importance of your vision. do not be afraid to take risks with your documentary. the bold. there is a $5,000 grand prize. visit our website at studentcam.org. >> is genia governor -- virginia -- watch tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span, c-span now, our free mobile video app, or online at c-span.org. >> c-span it has your unfiltered view of government, provided by these television companies and more. >> the world has changed.

today, fast reliable internet connection is something that no one can live without. we are there for our customers with speed, reliability, value and choice. it all starts with great internet. >> wow supports c-span as a public television service. giving you a front-row to democracy. -- frontmost seat to democracy. host: any walter, the cook political report publisher and editor-in-chief, on now to talk about election day, just over two weeks away from today. i want to start with the president. early september, you did one about democrats winning over the net voter. you quote pew as well in this. democrats are still going to vote democratic.

guest: it has been true over the last 10 or 15 years. it is very hard to get people who disapprove of the president to vote for the party of the president. that may be true even if you like that candidate. there is a connection between -- you think a party here in washington is doing a bad job, you're probably going to vote against that party on the ballot. if you like the job the president is doing, you've over that party. the challenge for the democrats since the very beginning of the cycle is, can they win in states or districts where the president is unpopular? what we have been seeing in the polling, at least these polls in september and even early october, are that many of the voters have put themselves not as strong disapproval, not people who say, i absolutely cannot stand president. the polls ask a stepped question, strongly approve,

approve, somewhat disapprove, strongly disapprove. the somewhat disapprove people are the ones where looking at. i don't truly dislike the guy, but i don't think he is doing a great job. those folks were actually voting more for democrats than we had seen in previous midterm years. it also helps answer the question as to why so many democratic candidate, especially senate candidates, were doing so much better than biden in states like georgia or in arizona. it seems as if what we are getting is the answer that these voters who are not crazy about biden, they are also not interested in voting for a republican. host: we will explain the senate races tightening up. guest: this goes with my question i raised very early in the cycle. how much can you over perform

the president? getting some of those voters is important. but can you get more than a small amount, or are those senate candidates -- it's not at the race is necessarily tightening, it is that they hit their ceiling early on. they consolidated all of those voters, including those who might not really approve of the job the president is doing, to give them a 46%, 47 percent, 40% on the ballot. host: and they are not getting anymore. guest: you are kind of trapped there. that is always the challenge. when you are looking at an incumbent and you are at 48%, it seems you just need to percent more. but that is often easier said than done. host: before we get into the broad house races out there, giving away the secret sauce of

the cook political report, as you look at all the house and senate races, what is it your organization writers and analysts are doing, looking at these individual, particularly when it comes to individual congressional house races? guest: we look at it both from a 30,000 foot perspective, as well as getting in and on the ground perspective. understanding the bigger, broader political environment. that is pretty important. how do people feel about the president, how do they feel about the state of the country, how are they feeling about what the top issues are? which you all talked about just a minute ago. then, getting down to individual races, what are the unique circumstances in those states that helps us to understand which way these races can go? the overall political environment, it trumps about 90% of what happens in these races. the 10% is what is going on on

the ground. there are some democrats, even as the wind is blowing up against their face, they will be over to -- they will be able to overcome that. host: there seems to be a bit of a demarcation this summer. there seems to be wind in the sales of some democratic races. how has that changed? guest: that's a really good question. earlier in the year, what you saw was maybe gale force winds or higher in the face of democrats. it was not just at the president's job approval ratings, in some cases, at all-time lows that we had seen for a first-term president, but inflation continued to bite. we were seeing more and more challenges that the administration was struggling with. or importantly, we were spending a whole lot of time -- if you think about the media narrative,

where was our attention? it was on what democrats were not doing. they were not getting things done on capitol hill, they were fighting amongst themselves. we were hearing about joe manchin and is he or is he not going to support president biden? over the summer, we moved from being completely focused on democrats to one that started to focus on the former president. we had the january 6 hearings. we had former president going and supporting republican candidate's, and stumping against many of the people that voted for impeachment. republicans who voted for impeachment. he was in the news a lot. he is also incredibly polarizing, much like the current president. and as he said, we had the dobbs decision. what you can feel was a wind that was category four category

five. the wind had not lessened in the face of democrats because the intensity on the side of democrats, in terms of their interest and engagement, that started to go up as the lens and focus was on trump, abortion access, and not as much on the things that were hurting democrats. host: what are the raw numbers for the house? how may seats do republicans need to win two take control of the house, and where do you think that may stand right now? guest: republicans only need five seats to pick up control of the house. the challenge for democrats is that they have many more vulnerable seats, what we call tossup's. those are the close races. there are over 30 of those right now, the lions share of those, more than 20 of them, are in --

were once held by democrats. i think it is something like republicans, in order to win congress, would only need to win about 70% or 20% of the closest races that we have -- 17% or 20% of the closes races that we have in that category. the bar is significantly lower than, say, if they needed to pick up 50 seats or something like that. the good news for democrats is, there aren't as many competitive races out there as there were in 1994 or 2010, when republicans made really big gains in the house. there are just fewer and fewer democrats in districts that are conservative or are red-leaning. most members of congress sit in a district that the presidential candidate of their party carries. host: any walters hero thousand till 9:00. she is the publisher and

