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host: good morning. the economy is a top issue for many voters this morning and both candidates are prioritizing the middle class but what does it mean to be middle-class in america today? this morning we want to hear from you. if you consider yourself to be below middle-class, call (202) 748-8000. if you think you are middle-class, that number is (202) 748-8001. and if you believe you are above middle class, (202) 748-8002. if you would like to text us, that number is (202) 748-8003. please be sure to include your name, where you are writing in from, and which category you put yourself in.

we are also on social media, facebook.com/c-span, and on x @cspanwj. for a sense of how america considers itself when it comes to whether or not someone is middle-class, we have some polling from gallup on this exact toc. between 2002 and 2000 6, 61 percent of americans considered themselves middle or upper middle-class. 2008 at the start of the great cession, that number dpped to 56%, and since then, that figure has averaged 53%. meanwhile, the combined percentage of adults identifying as working-class has increased from an average of 37% to 45%. for an exact definition of what it means to be middle-class, we can lo to the u.s. census. inhe 2020 census, for a single individual, a middle-class income ranged from $30,000 to $90,000 per year.

for a couple, it starts at $42,000 up to $127,000. for a family of three, 60,000 to $180,000 a year. for a family of 4, 60 $7,000 to $201,000 per year. as we just mentioned, both of the presidential candidates are making their pictures to the middle class, including vice president harris in her acceptance speech at the democratic national convention on thursday. she spoke about the importance of the middle class. [video clip] >> we are starting -- and we are starting a new way forward. forward to a future with a strong and growing middle class because we know a strong middle class has always been critical to america's success, and building that middle-class will be a defining goal of my presidency.

and i will tell you, this is personal for me. the middle class is where i come from. my mother kept a strict budget. we lived within our means. yet we wanted for little. and she expected us to make the most of the opportunities that were available to us and to be grateful for them. because as she taught us, opportunity is not available to everyone. that is why we will create what i call an opportunity economy, an opportunity economy where everyone has a chance to compete and a chance to succeed. host: former president trump was in york, pennsylvania last monday, also making his pitch to the middle class, talking about how increased energy production will push costs lower and help

the middle class. [video clip] >> unleashing american energy will reduce prices, large record-setting economic growth. we had millions and millions of jobs that produce higher wages for the american worker. you cannot be a manufacturing powerhouse unless you have low-cost energy. we will have low-cost energy. electricity rates for a chinese factory are more than 50% lower than the price of electricity for the price of an american factory. we were working for years ago and really getting involved. we were hit with -- covid came in. we focused on that. we did a great job on that. if we did not do a good job on that, we would have been in a depression like 1929, which is where we are heading. you are heading to the depression of 1929, that type, the big-league depression. host: once again, we want to hear from you this morning. what does it mean to be

middle-class in america? if you think you are below middle class, that number is (202) 748-8000. if you believe you are middle, (202) 748-8001. and if you believe you are above middle class, (202) 748-8002. let's start with marvin in philadelphia. marvin, where do you sit? caller: right now, i would consider myself below middle-class. it is kind of hard to gauge. i am making almt $70,000 a year, between $70,00an $80,000 a year. but the way thomy is right now, i considelf middle-class i consider myself ddle-class. i think things started cha after reagan. basically, the workison has been attacked. with different things like that, keeping up the cost of living and stuff like that, it is hard to gauge middle class. so i considerf the lower

middle class. host:k, thank you. patrick is in lady lake, florida. patrick, where do you consider yourself? caller: i consider myself in the middle class, but kind of as usual,n leaves out a lot of stuff. th middle class, the 40 hour workweek, mom can stay at home and raise the kids, that was only because of world war ii en america had to get only producing economy and the thing elped that was the g.i. bill. before we had the g.l, depression.ot the recession, from the war manufacturing economy, the only thing that pulled us out of that e g.i. bill. andhat skintone are you

talking about? what do you think the person lived up until the up until 1988, a bank refuse a woman a loan legally. that was a l i would like to point out one the g7 -- of the g7, france has the highest household formation, which means the parents can afford the mortgage, can afford to send the kids off to college and put up with that mess and one last thing when you get into this domestic drill, baby, drill. come to florida. try that in florida. send the c-span school bus down here. host: we are going to stick to the topic of the middle class, thank you. let's hear from ben in ocean city, maryland. ben, where you consider yourself

when it comes to whether or not you are middle class. caller: hi, good morning. i do consider myself middle class, mid to low middle class at this point. circa 2019, things were great in every sense t word. i was makg about $10,000 less a ye a the time, but i felt much wealthier. with ts inflation and everything that has gone on since the pandemic, it is sa. the fact that i waeaing less and i felt exponentially wealthier than i do in 2024, earning more. however, i am optisc for the future for the first time in several yearbeuse i do firmlyelieve american people coectively have seen enough and president trump will be elected in a landslide in november. host: yahoo! finance breaks down what it takes to be middle-class in each individual state, and in maryland where ben was just calling in from, the median household income is $98,461.

the lowest end is $65,000 $640. the high-end middle-class income, $196,922. thomas paine says on facebook in terms of what it takes to be middle-class in america it is completely subjective. many affluent people falsely believe they are middle cls when they are in the top 10%. frank says middle class describes most of us, butt simply being an american. we work, pay taxes, save something for our kids when we go, and have a good life. we are not rich, but we are not poor. kareem says middle class in th u.s., a meal on the table every night at a subsumption service to something you don't need. let's go to edwin in connecticut, who called in on our line for folks below the middle class. good morning, edwin. caller: good morning. i think i would consider myself below middle class, but we also

have to discuss what we mean by class, so this is a great question about what is a class. a lot of people think it is based on the income that you make, but if we think about it historically come it also comes down to your role in the economy, right? so whether or not -- for example, if you are working to produce something like you are a factory worker, you would be considered lover class because you would be the one doing the production as opposed to if you were the person who owned the factory, you would be in the upper class. for a long time, it seemed to be those two classes, the upper and the lower. it was not until pretty recently like a little bit after world war ii that we started talking about the middle class. the little people who are stuck in the middle because you don't do a whole lot of production, but they also don't do owning, people like your managers or hr. a lot of your white-collar workers. you know?

