problem. but i think there is some possibilities there. the senate is where it -- the place where it can happen more easily than the house, as norm quite correctly identifies it. but we've had histories under president bush, under clinton, under presidents bush and

reagan, where, you know, the senate kind of does the compromising side. the house massages its own view. and they do get things through. that can happen. it helps to have a president who assists rather than retards the process. chris's question, my understanding -- correct me if i'm wrong -- a three-point advantage for democrats and party id on the exit poll, that seems -- is that wrong? >> it was 36-36, democrat-republican. and independent was 38. >> and then it came out, what, six points democratic in the presidential election which i think was partly a result of change of man, partly as a result of turnout of democratic groups. independents, a lot of people say they're independents. they don't vote like independents. they vote all republican, all

democrats. we've got the fewest number of split congressional districts ince 1920. a lot of people who are independents are, or at least were during the last two or four years, disgruntled republicans. it's one of the reasons why we often, although not quite in the recent polls, where congressionallal republicans are rated lower than congressional democrats. when you look at the innards of those polls, what you find out are a lot of people identified as republicans give negative ratings to republicans in congress, where relatively few people who identify as democrats give negative ratings to democrats in congress. they're both negative, but, you know, what it says, we're in a period of competition. republicans have won four -- no. democrats have won four of the last six presidential elections, popular vote.

republicans have won house majorities in eight of the ten elections. that's robust competition, on a fairly even playing field with the democrats having some advantage in the electoral college, the republicans in equal population district legislatures. and the fight continues. >> the number of pure independents in the university of michigan's long trend line, starting in the 1950's, is about 10% to 12%. okay. we have two questions at that table. then we're going to go over to that side of the room. >> barbara whitman. i'd like to elicit commentary on the virginia race. ed gillespie believed in himself so much that it was infectious. i was at his house on saturday morning, having coffee with him and his wife before we went out to vote early. and it was so infectious that i almost came to believe him. and at any rate, what i'd like to know is whether you all think that the fact that he

couldn't convince people of that infectious spirit sooner, so that, for instance, as a fund-raiser for him, i had a heck of a time getting people to give money because they said that was a hopeless race, or whether there's any validity to the idea that having a 2.5% raw for a libertarian meant we couldn't make it. >> the question from the gentleman next to you. if you could say your questions quickly, then we'll try to move around the room. >> adam powell from the university of southern california. michael barone, you said that millennials are mildly more than average democratic in this election. have you seen any survey data of millennial voters about hillary clinton specifically addressing the question of the fact that she'll be significantly perhaps a generation older than the republican candidate? >> anyone? >> i haven't seen that, but your question prompts me to go

look for it this afternoon. [laughter] i think that's a good question. i think it's something, if you're running her campaign, you would be concerned about. you know, is she -- you know, she's -- you get the mood of ed gillespie much more upbeat, much more sunny, optimistic. the democrats, i think, remind me of murray's phrase in the 1965 in the new york mayor race, about john lindsey, he is fresh and everyone else is tired. i think that's a danger for the democratic party, possibly an opportunity for the republican party. on ed gillespie, mark warner was 65% of the vote 8 years ago. that was not a close election. and he went down to 49% in his one-point reelection victory. you know, ed gillespie was already a serious player in political vineyards.

he showed very well. warner got what he polled. actually, the polls were dead-accurate on what mark warner got. all i can say is, you know, he must have -- it must have been a heck of an election night for him, when you come down 16%. says something about the obama democratic party, doesn't it? >> yeah, it does. it also says something about the obama democratic party in virginia, where somebody who didn't think he had a terribly close race probably would have done things differently if ed gillespie had gotten a couple million three weeks out. i can imagine that mark warner would have run a different race three weeks out. it shows the stability of the obama coalition in virginia, that it's now held up over a governor's race, a senate race, two presidential races. virginia is not a red state anymore, not even a light red state anymore. could gillespie have won? perhaps. certainly with additional resources.

