infrastructure -- bawk at infrastructure, that is a mistake. so many needs are out there for the basic infrastructure repairs. there will be a need for more workers and a caller earlier talked about the immigration reform where there are some new people coming in that would be happy to have a good paying job to feed their families and have a better life. i just think they keep punting that problem from one administration to the next administration to the next administration, and i'm really frustrated that we have not come up with a good immigration reform. because the baby boomers are retiring and you just look at the needs of people to get things done and there announcer" continues. host: kyle kondik is back with us this morning, joining us to

talk about a new effort to explore political polarization in the u.s. and how to bridge it. explain why and how you chose to undertake a study on this topic. guest: where i work is working with a new group that is concerned about, as we are, they divide in the country and at the deep amount of distrust between people who voted for donald trump and people who voted for john biden -- joe biden. we have been rolling out pieces of the study. we introduced the project last thursday. and one of the things that comes out is on certain policy matters, a decent number, trump and biden voters are not far apart, it is the details of the infrastructure bill that passed the senate and is now kind of awaiting its feet in the house -- fate in the house, but most of it is things that are

strongly supported by bothsides. -- by both sides. then you get to contentious proposals like tax increases, making community college free, and that is where you start to see differences on policy matters. and there is also extreme distrust in that. a big swath of voters do not trust those on the others. they think elected officials from the other side are a threat to the country. i do not think it is earth shattering to say that the country is divided. but i think that the depth of these findings has been kind of alarming to some. and that is why we did the project, we want to expose these things and figure out ways for people to talk more effectively with host: host: each other. on measuring the division, when people say, we are more divided than we have ever been, are they right? guest: this is the first time we

have done this actual poll, so i cannot say we did it 20 years ago and it said things were better. we also fought a civil war. so i think it always feels like things are worse now than they have ever been, but with that said my guess is if you did a poll 20 or 30 years ago, the difference would not be as stark. the country is ideologically sorted out. 30 years ago, you had more moderates in the democratic party, more liberals in the conservative party. i think that the electorate kind of showed more willingness to cross over. now we are in a time where very few states have a senator from each party representing it in the senate. you only have 17 houses districts that voted for a party

for president, one party for the house. there's not as much crossover in congress as there used to be. and it is reflected in these numbers, too, that the partisan camps are well divided and if they do not like each other. host: political polarization is the topic. republicans, 202-748-8001. it democrats, 202-748-8000. independents, 202-748-8002. this is kyle kondik. i should also note he's the author of "the long red thread." i want to get to the booking a little bit, but returning to the findings on political polarization. a strong majority of trump voters see no difference between democrats and socialists. a majority of biden voters agree

there is no real difference between republicans and fascists. that's one finding. 41% of biden voters agree that it is time to split the country into parts, red and blue states seceding from the union. does that worry you? guest: i think it is worrisome. i do not think it is that people will act on those actions, but if you are basically willing to say that we should split the country because it is so divided, which is an opinion you do see expressed from commentators, i do think it is illustrative of the divide, even though i do not think that that is something that will happen. you have to remember, when the country fought a civil war, you had an obvious division between north and south, slave and non-slave states. yes, today you have red and blue states, but a lot of them are a

mix where you have kind of big blue urban areas and red rural areas. how you would actually divide up a country, even if you wanted to, and i personally do not want to, how you would even do that, i do not know how it would work. host: coming back to the historical comparisons. in "the washington post," it's said it is fashionable to say that the u.s. is at its low point. and we are more divided, more deceived than ever before. our problems are too large and our leaders are too small for their jobs. what the diagnosis gets wrong is the historical dimension. not much is happening now that has not happened before. the climate crisis appears more menacing than the nuclear holocaust of the kennedy years because it is in the foreground and the other has receded.