host: edwin, i did want to add some detail here looking at the yahoo! finance article. where you are in connecticut, the median household income is $97,213. the lowest end of middle class income at least according to the data, i understand the jobs you have, $60,141. the highest end of the middle class income, $180,426. do those numbers sound about right to you? caller: i really would not know. i am not much of an economist. i am a mechanic. but that is what the economists are saying, i guess that is what the middle class would be. i live next to the electric shipyard and there are a few workers but i don't know how much their wages are but i know a lot of those are hard-working blue-collar workers so i hope they are making what they deserve, you know? host: do you think $60,000 a

year would be enough to live what you consider a middle class life in connecticut? caller: if you live frugally. i think if you are very tight with your budget and if you were very particular with how you were spending it, i think you could afford that. for example, my last rent was close to $1200 a month and i just finally bought a house. host: congratulations. caller: i make $80,000 a year. thank you. i also have to be particular about how much i am spending. if i am being a little careless, i could be living paycheck-to-paycheck so it is hard to save even if i make that much money. host: ok. next up we have john in new york who considers himself middle class. good morning, john. caller: morning. thanks for taking my call. yeah, i would categorize myself as middle class. i alys felt that way, even

en i was a kid growing up. were certainly lower middle class at that point. a lot of people do tie that category to financial status. basically, im kind of worried over a few things. i see the nation not becoming ecomically self-sufficient anymore in terms of this wild inflation and reckless spending. inflation reas me worried because it comes and goes i know in the past in waves, b whatever reason, this time it ally resonated with meecause with the sn gas prices and everything like this, it is really affecting your income and negatively impacting y quality of life. so those are things that really concern me about the middle ied that when you had the

democratic nationa convention, ms that -- i don't wa to get into the partisan politics of this, but when you candidate and they are coming up with their contr ideas about the economy, price controls, now we are start get into an areat is really i think going toa negative impact and the middle class wi affected in an adverse way. even mimicking priat is it , no tax on tips and stuff. again, i don't want to become partisan, but it seems that there is no coherent thing. we need to become economically self-sufficient. make sure that, you know, there is quality of life for everybody, that the middle class can constantly redefined in some

word salad. i think we would be better off in that sense. so i think you came up with a good topic, but people are playing games with the economy. host: john, since you mentioned the convention that just wrapped up, the democratic national convention, i want to play another clip from vice president harris during her acceptance speech thursday night, talking about her plan for the economy. some of those points which you just mentioned, john. [video clip] >> as president, i will bring together labor and workers and small business owners and entrepreneurs, and american companies to create jobs, to grow our economy, and to lower the cost of everyday needs like health care and housing and groceries. we will provide access to capital for small business owners and entrepreneurs and founders.

and we will end america's housing shortage and protect social security and medicare. now compare that to donald trump. because i think everyone here knows he doesn't not actually fight for the middle class. he does not actually fight for the middle class. instead, he fights for himself and his billionaire friends. he will give them another round of tax breaks that will add up to $5 trillion to the national debt. and all the while, he intends to enact what in effect is a national sales tax, call it a trump tax, that would raise taxes on middle-class families by almost $4000 a year. well, instead of a trump tax hike, we will pass a middle

class tax cut that will benefit more than 100 million americans. host: a bit more detail from that gallup poll and we mentioned earlier that shows 54 percent of americans identify as middle class. there is a partisan breakdown to that. more republicans and fewer democrats identify as working-class and lower-class. if you look here, you can see how the chart actually looks. american social class self identification 2002 to 2024, who identifies as upper-class, middle-class, and working class. that is the 54% number. but if you go down here, you can break it down by party identification. republicans, 18% identifying as upper middle class. and then when it comes to middle

class, 35%. working class, 31%. lower-class, 15%. among democrats, you still see the 18% identifying as upper middle class. 44% identifying as middle class. 28% as working class. slightly different numbers for independents. former president trump last weekend also talking about the middle class, was accusing the harris and biden administration of hurting that particular demographic. [video clip] >> under kamala harris and crook and joe biden, the american dream was dead and it is dead. it is dead as a doornail. they will never bring it back unless we win. if we win, we will have the american dream alive all for your beautiful children and grandchildren. we will have the american dream back with us. the radical liberal policies, horrific inflation decimated the

middle class and go of the finances of millions of american families and you know what i am talking because everyone in this room has been devastated by what they have done. they have no idea. they are grossly incompetent people. real incomes are down by over $2000 a year. think of that. minimum. ours up five times that they amount. more than five times that amount. the house to put household from a $28,000, and that is called the kamala harris inflation tax. she was there for everything. host: on facebook, we have a comment from stephen says for the middle class it means you own a house and a car and you have good medical care and you can afford to send your kids to college. back to your calls. tom is in west columbia, south carolina, calling in on our line for folks below middle class. good morning, tom.

caller: yes, i wanted to put a little different perspective on this. host: tom, could you turn down the volume on your tv, please? caller: i am sorry. i have it all the way down. i wanted to put a little different perspective on this. i consider myself lower class because of a lifestyle that i have. it has nothing to do with income. i had a job for 25 years where wore a coat and tie. that was my company dress code. i had a coworker who ry similar to me. he had a collegee. he was married with two children. i was divorced. no colleree. two children. but he got all of the pert i did not get becauseas not

a college graduate and because i was divorced. that happens in this country. we cannot deny it does not there are those of us who don't ha lifestyle, regardless of the income. host: tom, actually i have some data that backs up what you are saying from that same gallup poll if you will stay with me. if you break down how americans consider themselves in terms of how they identify their social class, if you break it down by education, people who have high school or less as you can see in this chart are more likely to identify as working class or middle class or lower class than those who have some college or college graduates or postgraduates. they are likely to consider themselves upper middle class or upper customer the more education you go up.