but then again, if i were a national party strategist, and i had to decide whether to expend money three weeks out, and the expense of the washington market, and i saw mark warner polling at 49-51, i probably wouldn't have put $2 million into the campaign either. much better to put those $2 million into the races that you know you have a shot at that are probably much less xpensive per vote possibly gained. >> okay. this table over here, we have three questions. over here. let's put them all on the table. anybody can answer. if you could ask your question quickly, because we don't have much more time. >> in a low turnout election, almost anything can happen. my question is, on the impact of early voting, what do you see as the impact of early voting on the get out the vote effort? the republican effort was said to be exceptional. the democratic effort may have faltered a bit. >> and the gentleman next to him. >> yeah. the republicans will defend a

lot more senate seats in 2016. the democrats. how might that affect mitch mcconnell's agenda? >> and then your question right here. >> oh. sorry. linda kilian. i wanted to say, if you looked at the virginia exit polls, mark warner's favorability was 56%. gillespie's was 49%. it was all about obama, in virginia. the second thing i'd really like to challenge your assertion on independent voters. i really think it's closer to 20%. and there's a lot of reasons we can't go into here, but look at colorado. look at the difference in the governor and senate race in colorado. pick six, ten, twelve races this year. those were swing voters. >> okay.

who wants to take one question? henry? >> talking about the low turnout, i dispute this was a low turnout election, that when you take a look at the states where there were actually competitive races as opposed to states like mississippi or alabama where there were no competitive races, turnout was running between 70% and 75% of the 2012 level. the turnout differences between democratic urban areas and republican rural areas were not significant. in states where both parties were committing lots of resources, you saw voters turnout at rates that were pretty high for a midterm election and you saw partisans on both sides turn out. democrats did not lose colorado because democrats didn't show up. the turnout national figures obscure a couple of things. one is that minorities tend to be concentrated in states that do not have serious races. hispanics tend to be concentrated in california and texas and nevada and new

mexico, none of which had serious competitive races. african-americans are concentrated in a lot of southern states that did not have serious races. second, millennials tend to be more nonwhite. so the two things coincide. that young hispanics are in areas where they're not motivated to turn out, and that depresses the so-called millennial votes. it wasn't a low turnout race. democrats did much better in states where they could have won than the national would suggest. it was up to the message, which didn't persuade, whether it's 10%, 15%, 20%, the people in the middle at this particular time. >> let me just address the senators who are up. there are 24 republicans up to 10 democrats the next time. it's really a reverse phenomenon. almost all the democrats who won in 2010 won with a very stiff wind in their faces. and republicans had wind at their backs. many of them in states that

obama carried, blue states. but there's a dilemma for them, because they have to worry about primary challenges. if they move too far, too early, to accommodate the broader dynamics in their states, they could face a problem. but they do have a problem with some of these votes. and where the new majority leader mcconnell has said he's going to return to the regular order and have a more open amendment process, i'm just waiting for the first bill that omes up. maybe it's the keystone pipeline or maybe it's a repeal of the medical device tax, in an open amendment process with democrats step in with 20 gotcha amendments, i think we're going to be seeing the amendment tree filled, not perhaps all the time, but a lot of the time to protect those vulnerable senators who are up the next term. >> john, get out the vote. >> a couple things on early voting. i think there's been a little

bit of a misunderstanding of what early voting does in terms of turnout. early voting by itself, most research shows, does not increase turnout. it's certainly been used significantly by parties to ncourage their voters to start voting earlier, but then, you know, on election day, you might not have those voters there. i think this cycle you saw republicans using effectively in places, i think the opposition to in-person early voting by some republicans -- i mean, i'm not for an extremely long period, but i think a reasonable period of seven to ten days in early voting is something republicans should not fear. on the -- look, i think norm's point is well-taken that republicans have more ground to defend, but one obvious point is republicans are going to have 54 votes in the senate. 245er going to -- they're going to need to retain the majority. while many of those seats are in states that president obama

won, very few of them are in wildly democratic states. they're in the states like ohio and wisconsin and places where certainly some of those republicans will feel pressure, but it's not as much of a slam dunk as those six very red states that democrats faced in this election. >> michael, quickly. >> i'd underline what john just said. i took a look at the seats that are up this time. and you've got, you know, in target states, states that were carried by obama, you've got seven republican senators up. only one of those states that obama -- using the obama percentage of 2012 as an index get more than 53% of the vote. that's illinois where he got 58%, where mark kirk is up. the upscale voters did throw ut the democrat brad schneider and elect the republican bob dole, 2013. i don't think kirk is a sure

loser, though he's an obvious target. six of those seven states have republican governors, which shows that republicans are capable of winning statewide. the obama percentage ranged from 48 to 53. this is not quite as juicy a target for democrats as the current -- as this year's lineup was for republicans. and you've got harry reid. now, reid has shown in 2010, and the gaming industry showed they can get the votes out and bring them out even when harry reid's job rating was terrible. they conspicuously -- democrats did not do that in 2014 in nevada. and basically they lost both houses to the legislature for the first time in a very long time. but the gaming industry and the culinary union are capable of ginning that up for harry reid again. and, you know, we have to keep up with our john ralston in the las vegas review journal. >> there's a question in the