the immigration crisis seems more urgent only because this one's reckoning feel robbed because it is happening to us, not because it is more painful than the lynchings or chattel slavery. guest: those are fair points. i will not guarantee to you that the situation is spelled out -- that's spelled out in this poll is worse than before. part of what happened, and i get into this in the book, is that over the course of many decades, the parties realign themselves ideologically. they realign themselves geographically. and there was far less crossover than there used to be. i think that our political system, there's so many checks and balances, the filibuster in the senate, and all these stopping points in the system

that i think requires some bipartisan cooperation to essentially get things done, unless one side has a gigantic majority. what's different now is we are in a time of small majorities in the house and senate, there are chokepoints in the system and we cannot get through them. that, the governing structure, seems worse, even if the other challenges we face, certainly america has a dark history with race, that you could argue is better now than it has been. but that there continues to be challenges, as the columnist noted. and immigration, of course, is a long-standing push and pull in u.s. history, so i agree with that. but i wonder if the governing arrangement we have with a two-party system we have is equipped to deal with these challenges. i mean, again, i do not think

that those are unfair points. host: on the book, "the long red thread, how democratic dominance gave way to republican advantage in u.s. house elections." republican advantage at a time when democrats are in control of the house. guest: that is a fair point. what i was trying to illustrate is you have this long time from the great depression through the republican revolution in 1994 , where democrats controlled the house. and now, since 1994, the republicans, even though the democrats control the majority now, the republicans have controlled the majority for 20 out of 80 years and appear poised to win the house back in 2022. so, what the book traces is what

changed in the house and what has transitioned the house from a time where the democrats would always win big majorities to one where it is not evenly balanced. host: it is almost like you have a crystal ball you are looking into. now to the callers. richard, a democrat. caller: i want to talk about human nature. you go anywhere in the world, anytime, and you will find people who are very empathetic. and they are the kind of people that would -- to somebody they do not even know. opposite, the sociopaths. they do not care about anybody. and i do not care where you are in that world, there is those groups of people.

in the west, in the last century, when the poles divided, it ended up with the fascists and socialists. you found it in the 1930's. and you find it now, in europe and in the united states. that is where we are now, the socialist versus the fascist. host: again, what we talked about in the polling. guest: democrats will sometimes call republicans fascists, republicans will call the democrats socialists. there's some democrats that refer to themselves as being socialist. one thing i will say, i think the caller goes a little far in his descriptions, but i will say that -- and our research gets into this, and there are other researchers that look at this. there's a book called "the righteous mind," which talks

about the psychological differences between folks who end up in the democratic camp and those who generally end up in the republican camp. and i think there are different ways of looking at the world, different kinds of attitudes, i suppose, that you could associate with one side or the other. i would not make a value judgment on which one is better. i think people think about these things in different ways and it can be hard sometimes to reconcile the opinions of the two sides. host: justin in the peach state. good morning. caller: i'm a true independent that will support either side, but i change a little more towards the republicans after obamacare in 2010. and got real time information. and i can link it to the immigration situation. they know all the money we are giving is doing what is going on with the king of jordan, all the

leaders down there are pocketing money and sending migrants our way. i was on a conference call in 2010, where it was said illegal immigration is a national security threat. the biggest difference now is our welfare and social programs. many of them are coming here, unfortunately, and this is from intel from 10 years ago, to get on our social services while we send money, knowingly, 93% of the money we send -- we are airlifting money to kabul. they will not know where that money is going. and the american public is now getting this information. and the reason i do not support the dems anymore is i would sit in consultations with them, they would look at an intel report, and go out and lie about it. host: justin in georgia.

the issue of immigration. guest: it is a dividing line between the two parties, in that either -- how many illegal immigrants we let into the country or what we do about legal immigration, republicans are more likely to be concerned about the issue, favoring or the more restrictive on that issue and democrats attend to more laissez-faire on immigration. but we could talk about history, this has been a dividing line between the two parties. you go back 150 years, the democrats back then, in some ways they were also the party of more recent immigration. and the republicans are more the party who have established groups that could trace their lineage back longer, and that

was a push and pull. and be. a lot of people who voted for trump concerns expressed about illegal immigration, about immigrants coming into the country and affecting their livelihood in some way whether it be social safety net having to take care of more folks coming into the country, job situation, or what have you, so it does represent a dividing line. i also think it's an issue, immigration in general, it is not one that necessarily has easy answers because if you are going to have any restriction on immigration, if you are going to essentially prevent people from coming into the country, how strongly to enforce that, what do you do with folks already here? i'm not necessarily prescribing the solutions here. all them saying is reasonable people can come to different conclusions as to what to do and immigration ends up being also a political headache for whoever