you can go ahead, tom. caller: i can understand that, but i don't agree with it because the truth of the matter is that if you are divorced, if you do not have a college degree , you don't have the lifestyle that people who are married and have college degrees have. that is the simple truth of life out here. and that is why i consider myself a lower class individual. it had nothing to do with my income. because i made a good income when i was employed. i am retired now. 83 years of age. as i said, i am divorced. i have no college degree, but let me tell you, i have learned more in life than most college graduates will ever, ever know. and i thank you for taking my call. let's let somebody else talk now. host: tom is in south carolina.

going back to that yahoo! finance article, the median household income, $63,623. lowest end of the middle-class income scale, $42,415. highest end of the middle-class income scale, $127,246 a year. next up is anthony in sierra vista, arizona, considering themselves. good morning, anthony. caller: good morning. thanks, teammate. kim, i hear a lot of people tell me when i tell them how are you doing, they oftete me i am living the dream. i have often had to st a try to let them understand you can never live a dream you can dream a dream, t u have to live a reality.

ansoith that said, i grew up lower middle class. welfare, mom was single, but dad got kicked out of the military, but here is what i do. just like the gentleman before mei learned. i plowed behind a mule with the plow. i cut wood. i went to college. and i ended up lein college. buwhen i first started, i by the story, spent fivetopped dollars, got me balogna, cheese, and bread, made the sandwi the next day and ate that night off of it. all i needed five dollars. that was in 1979, 1981, 1982. today, i am middle class.

i am actually upper midass . i orced, but all of my children have graduated from college. my former spouse has graduated from college. i graduated from college. how did i do that? i used this thing called opportunity. opportunity may have passed me, but i have never passed opportunity. questions, kim? host: well, i am looking in sierra vista, arizona, i will pull up the data for that as well from this yahoo! finance article, median household income was $72,581. lowest end of middle class income, $48,387 a year. do you think that is enough to live a middle-class lifestyle in arizona, anthony? caller: yes, with a caveat.

as you work through the steps of your life, as you live every day, you have got to get some education, and today's environment is a lot better because you can learn so much without paying an institution. it is the skills that you acquire that people will pay you for versus what you will pay someone to teach you. host: ok. tommy is in georgia, above middle class. good morning, tommy. hi there, tommy. can you hear us? we will try to come back to tommy. diane is in st. louis, missouri, calling in on our line for folks below middle class. good morning, diane. caller: good morning. i am below middle class. middle-class is a distant dream.

i live solely on social security. they pay $13,000 a year. when social security was enacted, it was done to ensure at retirees could live the rest of their lives in dignity. there nothing dignified about scraping and having to pull groceries out of your cart in the checkout lane because you cannot afford everything that is in there. both parties say they will protect social security, but protecting the status quo means many, many americans are in deep poverty. trump has already said he will cut social security. the system is set up to impoverish us. neither party talks about raising social security to a livable wage. democrats say they will give first-time homebuyers $25,000 for a down payment on a home.

but nobody talks about helping elderly people out so they do not lose their homes. there is no $25,000 sustenance financial sustenance for people to avoid losing their homes. and, you know, it is hard to fathom how social security can think that anyone could live on $13,000 a year. host: diane, where you are in missouri, the lowest end of the middle class income scale is $43,946 a year. caller: well, what are you saying? host: no, i was just emphasizing your point. you said it would be impossible

to live on $13,000 a year, and i was saying that to be middle class in missouri according to the data it would take more than $43,000 a year, just to emphasize your point. caller: yeah. and, you know, i grew up definitely middle class. i always thought things would get better, but the system is set up to impoverish you. i cannot get food stamps because i have pension money that i am using to supplement social security, but the problem with that is you have to withdraw thousands of dollars every year from your pension, and so that just means it will deplete. it will deplete my pension before -- well, within about

five to seven years, that will be gone completely. and then, i don't know what to do because where do you go when you have lost your house and you have no money? host: steve is in miami, florida, above middle class. good morning, steve. caller: yes, good morning. i think the term middle class is kind of distorted, and i would just like to share my situation. i was making a mid income of over six figures and legally dropped due to the economy. at the same time, i have a net worth almost close to $1 million, but here in miami, everyone knows that our insurance, our condo and home insurance has gone up 500%, so a lot of my incw iseing eaten up by insurance, taking

condo here, so the thing is while we are basing it upon income, when you have the net wort and you start looking at it from a recent for adjusting focost of living and differentns the numbers don't really show the bigger picture. i can take my income and go to national and livably much better given that the income in nashville is better than miami. i just wt get your thoughts on that. host: i will look at some numbers then because you gave an example of what it would take to live in florida versus tennessee, so the lowest end of the middle-class income in florida, just over $45,000. the highest end, close to $136,000. if we scroll down to tennessee,

which will take me a little bit here, tennessee, the lowest end of the middle class income, $42,000 a year. highest end of the middle-class income is $128,000 a year. not that different, but i guess it depends on what city you are in. caller: again, cost of living. i think the cost of living in different areas like california, new york, that have higher taxes, and then you look at florida and you look at places like tennessee, where a lot of people in miami now because of the cost of living are moving towards because here it has gotten out of whack. the middle class in miami is being decimated totally because simply the people cannot afford to live. you will start seeing that next

year as it comes up and it will definitely have a factor the next presidential election because it is affecting the middle class in florida. thank you for taking my call. host: greg is in ohio, who considers himself middle class. good morning, greg. caller: how are you doing? i just want to say everything you see, i am trying not to brag and not try to put myself out there to be something i am not good i always lived below my means. when i had money, i took that money and paid off my house. during the pandemic when i received a tax credit, i took that money to pay off my house. middle class is being able to afford a home, a car, and children, and vacations and enjoy your life. without asking for help from anybody else when you are doing it.