back. are there any questions on this side of the room? >> anna smith from the hungarian embassy. can you explain to me the phenomenon of general dissolutionment with the political establishment across the voting base, left and right, with a relatively low voter turnout? by my counts, the highest number of uncontested races and the fact that about 90% of the house races were really not very competitive. in other words, why do you keep reelecting your own members if you're so angry and disillusioned with them? >> two points. one it's true there are a lot of saved seats. that's more because of the way in which americans are living in democratic areas or republican areas. i do think, when it comes down to the mix of competitive seats, we have always heard this story that we're going to have the election, where we

throw out the incumbents on both sides and we're disillusioned with everyone. that really never comes about. these waves come about because one side is more motivated and the incumbents that are in danger of seats on the other side are the ones that get knocked out. if it comes around the other way, it's in the other direction. but almost never do we have this mythical throw all the bums out of both parties, although we talk about i every election. >> the republicans appear to have gained house seats or be ahead in, i think, and only four of the seats are 55% or more obama districts. in straight-ticket voting, you can target things with precision and you don't waste money on hopeless races. >> you know what? michael, again, may be the limiting case here. if you've got a really anti-incumbent mood, strong enough that you've decided that you want to throw the bums out, and you've got a guy who is under a 20-count indictment for

tax fraud and who is otherwise best known for threatening a reporter, to throw him off the balcony, and he wins by 13 oints, what does that tell you? it tells you that voters in staten island first said, well, he's one of our guys. and seconds, probably that there's enough cynicism and disillusionment that voters think they're all like that. ours just happen to be the one that got caught. so if that's the sort of mind-set that people can have, these utterly conflicting views in their heads, throw all the bums out, including polls that showed us a higher proportion who were willing to throw their own out, and then they vote in a very different way, maybe that just tells us something about human nature. >> i want to thank all of you and thank my guys on the panel. i just want to say one more thing, because i'm feeling very nostalgic.

we've had election watch in this room since 1982. we'll be back for the 2016 ace, but we won't be here. we won't be here. we'll be in our fabulous new building on massachusetts avenue. we hope all of you will join us for 2016. thank you so much! [applause] >> tomorrow, u.s. ambassador to the u.n. samantha power will speak at the american enterprise institute in washington, d.c. she's expected to talk about u.n. peacekeeping missions and the u.s. role in supporting the missions. live coverage begins at 1:00 p.m. eastern here on crfment span. -- c-span. >> this weekend on the c-span networks friday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span more reaction to the midterm elections.

on saturday night at 8:00 a debate on the future of the internet. and sunday evening at 8:00 on q&a author and television holst tavis smiley on his latest book "death of a king" and friday night at 8:00 on c-span two amherst college professor and thor ronald rosbottom on jemplen-occupied paris in world war ii and author jeff chang on the idea of racial progress in america and edward o'wilson on what makes us human and different from other species. fingertip at 8:00 on american history tv op c-span three, medal of honor recipients reflect on their service in world war ii, vietnam and afghanistan. and saturday, at 8:00 on lectures in history, the social prejudice immigrants face during the 1800's. and sunday night at 8:00, the 25th anniversary of the fall of the berlin wall. find our television schedule at c-span.org and let us know what you think about the programs you're watching. call ulis at 202-626-3400.

ail ulings at comments @cspan.org or a tweet at c-span #comments. like us on facebook and follow us on twitter. here are a few of the comments we received from our viewers. >> just calling to tell you how much i enjoy q&a. at 5:00, on sunday, on the west coast, everything stops in my house. i turn off my phones, i get my cup of coffee and it's the most enjoyable hour on television. >> the guest today was very informative. they had opinions and i enjoyed listening to him and the comments that were done today. me, myself, in the middle east, he was very accurate, and he was on point. not -- he was not using his own personal innuendos. and i greatly enjoyed it. and i hope you have more guests like that.

but right on target this morning. >> i'm calling to say i think like many people, c-span is wonderful but appearance to criticisms, i almost have none. and i'm a very partisan kind of person. the reason i almost have none is i think you all do a tremendous job of showing just about every side of everything. and the way people look at continue to let us know what you think about the programs you're watching. atail us at comments c-span.org. send us a tweet. like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. house speaker john boehner talked about the midterm