i'm happy to be here. >> that was great. >> thank you. thank you for coming. >> nice to meet you. good luck. keep going. >> thank you for the questions and answers. >> you got it. >> did you talk to matt? >> thank you. wonderful to see you. >> thank you for coming. >> absolutely. appreciate your insights. >> thank you. you did it. >> thank you very much.

how are you? >> nice to see you again. >> i will shake your hand. of course. excellent. [inaudible] >> i do not think gilbert can pull it off better than uribe. i like that one. look at that. >> thanks so much. >> you are very welcome. >> anymore deals? >> i think they have one left in

them. you -- yeah. >> thanks, man. >> governor christie will be one of 14 republican presidential candidates attending the voters first forum at st. vincent college. c-span is partnering with media organizations from primary states for the event. we will have it live at 7:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. we look at the latest developments in the presidential race with political strategists from this morning's "washington journal." host: joining us, stefan hankin a democratic pollster and david winston, republican strategist.

how much attention should people be paying to as far as pulling when it comes to the presidential race? guest: it is the only thing they should be watching. for most americans, a little early. for those of us in the beltway and people who are political junkies, obviously, this is what we live and die by. we are still five months away from the first primaries. a long way to go before the general. it is early. want to talk about, fun to look at. but what you are seeing now is not necessarily indicative of what we will be seeing in 2016. guest: i do not necessarily disagreeguest:. there are a lot of things that will change. on the republican side, pulling is critical given that is how fox will select who they support in the debate.

it is important for the candidates to be on that stage. the role survey research is playing is critical. host: when it comes to the fox debate and polls will be the deciding factor, what polls are they looking at? what numbers are they looking at? what things have to factor into making those decisions? guest: it is not clear at this point. all the polls have a margin of error. if you look at the 10 spots that will be allowed on stage with 15 candidates, when you look from the eighth to the 13th or 14th, they are in the margin of error the range of accuracy. there is a certain amount of error. a person could be .8 behind another person.

that is well within the margin of error. so i am not sure which pulls they are using at this point. and the other element, what is the methodology? what percentage of the poll will be independence versus republicans? how will they work through that? it has not been clear. guest: i agree completely. as a democrat, i am sitting back and getting the popcorn ready. what polls are you using? national polls, staples? with primary elections you do not win a primary state-by-state. with the top candidates, probably top three or four, you have this big group in the middle. why should this person be in and not this person?

just because you are at five and you are at four, is that a meaningful difference? i am glad i do not have to deal with this one. host: are these typically done in the usual manner as far as calling people, asking them a series of questions? are they robo calls? how does that affect the poll being considered? host: i will defer to my colleague. guest: my understanding is that they will pick three or four major polls and take the average. guest: there are five. major network polls, wall street journal, nbc. they will be national. what is unclear is, will that be a survey of primary voters which represents the universe of 1000

or a subset of a national poll of 500? because the margin of error increases significantly as the sample size gets smaller. host: our guests are here to talk campaigns and politics from different perspectives. if you have questions, call the numbers on the screens. republicans, (202) 748-8001. democrats, (202) 748-8000. independents, (202) 748-8002. c-span is participating in a voters first oram -- forum tomorrow at 7:00 in the evening. let's take a call. mike from montana, democrat line. go ahead with a question or comment. caller: i want to talk a little

about the arrangement fox is having. i think it would make sense to extend the time for the debate and have everybody on kind of scramble or rotate on the stage. they do not ask the same question to all the same candidates anyway. so extend the debate, with everybody on the stage for three hours instead of two. then just ask questions of all the different candidates over three hours and have them all on. that is basically all i have to say. host: mr. winston? guest: obviously, the debates last time were a central piece. it is important for all the candidates to be on stage.

i agree there should be a way to get everybody on stage. you are looking at some people who may not get in who are twice elected governors, not minor players. these are people with standing and stature. they should be on stage. there should be some arrangement applied to make sure everybody has a chance in terms of participating. host: could governor kasich not make the prime time slot? guest: he is on the bubble. i feel like we are doing the ncaa. is one of the candidates on the bubble. when you think about kasich, here is a person who won a state that republicans have to carry did very well last time. the fact that there is a chance he may not be on stage is not a positive sense in terms of what the debate should be trying to capture.

host: your ideas on what the caller talked about? guest: it is incredibly tough. if you said, there is going to be some subset of candidates for an hour, how you are picking candidates completely throws things off. clearly, there are some personalities, so to speak. if you are in a group with donald trump, it will be completely different. do you mix people at the top polling under zero? do you tier it? i do not know if there is a perfect answer, but it is a little ridiculous that john kasich, governor of ohio, who ran very well there, is very popular according to polls, he may not be on the stage. it is a little strange. host: brick from ohio on the

independent line. caller: i live in ohio. the people of ohio think kasich is rotten as can be. here is the truth -- we are a police state. we are a police state, a military state, where funds are taken from the good of the people and given to the military so they can go on with illegal wars. you have a military state. the witness breaks down, i am, ohio -- from ohio. the last three wars were started by texans. this is my freedom of speech. host: to the point of pulling or the topic of what is going on? can you direct a question?