the people by what they want and what they need. a car does not dictate your economic status. i always say if you have a certain type of car, what are you driving that car to? in texas, a saying is you have a cowboy hat but you don't have cattle. i don't equate my economic or financial status based upon who is president because that is irrelevant to me for i am in charge of my financial status. not who is president. and i live very well. and i am a teacher. and i do pretty well. but it is amazing to me how my son went to college and he graduated and became an accountant and he had a job before he graduated and i have been teaching almost 30 years and he got a job and his job almost paid more than i make in

30 years in one year and he is doing very well and he is going to buy a house. matter of fact, he is closing on a house. so you are in charge of your financial future. everyone has an equal paternity in the united states, and that is what is so beautiful about our country. you have the ability to be whatever you want in the choice, so when it comes to financial status and your economic status, everyone has that opportunity, and that is why i love america. y.yo host: tim allen on facebook says the middle classthe financial engine for the rich. the government caters to the lobbyists paid by th corporations so the top brass can make more money. th middle class is kept in check by laws that do not apply to theeahy and powerful. this process is accidentally worse on theer class. and then we have a text from pat from westminster, cali, who says middle class being able ay all the monthly bills in full and having enough left to

buy food, clothes, and she was going on for the occasional dinner and we become a yearly vacation, and put some money in a savings account. there is a political difference in terms of how americans consider themselves middle class or not. back to thlup polling. until 2022, republicans were morey th democrats to identify as uppddleor middle class, and less likely to tifys working or lower class. however, in the past two readings of the gallup polling, democrats more likely thand with republicans to identify as upper, middle, or middl class. meanwhile, republicans now lead in combined identification as working or lower class. still, a slim majority of republicans consider themselves upper, middle, or middle class. karen is in napa, california, below middle class. good morning, karen.

caller: hi, kimberly. i don't think you have put up a chart for california yet, have you? host: no, but i can pull in up while you are chatting. caller: thank you so much. host: you can go ahead and make your point while i look for it. caller: ok. one other quick point is you would over a chart where it talked about how many people consider themselves middle class and working class to get it for working class, can you remind me just in the total of the united states how many people consider themselves working class. host: sure, but first let me get you the california number you were just asking about. in california, median household income is $91,905. lowest end of middle class income is $61,269. the highest end of middle-class income is $183,810. do you want to give me your

thoughts on those numbers while i pull up the working-class number you asked for? caller: thank you. did you have -- sticking with the california chart, what working-class is? host: not for working-class in california, sorry. caller:k. ok. oh, dear. ok. i actual had to retire for health reaso a couple years ag, and my income until i get a part-time job is $36,000, so i feel as though i am a loincome person. at $36,000. just to let everyone in america know that it might be nice to live in california, but the cost of living here is very high. a lot of people when they retire move out to other states, which i have considered, but you were going to pull up that other chart? host: yes, so working class and middle class. if we go back up here in terms

of the percentage of people who consider themselves working class and lower class, for working class, that number is 31% of americans consider themselves working class. 12% of americans consider themselves lower class. caller: ok. i just wanted to finish up taking it from what you just said it seems to be like the two major candidates for president are addressing middle class people, that consider themselves middle-class but such a large percentage of people are working class. i don't understand why they don't direct their comments and what they are going to do for americans to the working class person. just an observation. host: ok. tommy is in georgia, above middle class. i think we've got you this time, tommy. caller: yes. how are you doing? host: good, thank you. caller: to me, i am in the upper middle class, but it is because

my grandfather and my father always told me never depend on government for your livelihood. and i see today that we have too many people depending on government. the government is going to take care of them, you know? once you get yourself on all of those social programs, once you make ctain man of money they will kick you out so it kind of tracks you -- traps you into being in a poor situation and pelere living off of that. so my thing is don't depend on government. if you depend on government, then you know you e bad shape. you are in a b way, and you need to try toetut of that. this is the key to get out of there. for myself, i joined the milita. om the military, i got into the government. so i am doing pretty w really well, you know, in retirement now becauthose things.

for me. , most black individuals get to the middle class, the high middle c through the military, through the post office, or workinge government. when you look at the 2025 plan when it said they wanted to get rid of 30,000 to 50,000 government employees, they want to privatize the postffice, or if the army is too woke and they want to get rid of 400 generals to do what they want to do, that can turn around and really hurt black people in america because thoses are something they have been able to thrive in. so for me, do not depend government. work hard. get an education. and you will probably be in the middle class to the upper middle class. that is my statement. host: ok.

don is in ohio. morning, -- middle class. morning, john. caller: i just wonder what the medium income for people in washington, d.c., is. i think there is two different visions going on here. i think one once to create jobs and have it work for everyone, and one side wants to -- they are not willing to describe how they are going to help the middle class. host: which side is which, john? caller: i think the left is leaning more towards not being able to describe how they are going to lift people up and stuff. i mean, say you get $25,000 for first-time homebuyers. where is that money coming from? the government, they don't really create jobs. they spend money, but they don't really create jobs unless it is

a government job, and i don't know how many government employees there are today, like 300,000 or what? tuition costs for colleges, why don't the colleges lower that? where is that money going to? i know you got some college coaches that are making millions. that point is never raised. but the people ought to become aware of that. the media is not going to show that because they are part of the corruption. that is part of the downfall of america. and also, do you ever wonder how someone gets in congress or the senate and they become millionaires after a short amount of time? how does that happen? where is all that money coming from? it is coming from the taxpayers, is where it is coming from. host: john, you mentioned how