editor-in-chief of the cook political report. we welcome your calls and comments about election 2022. republicans, (202) 748-8001. immigrants use -- democrats use (202) 748-8000. independents, (202) 748-8002. text, (202) 748-8003. guest: to be fair, it has been a long time since we have seen people saying things are on the "right track." what you're seeing is a combination of things. what makes people upset with the status quo? there will be democrats in the group who say, when i really don't like is donald trump or what republicans are doing. but i think it fundamentally

signals the frustration with the fact that, one, we are coming out of the reality of the pandemic. the economy, especially with inflation, is a real day-to-day issue for somebody people. -- so many people. and i hear this a lot when i talk to voters. maybe we are just broken past the point of being able to be fixed. our political system, the way we are unable, it seems, to even have a conversation about politics. there is just a sense that things are in a really, really bad place. we are seeing in the data as well that it is not just concern about the direction of the country, but the direction of the economy. there is a tremendous amount of pessimism out there, not just that the economy is bad, but it

is not expected to get better. host: explain why and how you and your team do that, and why that is important. guest: the good news about all of our new technology that we learned about in the pandemic, like zoom and other technology, is that focus groups used to be a time-consuming and expensive process. i like to go and watch voters in a group, with a moderator, talking to the voters. i have to travel to that and sit behind glass, and listen as they were going about the conversation. now, i can do it from the comfort of my own home on a screen. we had an opportunity to listen to a lot of voters from lots of different places all around the country. these are usually done by third-party groups.

the cook political report is not sponsoring these groups, but is invited to come and watch and report on them. i find that is a really good way of understanding the nuance of racists. when you look at a pole and you ask who you voted for, how you identify yourself, but when you listen to voters process through the issues they are struggling with, you get a real appreciation for how these things are landing in real life. and how complicated politics is. voters are not robots, humans are not robots. we are being asked to vote in this very binary way. yes or no, d or r, up or down. but we have a lot of thoughts going on. i like this person for this reason, but i don't like they are doing that. then, we have to make a choice for just one of them. host: for lack of a better term,

do you think voters are more non-binary? guest: they are more independent. we have heard a lot of voters in the groups who say, especially since the roe v. wade decision, you know, i am pro-life, but i don't want all these restrictions. i don't think there should be no abortions. this is me personally being pro-life. i don't think i should be able to dictate my opinions onto other people. that is where you come to appreciate that these terms we throw around in politics, they don't fit these voters. they are not wearing those clothes the way we think they are. host: we have some calls for you. first, jim in virginia, democrat line. good morning. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. host: you bet. caller: i'm not trying to be

disrespectful to ms. walter, but i wanted to respond to a call from your previous section. this pertains to what she's speaking about, as to the people who are processing things, nuance, and it is difficult because of so much misinformation. if you give me a couple minutes here, i can explain what i'm talking about. a fellow called in and seemed to be an obvious trump supporter. he was completely climbing up and down bill clinton for anything with epstein. i don't know how any millions of people listen to c-span, but they all heard him tell them that bill clinton was hanging out with sexual deviant epstein. people don't realize -- for example, epstein was a very high profile financial investments counselor.

i imagine, like the clinton foundation, he probably managed assets and funds for the clinton foundation. while, the clinton foundation, for example, actually provided aids medication for over half the people suffering from aids in the entire world. host: i appreciate your call this morning, but to your point about disinformation, we get all kinds of colors on this program. guest: it is really hard in this world to understand how to process the information that we get every day. i have a hard time, and it is my job to go through it every day. listening to so many of these voters, especially early on in 2021, when we were going through that second bout of covid, and they would say, i just don't know what to believe. i go on facebook and my friends

and family are saying this thing, and i turned the tv on and i hear this thing, and then i logged onto whatever social media platform and i hear this thing. i don't know which one is correct. the reality is probably there are pieces within all of those that was probably true in every one of those. but it is much too much to ask a normal person to have to sift through all of it. i think, to the caller's point, there is a whole bunch of information out there and you have to decide half -- how to process it, besides people deliberately selling misinformation. we know that is happening. but there is also an opportunity for individuals -- i always say this to people. they say, i don't know what to believe. if there is something that you read and you have to ask yourself, do we really think this is true?

just process through that a little more, do a little more digging. there are plenty of ways to find at least an answer closest to the truth. host: here is steve in florida on the independent line. caller: yes, good morning. i think you are doing a good job here. why are we begging our enemies for oil? that's what i can't understand. that makes no sense. i cannot believe that the people of pennsylvania would vote to shut down their fracking to rebuild philadelphia and pittsburgh. i cannot believe that vote. you would have to think that your taxes would agree to shut in their oil and ep's. even the liberals over there want their oil because it funds all of the colleges over there and everything. we have to produce domestically in order to keep our sovereignty.