the president is. i think biden has suffered in some ways because as trump was seen as maybe too hard on immigration, biden as seen -- is seen as too soft. there is this constant push and pull on it. these are difficult issues. host: 9:00 a.m. eastern, about a half-hour left with kyle. we have been talking about the series of polls you are working on, the project you are doing at the center for politics along with project home fire. you pulled trump and biden voters. why not do the regular democrats and republicans? guest: there's going to be a lot of crossover between people who identify as democrats, people identify as biden voters, and people who identify as republicans and trump voters. i think he wanted -- we wanted to set up 100% on one side and 100% on the other and avoid the folks who may be voted third

party or call themselves one party label but maybe vote a different way. there are still some of those folks in the country, particularly if you look at party registration in certain states, republicans in say like west virginia, they >> this is live coverage on c-span. my family was very good at it. at the time my father was a largest manufacturer of

commercial refrigeration in the world, privately owned. his fortunes were made by setting up affiliates and distributorships. host: it is a story that might have worked better than the previous segment when we talked about dark money and the movement of money. do you have a comment on political polarization? caller: i think it benefits some people to make people angry at each other. consequently, some folks know how to increase their popularity in the polls by pitting people against each other. that is pretty much what has happened. host: we will take the point. guest: it is a totally fair point. one of the things we are hopeful to do with this polling and data project going forward is to point out the messages politicians can use, instead of trying to divide folks, try to build bridges.

in an ideal world both parties would be incentivized to have those messages. unfortunately, it is sometimes incentivized the other way. stoking the vision can be a way to win elections. maybe not the greatest way to try to govern the country or bring folks together. host: we will come back to the crystal ball. guest: we are a nonpartisan elections analysis newsletter. we come out a couple of times a week. you can sign up for free at that website to get our newsletter. we do a handicapping of election in a midterm year in the u.s. house, governors races, senate races. we are following the redistricting going on right now, which is redrawing the house map in most states across the country.

those are the things we write about. we will publish more findings in our folding project we have been talking about with project home fire. sign up. host: you mentioned governors races. you are at the university of virginia. they closely watched race in virginia. what does the crystal ball say? guest: anywhere from a tossup that is 50-50 all the way to republican or democratic. we don't see a chance of one side losing. we rate this as lean democratic. we've had it that way the whole election cycle. we still see terry mcauliffe is a favorite in this race. i have to say, my understanding is there has been a lot of public polling and private polling that indicates the race is close. there was a respected poll in virginia they came out this morning from christopher newport university. they headed up by four points.

there are poles that are followed within that range. you might -- i think is a very close race. the republican nominee is from the business world. at the very least donald did poorly in virginia, particularly -- donald trump did poorly in virginia, particularly the second time which wound up being the biggest democratic win in virginia since 1964. it overstates a democratic virginia is. it could become a left-center state at this point. as someone from a business background he probably has more appeal than some lapsed -- for some lapsed republican voters. i think it is a close race. a race that often breaks against the white house. it is common for the party that does not hold the white house to end up winning this race a year

after the presidential race. that gives it -- it means he gets national attention. plus the fact that so many political commentators and operatives live in northern virginia. it is their home state race and that causes there to be more focus on it. host: in terms of how terry mcauliffe has run the race, what will it mean if he wins? guest: mcauliffe started by embracing joe biden. he has certainly read the tea leaves. he was on a call a couple of days ago and he admitted biden is not that popular anymore in virginia. as the numbers have gone from approval in the mid-50's for much of the start of the paper did -- presidency, it has turned negative. it was dipping in july and

august and the collapse of the afghan government exacerbated his problems. i think you are seeing mcauliffe -- he try to create distance between himself and obama white house. i think you started this race clearly embracing biden but had to pit because biden has gone to not being a clear asset for the democratic party. host: howard and carmel. caller: good morning. political polarization is our critical issue right now. the reference from ken burns that we are all familiar with who has chronicled the major episodes of american history like the civil war, world war ii. ken burns counties times is on