the two sides are different -- have different ways of explaining their ways for the middle class in america. i want to play a clip from senator jd vance, who was in michigan last week arguing that revitalizing the manufacturing sector in the u.s. is one of the things that will help the middle class. [video clip] >> there is no state that perfectly exemplifies what is broken about american policy in washington. this was one of the wealthiest states in the entire country for pretty much the entirety of the post-world war ii era. this is a state that had a proud manufacturing tradition were whether you went to college or graduated from high school or did something in the middle, you could build a middle-class life as long as you work hard and played by the rules, and thanks to a generation of failed leadership, michigan has seen thousands of manufacturing jobs disappear. we have to do better. we used to call michigan a blue wall state. i think michigan is a red ball

state now because people are sick of losing their livelihoods and losing their jobs and they know donald trump will be good for both. host: and here is vice presidential nominee governor tim walz aching his middle-class pitch during his acceptance speech at the dnc on wednesday night. [video clip] >> we have a chance to make kamala harris the next president of the united states. but i think we owe it to the american people to tell them exactly what she would do as president before we ask them for their votes, so this is the part , clip it, save it, send it to your undescended relatives so they know. if your middle-class family or family tried to get to the middle-class, kamala harris will cut your taxes. if you are getting squeezed by prescription drug prices, kamala harris will take on big pharma.

if you are hoping to buy a home, kamala harris help make it more affordable -- will help make it more affordable. host: john can you just heard the two expeditions of the economic plans for the middle class. what are your thoughts? caller: i thought jd vance was common sense, lifting everybody out. what walz said about big pharma, can you get the facts on how much they received during the pandemic? the plandemic actually. we were invaded by a demonic force from outside of our country that crippled as just in time to bring troops down. it worked. it worked for them. it worked. people are going to wake up. people are waking up like crazy now. host: timothy is in anchorage, alaska, below middle class. good morning, timothy.

caller: good morning, kimberly. yeah, i just recently retired. my income was -- well, it is about $40,000 i guess or something there about. the cost of living here is high in alaska. host: i am looking at the numbers here. it looks like the lowest end of the middle class income in alaska is $57,579. caller: yeah. yeah. we don't have income tax. we don't have sales tax. but everything else is expensive. in terms of inflation, things are always relative. it is the one thing that people always seem to blame on presidents. they have absolutely no control about inflation. i cannot hear either party talk

about actually a plan to do anything about inflation because i really don't see what they can do. it is just like gas prices. they can reproduce the most amount of gas in the world right now but it is not going to bring gas prices down because most of it we export. we don't use it for domestic consumption, so it is really unfortunate, but people blame whoever the president is or others and say my gas is high. it should not be, and if it is, it is because there is a lot of countries that produce gas, including africa, arabia, russia , south america, venezuela. hey, even england, the north atlantic produces gas. if it is not being produced and

not being brought back to the u.s. forever domestic consumption, which keeps gas prices high, which gives certain people an opportunity to blame another group of people about keeping gas prices high, so i believe i am low or middle class because with a fixed income now, it is just a lot more difficult, even with social security, just to be able to manage things. i don't see that changing much at all. host: creed is in columbus, ohio, above middle-class. good morning, creed. caller: how are you doing this morning? host: doing well, thank you. caller: i was listening in and everything but we were talking about middle-class. host: what does it take to be middle class in america? caller: what does it take to be middle class in america? ok, my opinion would be insurance, maybe.

i am maybe going off topic a little bit, but for the african-american community specifically, i believe that we pay more into life insurance and give our people a leg up, maybe eventually after 20 or 30 years of paying into it, things start regenerating and we can reinvest that half $1 million life insurance policy for life insurance and we invest it in the communities. the middle class or this or that, we can create our own class, our own income, and then we can create our own life insurance companies and oil companies and things like that. you know, just live life peacefully. but we would have to invest in ourselves and life insurance because that leg up is what generates a high class. nobody really works for his money.

that is my opinion. host: debbie is in florida, below middle class. good morning, debbie. caller: good morning, and thank you for this opportunity. yeah, i am in florida, and i consider myself at this point to be lower middle class. had you asked me this maybe a couple years ago, i would have said middle class. but florida has undergone such a great change. first of all, the wages have not really gone up. we have had all of this inflation. we had an influx of people from all over the united states come into florida, by up the real estate that the people here were able to live and afford based on what they were making, and now we have had like a 100 fold increase in rent and the prices of homes, so, you know, this

economy, everything is relative. i kind of the way it is working now is it will either be rich or poor. remind you, i am a republican. ask me why. well, because i am conflicted. i feel that america, our values have gone down the drain. the republican party moral and ethical, but i have to look at who the leading candidate is, and that is the most immoral person, so i am torn there. then i look at the democrats, which are speaking more to me now because really, financially,

i am not doing better. the human nature is greed, ok? and if you do not put boundaries, nobody likes restrictions. wall street certainly doesn't. the mortgage company, nobody wants that because it inhibits the rich. who makes the jobs? the rich. look. right now, the united states is not even solvent. everything that we hear about economics is all shenanigans. i don't believe in anything anymore. i do believe in hard work. i have to give it to anthony and to some of the other gentleman who called in and said, look, you can still make lemonade out of lemons if you work hard in this country. host: rhonda is in new jersey, middle-class. good morning, rhonda. caller: hi.

good morning, america. yes, i consider myself middle class. i retired at the age of 62. i built my home. let's see. i built my home 17 years ago for $259,000. i put down 40%. and i have the lowest mortgage in my neighborhood. my house is now worth over half $1 million. i never touch the equity. so i have an inheritance, generational wealth for my two sons. i live very, very simple. i don't blow a dime. i go on vacation every now and again. i never buy a new car. i always wait until they are at least three years old when i buy a car because you get it for half the cost.