caller: polling is taking place out of texas. this is my freedom of speech -- you are going to hang up on me. all of the media is controlled out of texas, georgia, florida. the other part is the jews and the billionaires on the east coast. host: let's take the point of where polls are taken from. guest: the polling companies are based in dce, new york, california. all over the place. the methodology is flawless. it is getting a representative sample regionally, demographically. if you do not like the results that is your right.

but in general, these are tried and true methods. when you are seeing similar results out of major polls, it says something. guest: i agree. there are call centers around the country. what you are trying to do is get a neutral voice so nobody can identify where the call is coming from and that does not become an issue. host: you mean accent? guest: yes, so the person on the phone has no sense of where that person is calling from, where they are from. because there may be a perceived bias in that part of the conversation. they are all over the country. you are trying to make sure you get the best response from the

individual you are calling. host: from pennsylvania chuck. caller: in terms of the polling 17 republican candidates -- if i had to select one, i would have great difficulty doing so. there are eight or 10 i would support. why do you not poll in a rating of one to 10, so you do not get the skewing with one candidate? guest: that is not an unreasonable view. at this point, there are a lot of folks that are looking at potentially having four or five people they are interested in. the idea of potential he giving ratings is not unreasonable. host: what do you thinkhost:? guest: agree completely. with media polls i do not want

to disparage, but a lot of it is forgetting attention, clicks on websites. they do not tend to go into depth. internal polls, i can guarantee you all these campaigns are factoring in what if this person drops out, leaves, what does that mean? there is a big difference between internal polls and media campaigns. host: questions for all caps, (202) 748-8001 for republicans (202) 748-8000 for democrats (202) 748-8002 for independent. s. when it comes to hillary clinton, likability, 57% of voters said she was not honest or trustworthy.

52% said she did not care about major problems. is this a problem for her? guest: i do not think it is great. good points to what they need to work on as a campaign. in the big picture what is happening on the presidential level is the way demographics have shifted in the country, democrats have an advantage. it is hillary's race to lose. if she does, it will go down as one of the worst campaigns possible. this is a smaller story to the big picture. they need to address this. if you have 57% saying you are not trustworthy, they need to do something about that number. but i do not look at that and say she is in trouble. host: what do you think they will change? caller: probably not a ton. she is a well-known commodity from 1992.

she has been a senator from new york, secretary of state. this is not a new person for the american public. once people make up their minds, numbers do not shift dramatically. would you like to see the number seeing closer to 50 overtime? host: would you question the source in terms of methodology? guest: they had somewhat strange state polls in colorado showing 36% of voters was undecided which is not true. not that people were not saying that, but 36% of people in any state are not undecided on a presidential race, regardless of the candidates. there are not that many people up in the air. host: what about these people putting donald trump on top consistently? guest: i do not want to suggest there is a mindset, and this

exists across the spectrum -- there are a group of people unhappy about the direction of the country and have been that way for a while. they look at political discourse as addressing those concerns. the people supporting donald trump are people willing to play 52-card pickup. they just want to make a statement that they are unhappy the discourse is not addressing our concerns. they're just trying to shake things up. >> on the next washington journal, former officials of the center for medicare and medicaid services marked the medicare 50th anniversary. robert egge from alzheimer's association talks about how spending will be impacted by the expected rise in alzheimer's by 2050.

you can join the conversation on facebook and twitter. washington journal, 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> monday night on the communicators, democratic representatives on internet privacy and how to combat data breaches. >> we have seen attack after attack. the most recent, of course, on the office of personnel management and private industry. target, home depot, private corporations that have had customer information stolen. what we have realized is we can try very hard to keep ahead of the hackers, but what we need to do is think about how we minimize the need for customers to put their private information on websites. >> right now, there are legal

organizations from the government sharing information with the private sector and the private sector sharing information back with government termed to be acting as agents of the government. what we want to do is allow the barriers to be removed so you can share information on threat features, narrowly defined, very technical conversations. of the various hacks. we can broadly share that information, when there is one hack one place, hopefully we can widely share the vulnerability to protect everyone. >> monday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span two. >> tonight on c-span, "q&a"

with robert kurson, followed by presidential candidates speaking this last week at the urban league's national conference in fort lauderdale. ♪ >> this week on "q&a," robert kurson discusses his book "pirate hunters" and the search for the ship the golden fleece sunk off the dominican republic in the 1680's. the captain, joseph bannister, was a respected merchant captain but became a pirate. robert kurson also talked about his work as a journalist and author. brian: robert kurson, author of pirate