anyway, i think there is massive groupthink in the polling. i think there are way too many democrats involved in this thing to get a fair shot at really getting what the truth is. there is massive government censorship now that really has people upset. host: all right, steve. any walter. guest: the issue of energy is a really, really important one. in a state like pennsylvania, where the issue of fracking is not on the ballot in the sense that people are voting up or down, whether we should frack, but the representatives you sent to congress, who are supportive or not of certain regulations, rules, of that process. in the senate race, this has become an issue because the democratic candidate had been

not supportive of fracking. again, in a state that really is, the caller is correct, a big driver of their community, there is a reason why republicans are keen on that issue. host: so they cannot focus in on price gaps. guest: exactly. and we know that winter is coming, and natural gas is spiking for a lot of people. host: here is clay in louisiana. morning, go ahead. caller: good morning and thank you for taking my call. the program is very interesting. i think it is very nuanced about the election and so on. i think one of the biggest issues, besides inflation -- i am retired, i am a super senior. i will use my wife, as an example. she is as nonpolitical as you can get. she probably would not even vote unless i urged her to.

she is afraid we live outside of a multicolor to an area in new orleans. she is afraid to go out into the city, to go out dining like we used to, because crime is so prolific and a lot of our friends say this is an issue not factored into the election. host: clay, is that going to send your wife to the polls? is she going to vote this year? caller: absolutely she is going to vote, no question about it. crime is an issue that is not being addressed. host: we certainly talked about in the first hour before we came on the air here. it's a big part of the attack ads we are seeing. guest: it's absolutely correct. the issue of crime, for so long, and it usually is, is a local issue. these are things that mayors and governors deal with. these prosecutors that we hear about and some of these cities,

these are not people that members of congress can do anything about. this is local government. i think it is the overall sense that democrats have not taken this seriously enough, have not paid enough attention to the fact that many of these cities that again are run by a local government, but they are not getting pushback from national democrats, or they aren't getting the kind of interest in helping to solve some of these. or, in many cases, they say this isn't something you should have to worry about because you don't live in my district, this isn't in my district. but it influences how people perceive the entire state. how you feel about what's going on in portland or seattle or philadelphia, even if you do not live in those cities, the perception of them is that the

cities are not safe, and they are cities that are being run, for the most part, by democrats. it sends the message that it is democrats themselves and their language on crime, their opinions on crime, that are if not making it worse, certainly not making it better. host: there's a headline this morning, republicans fault rebound puts a chill on democratic summer momentum peered we talked a little bit about that. what has given republicans that rebound? guest: i think a couple of things. remember, i talked about the spotlight moving from being all about democrats to really moving all about trump and abortion. those issues have faded as the summer has turned to fall. what are we back talking about? we are talking about inflation, gas prices, these cities that are still having really difficult crime concerns. these are all places that put

democrats on the defensive. i think the challenge of making abortion as a sort of motivating issue beyond where it went in the summer is that i think it energized democrats. it got them to really focus and pay attention, become more interested in turning out in the election. but it has not moved beyond that. it motivated democrats to a certain point, but that day-to-day concern, your cost of living, your safety concerns, those are what really are overshadowing everything else. i think it is also true that if you live in a state where the issue of abortion, if you feel like there is more at stake, like you are in a state with split control, maybe a publican and a democrat, with a trigger

law on the books, we would revert back to pre-row restrictions, who is elected governor is going to have a big say in what the abortion laws will look like next year. it's not so true in a state like oregon or massachusetts or new york or california, where it is already either a very democratic legislature or, in some cases, like nevada, it is already in the state constitution of protection for abortion access. it is not quite as existential of an issue there as it is in michigan or pennsylvania. host: i want to ask you about an important governors race in a minute. in michigan, there is a referendum on the ballot about abortion. guest: that's right. that's another good point, that you are turning people out to be more focused on the issue. host: let's go to patrick in maryland, democrats line. good morning, you are on with

any walter. caller: good morning to you. thank you for accepting my call. i have a loaded question. this is my question. are you going to write or approve an article that states, prior to the election, that the american people should trust the outcome of that election? the reason why i'm saying that is because i can see -- i'm sorry. i can see the innate kind of close election, whoever wins, the other candidate is going to claim fraud or there will be a reporter or an article that is going to claim fraud. so i'm going to charge you. i would like to know, pretty much a yes or no answer, will there be an article charging the candidates to state, both republican and democrat," i will support the outcome of the vote?" oh?

guest: it has become part of every debate in these tentative elections. the question is being asked of candidates, specifically those candidates who have argued that the 2020 election was not appropriately decided or that they deny that biden won the election. those people are being asked directly time and time again whether they will accept the outcome of the election. the answer is, yes, it is out there. it is being asked constantly. the question is what will it look like in practice? i think what we know with many of the states, especially the ones that are the closest, the georgia senate race we know that the closest to the election likely goes to a runoff.

you can't win with a plurality you have to win with outright more than 50% of the vote. host: one with the runoff happen? guest: december 6. we know states like pennsylvania , i can't remember the results. we have a process by which the ballots are counted, you're going to have secretaries of state in -- and other election officials who are going to be very vigilant and diligent and be transparent about what they are doing. ok? here is the early vote results, election day results, here is what we are still waiting on and going through that process is going to be very important but we know states like oregon, washington, california not only vote