people nowadays with this younger generation, i watched how they throw away money, and if they lose their job, they are devastated. we have to learn to have gratitude. they united states is the most beautiful country in the entire world. and we are spoiled. we are all spoiled. we are greedy. we want more then we earn. and i watch. when i built my house, my two best girlfriends, they are both italian, they bought their homes before i bought mine. neither one of them are in it now. they used their equity. they bought other homes, lost them, and now they are living that paycheck, social security check to social security check. so what i would like to say to people, it does not matter how

much money you earn. when you said you were doing the monthly income thing, i never even thought about it since i am retired and i don't have to file taxes. i never looked at it. i said, wow, that is a lot of money. $65,000 a year is a lot of money to me. i never had a salary of that. i always worked in sales and i always earned maybe -- let's say i made $25,000 in salary in a year, but i earned $40,000 in commission. sales, if you are not educated, if you are not with a college degree, say you have an associates -- host: rhonda, we are running out of time for this segment and i want to get a couple more folks in. let's hear from amy who is in pennsylvania, below middle class . go ahead, amy. caller: hi. good morning. thank you for this platform.

i am calling on behalf of american agriculture. host: ok. caller: i don't hear either platform mention what this country is going to eat. host: how does that relate to what it means to be middle class in america? caller: because your farmers on the family farm scale under corporate farm scale, basically live in poverty. when obamacare happened, they gave us the poorest health insurance we ever had with the hugest deductibles that we cannot afford. we work 60 plus hours per week. we take pride in our work. we work hard. we feed thousands of people a day. we do not get compensated for it. the milk pricing system, which usda has their hands in but

nobody realizes that, is broken. we get paid by 100 pounds of milk, and it depends which company. when i was a child, i have been in production agriculture my whole entire life. host: i just want to interrupt for a moment because i pulled up some numbers from the farm bureau, which has a report from back in february saying net farm income in 2024 was forecast to be down 25% from last year. this is based on usda numbers. the usda released the first insight into that farm income expectation in 2024, anticipating a decrease from 2023's forecast of 155 billion dollars to $116 billion, and drop of nearly $40 billion or 25.5%, and the largest recorded year to year dollar decrease in

net farm income. this decline marks the second consecutive drop since the record high farm income levels in 2022. caller: ok, so if you have one good year, 2022, and then you have five consecutive four years , it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that math does not work. our costs have tripled. tripled. you cannot afford a tractor. i don't own a tractor that is under 40 years old. all of our equipment we are working on it all the time, replacing parts. you cannot afford new equipment, which then becomes a safety issue, but when i am talking but american dairy, if you took the immigrant labor part out of it, you would have no american dairy. we cannot get people to work. young people do not want to work. parents do not make them get out of bed in the morning.

i have to put it as a social media thing as a parent and a grandparent. these kids can't afford the phones and they can't afford the bill. but yet they all have them and on the first problem with the kid jumping off a bridge were taking their life which is sad, it happens here and everywhere, you put the weapon in their hands. those kids can't afford the phones or the bills. so don't be the enabler. host: don in new york, middle class. morning. caller: howare you doing? host: good. caller: i wore to the industrial trade most of my working life. i know what it is like to work for a family of four. and i'm retired, living on fixed income, which up until probably about four or five years ago was

great. now i have to get a second job and go back out in the workforce. i'm in my last year of the 60's. i've got to pick up a side job just for pocket change. it's tough. these kids today don't understand what it is to work. they think everything is a gift or it is entitled. i don't know. host: barbara is in bayshore new york, below middle class. go ahead, barbara. caller: i'm below middle class. i work as a home health aide most of my life, and they use me more like a nurse. host: can you turn down the volume on your tv and please continue? caller: yes, i can. where's that remote? it's very low now but i will

turn it down more. i can barely hear it. yeah, i'm turning down right now. host: we're going to come back to you in just a moment. let's hear from ron in north carolina, above middle class. go ahead, ron. caller: yes, i just wanted to say that you talk about people not being able to be with class -- middle class, i really don't understand this. people go out and work and even get two jobs and do pretty well. it seems all the restaurants in greensboro are packed. particularly the fast food, and young people if there was any way possible to get people to join the military or learn how to work, we should do that. the military is begging for people and we can get anybody to join the military so i suggest will join the military and do what people used to do, learn a

trade in the military will pay for college. the worst thing we have going right now is that people sit at home and somebody is paying them not to work. the number one problem in this country, young people sitting at home and not working. that's all i've got to say. host: richard is in oklahoma on our middle-class life. go ahead. caller:'s i consider myself middle-class. just about retirement age. one of the things that i want to give everybody a heads up on at retirement age, you've got a 12% tax bracket roughly up until about $94,000 per year. with the tax cuts and jobs act.

if you are over 65 and you are married, filing jointly, take it all the way up to $125,000 per year and you have an ira, you can actually turn those into roth ira or cash amounts. you can develop a nice little nest egg that way. the problem is, you can only do that for two more years. the tax cuts and jo act goes away in 2020 600 lost your opportunity so anyway, i want to throw that out there. just say money-managey most individuals is horrible. we don't do it ll host: ray in south carolina, above midd css. good morning. caller: good morning.

i'm going to do my darndest to convince this retired educators, upper-middle-class andre primarily, i'm not boasting about it, but the fact that we've got three or four advanced degrees. and isas kind of thrust us to aveiddle class. we moved from florida to here in this state, so when you put together those things in a state with median income, we are up there, and i will admit that. but once again, itoowork, work, and more work to get to this point. there were times when i was in college and my wife was in college, we didn't have $.25 between us.

we had to put all of our funds together to actulye able to afford. and of course, we got the bs degreean then another tree, and then another degree, and then another degree. and that put us in upper-middle-class. people look at us now and think we got to this point overnight. i'm here to tell you it was tremendously different on our way up and i just want to let all the people know. i'm not boasting because we worked our tails off to get to this point. but when we go out, they don't have no clue as to what we run for. and one more point, we have -- that tell us that we are broke.