fire with those episodes in our history. we equivocate in our attempt to be evenhanded. saying democrats and republicans are both guilty. i disagree with that. we had an insurrection by a specific clinical party headed by the criminal president. that is very different and we need to address it more clearly. we have individuals showing up at school board meetings with guns and other violent issue. the violence around the country's much known, white supremacist groups are on the march. these times are different than others. when we try to do this equivocation, it worries me because we don't get to the

issues. we have a constitutional framework for our democracy where we assume that all of us agree to what the aspirations we reflect in our constitution. i think today, that is not true. we have a party that is working against our constitutional framework and we need to call that out. we have had people who cheered the insurrectionists, who are now sitting in congress. so how do we identify these embedded domestic enemies that now reside in the republican party? host: we will take the question. guest: i do think it is fair, particularly in terms of the kind of lack of trust between the two sides. when donald trump is president, particularly after the election, the stuff he said about the integrity of the election was very irresponsible and he was not backed up at all.

i think we know, because even trump criticize -- even though he won in 2016, he criticized the integrity of that election as a way to sort of deflect from not winning the national popular vote but the bottom line is i think he has propagated a belief amongst many republicans that the election was somehow stolen or biden did not win or whatnot and the results were only audited or what have you that the result would be different. it wouldn't be different. he lost. as mitch mcconnell told him after the election, i think that is documented in the new bob costa book, that ultimately trump was going to say the election was rigged and fraudulent anyway and he has been searching for evidence that backs up that predetermined assertion and has not presented anything compelling. that is corrosive. i think it is fair to say. i will certainly not both sides

that particular piece of it. host: to arizona, nathan, a republican. good morning. caller: good morning to both of you. i wanted to say the last time polarization had gotten out of hand it was the civil war. we will blame democrats for that because it was a democrat-caused war. i used to be able to say voters on the democratic side should not be blamed, but they have as much responsibility now as they did and we found out the democratic national committee created russia-gate, the special prosecutor confirmed that last month. to consider all of this talk about insurrection and stealing an election, it is the democratic leadership creating all of this. i was just listening to chuck schumer this morning on c-span talking about how it was republicans' fault but mitch mcconnell was adamant in saying democrats have insisted they do not need republicans, have proven they do not need

republicans, and they did with they did today or yesterday without one vote of the republicans. host: on what happened this week on the debt ceiling, the caller pointing out the republicans did not vote for the final bill to raise the debt ceiling through december 3 but a lot of -- republicans joining democrats 11 to break the filibuster, to end debate and move to that vote. does that give you some sign of hope? guest: [laughter] not particularly. the debt ceiling, and i would have said this -- in fact i did say this when trump was president, the debt ceiling always ends up getting raised. that we have gotten to the point where there is a lot of brinksmanship on the debt ceiling, and it seems to me risking a default would be a bad situation for the stature -- the financial stature of the united states. i think the way you look at this depends on what you think an actual majority in the senate

is, because the votes are there to do a longer term debt ceiling increase. it is just it would be essentially a 51/50 vote if everyone was present with kamala harris breaking the tie. but the republicans are choosing to filibuster, and you have to ask yourself, is it sort of a natural state of affairs that everything must be filibustered? that helps you assign what blame is. my thinking would be that republicans don't have to filibuster the debt ceiling, doubt have to vote for it, but -- don't have to vote for it, but actively filibustering it prevents it from getting to the senate. but you also have to ask yourself, what is the majority in the senate actually? is it a majority or 60 votes because you should assume everything should be filibustered? i guess different people could come to different conclusions on that but we have averted this particular debt ceiling crisis but will have another one coming up. the democrats have the power through reconciliation to deal with it.

i sort of felt throughout this whole back-and-forth that it is in some ways posturing as to what will end up being in political ads next year. i think republicans want to be able to say that democrats are -- they are going to argue the democrats are spending too much money, that they are busting the budget and that sort of thing, so to me, they could say that anyway without the debt ceiling. i sometimes wonder what is really the purpose of the debt ceiling other than create these kind of what i think are artificial crises but also real crises in that if we ever did breach the debt limits, who knows what might happen and what that would do to the united -- pres. biden: hello, folks. good afternoon. today, for the first time since march of 2020, the american under clement wright has --