we don't overdressed or underdressed, we are just in the middle in terms of dressing, but we do have a nice house, a nice car, all of that. but once again, we worked our tails off to get to this point. host: jesse is in rosedale, maryland, below middle class. caller: he sounds just like me. what i would say is if you have a roof over your head, transportation, money in your pocket, that is what a good life is. host: bonnie is in oakland, maryland, above middle class. >> good morning. i called this morning because something really upset me. a woman from missouri was talking about social security,

and i am a democrat, but how the republicans are going to raise the age and they are going to mess with social security and medicare. i've done my research and i've watched every channel. and i can tell you one thing. the republicans are not touching your social security. they are not touching your medicare. also, your social security will not be taxed. the money that you either pay at the end of the year or the money paid monthly gets deducted from your social security will not be taxed. i don't know where she's getting her information, but people, if you are smart you will watch many, many different news stations, radio station find out the truth. and i do know that trump, who i didn't vote for, but that he has

done everything he said he was going to do in those four years and more than ever anticipated. so i advise people from missouri, whatever you are listening to, watching, get more information. host: role is in texas, middle-class. good morning. caller: good morning. i am hispanic, i am used to paying my own bills. what i want to say is that middle-class is the class that gets taxed that is carrying this country. we don't have a choice, really. i work, pay my bills. last year, i paid $14,000 to an irs and sarcastically say that i received $460 back.

wow. i'd like to get more deductions and pay less taxes. thank you. host: gabriel is in north carolina, middle-class. good morning, gabriel. caller: i kind of want to clarify something. i definitely consider myself a class. i want to put something in context which other colors alluded to, which at think is a good point and they are talking about young people who aren't really working hard in the last. and that they are at home or sometimes sitting in their room playing video games. i want to put in context, i work hard my whole life and i'm only 34, but i've gone to medical school and to be honest with you, i went to law school. i work at the heart to try to get ahead. and it is hard to move forward.

it is hard to be a young person today, to purchase a property to actually have some of the opportunities that i think many of the people, the older generations may not see. and i actually went in the military. and it has still been hard. when i try to put two things together stay in the last, i just think how arduous it has been, how much of my life has gone to to even be in the middle class. i worked over 100 hours a week and i make like $65 -- six $5,000 a year. to start a family, to do all these other things that i think the baby boomers may take for granted during their time of what was potentially an option including my dad and my mom, i just think the same opportunities aren't there. they are there, but the

plentiful list of it and the opportunity and the waterfront to do it just isn't. but i believe wholeheartedly that you have to go in the right direction beget the middle-class is what is going to save all of us and the only way we can fix this country is to elevate the middle class, to give young people a chance. our health care, i won't even go there. dark out we are just about out of time, but thank you for calling in and thanks to all of our colors the segment. coming up, we are going to hear from two top pollsters were going to join us to talk about a public opinion has shifted in the months since vice president harris got into the race. director of polling at emerson college and director of research at siena college and then later, the wilson center will be here to discuss ukraine's recent incursion into russia and what it means for the broader conflict and possible peace talks. that's coming up. we will be right back.

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thanyofor watching it thanks so much for urupport. ♪ tonin q&a, we sat down with ben -- and ben's chili bowl official historian author of breaking barriers with chili about the history of the washington, d.c. landmark. >> april, 1968. did you stay open? >> yes. we were the only place that was allowed to remain open. we actually asked to remain open. they wanted everything closed in d.c.. we were the only place open.

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since 1979 leasing your primary source for capitol hill, providing balance, unfiltered coverage of government. taking you to our policy is debated and decided all with the support of america's cable companies. c-span, 45 years and counting powered by cable. washington journal continues. host: welcome back. to get the latest polls on public opinion in the presidential race, we are joined by two experts in polling, as well as tom levy he was director of the siena college research institute. thank you both so much for joining us. guest: pleasure to be with you. host: let me start with you. can you talk a little bit about the paulding that you all do at emerson college? guest: certainly. but i think before we dig into

those numbers and start talking about what is happening in the race, we should have some historical context for what we are doing. research goes back about a century and has been intertwined with politics since the 1920's, when the magazine literary digest was using what we call pseudo-straw polls to boost their prescriptions and pretty presidential elections, and they were pretty successful at doing this when they famously picked out for landon to beat fdr in one of the biggest polling debacles of all time. around this time in iowa there was this journalist professor, and he is teaching his students how to use a new method called survey research in order to have better public opinion about what people care about. and gallup was also a practitioner, using surveys to do market research and trying to

sell products. but in 1930 two, his mother-in-law wants to run for secretary of state out in iowa and he decides he's going to use both his profession hat and practitioner hat and work as a pollster and she wins the secretary of state position. in 1936, literary digest has -- and george gallup enters the arena, picks fdr in his pole and essentially creates a modern-day public opinion poll that we are going to talk about today. and there's two major innovations he brings with us. host: i want to make sure that we get some time to get to the latest polling, though i'm super interested in that history, thank you for that. i wonder if you can talk about the siena research institute and the private polling that you all do there. guest: sure, thank you very much. we at siena college phone shop for reelection polling.

we make thousands if not hundreds of thousands of calls to americans in the battleground states and nationally and one of the messages that we sort of pioneered over the last decade with calling people off the list of registered voters, previously folks used to call that was called random digit dialing. they would ask are you registered to vote? we've already computed the probability that they are going to turn out to vote so we use that in our analysis. and at this point, what we do continues to change. as recently as eight years ago we called 60% cell phones. now it is minute -- as many as 85%-90% of calls we make our via cell phone and as i said, asking for people by name. we conduct the new york times siena poll and over the last couple of years, we've been

named the most accurate pollster in america. host: speaking of 538, there is some new polling out about north carolina looking at the updated averages for who is ahead in this particular swing state and it shows harris and trump in almost a statistical dead heat. let me actually go also to some emerson polling with the national averages, august 2024 national polls. harris 50%, from 46 percent, showing harris slightly ahead in the national poll. can you talk about these numbers? guest: i think before we jump into those numbers, interpreting them is important. that national poll has harris at 50% and trump at 46% but there is a 3% margin of error and some people would take that to say it

is 4%, it is outside the margin of error. but trump could also be sis 49% and harris could be as low as 47%, so there is this range of scores that is part of interpreting poll results. although harris looks to be back to her biden was in 2020, there is still that range of scores that we have to keep in mind as we look at these numbers. host: can you talk about sort of the numbers coming out of the two conventions? what specifically happened with polling and are you seeing those sorts of trends this time? guest: certainly the race has changed. let's go back before the convention, even before the debate. in may when it was biden and trump, we started to see that trump was pulling ahead of biden both nationally and in all the battleground states. fast-forward, it does appear in our polling that the assassination attempt and the republican convention gave former president trump a bump.

this favorability numbers went up. the percentage of americans we identify as being double haters, americans are just like both candidates started to shrink. and then with biden leaving the race, we saw a really unprecedented movement almost immediately where harris in effect reclaimed the soft biden voters, the voters who kept telling us that biden is just too to be an effective president. we were seeing 74% of all americans, 50% democrats were telling us that. somewhat surprisingly to many insiders, harris was able to coalesce that support and now has reclaimed it. and we are seeing, margin of error notwithstanding, that when you compare the battleground polls across six states, we didn't do north carolina in may, we see harris performing between three points and 12 points better against trump then biden

was in may. so a dramatic shift in the race. whether polls are showing now harris at 1, 2, 4, their race is effectively a tossup at this point but it has changed dramatically since may and even more dramatically from that moment at which the debate took place and biden support really eroded at that point. host: where are the major shifts happening in the polling in terms of what we know about demographics? guest: to don's point, we did see that shift. what we were seeing prior to the debate with feynman trump was younger voters, they were normally breaking for the democrats by 25, 30 points. they were breaking for joe biden by five or six points and a lot of them were voting for third-party candidates like robert kennedy. when we saw harris get into the race, then younger vote came

back for harris in the kennedy host drop that was holding onto some of those younger voters and that kind of gave her the balance that we're seeing today that pushed her back in place democrats have releases the obama coalition in 2008. >> with the announcement that rfk jr. is suspending his campaign, what can we expect to see in the polling moving forward? >> the conventional wisdom with the third-party candidates for the incumbent party. dropping out of the race should help harris and democrats. but the polling look like kennedy was getting more votes from men and from younger voters. what we are seeing so far is a little bit of that boat is breaking for trump, but the younger vote came back to harris. we will see if she can hold onto those younger voters. there's also a higher number of minority voters who were voting for kennedy over white voters. so we will see again if that is

more of a natural constituency to go back to harris or if they decide to sit out this election. host: don, what are you looking to see in the upcoming polls now that we are through both of the conventions and we had a third-party candidate decide to suspend their campaign? guest: we are excited to see exactly what starts to take place right now. the rfk effect, we ran our numbers and from what voters told us with rfk dropping out at this point, it would move the vote to about a point to 1.5 points in a trump's favor, but it is way too soon to tell exactly if that is where those voters are going to go. we recently wrote a piece on who is kamala harris? that is what americans have got to decide. certainly that is with the democratic convention attempted to introduce america to kamala harris but right now, some of

the traits that we asked voters about. who do you think cares more about you, who has the right temperament to be president, who is more intelligent, who is a stronger leader. those are all traits, vibes sometimes they are referred to that at this point, kamala harris, despite being vice president of the u.s., despite being well known, is not completely well-known to america. so it is not uncommon. anecdotally the responses telus i just don't know that much about her or they learn about her through either paid or unpaid media from one side or the other. right now we're seeing that harris has a slight lead on empathy but one place for trump has an enormous lead is who is a stronger leader. regardless of who voters choose, there is a tendency to feel as though harris is not as strong a leader as donald trump, so we are going to see a battle over

who is kamala harris and who does the electorate, most importantly that small group of swing voters that we have been about 30% of the electorate, who are they going to decide kamala harris is? they pretty much know donald trump is. resident for four years, living rooms, social media. but the introduction of kamala harris and how that introduction is received by the swing voters in these seven states is what we are really concentrating on. host: who is kamala harris, the persuadable will decide and show our audiences characteristics you were talking about and you laid out that trump has an advantage over harris as a strong leader, but some bring about change. but harris has a lead and things like being able to unify the country, cares about people like

you, is intelligent. but you go onto say that voters think differently about these terms for each of these candidates. they are viewing leadership differently for both and intelligence differently for both. guest: sure. let's take intelligence first. when we ask voters about that, voters telus that they think that kamala harris has more book smarts. she is more well-educated. and she did take the lead on who is more intelligent. trump, voters see as streetsmart, business smart. it depends on the prison that voters are looking through. still, out of all those traits right now we have to look at where to be go from here? and both parties are going to make every attempt to convince voters that their candidate understands them more. we listened a little bit to some of the calls you had before we came on.

issues relative to the economy. issues relative to immigration. voters are going to have to decide not only on these intelligence and temperaments, but how those traits factor into the stands on issues. right now we continue -- host: looks like we may have lost don for a moment. for we go to our callers, i want to ask you about the role of the vice presidential candidates. we now know who both of them are, they both made acceptance speeches. how are they influencing what we are seeing the polls? >> i think it's going to take a little more time for these candidates to have tremendous impact. i think tim walz came out of the box pretty hot, jd vance as well. but the polling finds that his favorability is pretty favorable to jd vance.

they are both fairly unknown compared to the top of the ticket, where i presume that vice presidential debate really will be a gamengo see which direction the country thinks about these five presidential candidates. host: republicans can call in at (202) 748-8001. democrats, (202) 748-8000. independent, (202) 748-8002. let's start with bernie in louisville, kentucky on the line for democrats. good morning, bernie. caller: good morning. a very interesting topic. i've always been interested in polls because i work at a university in engineering and numbers are very important to us because numbers don't lie, numbers don't have a soul. numbers, you get what you get. my question was how long would it take -- i have a landline. you call miniland lines anymore,

or is it mostly cell phones? i know that a lot of times i see a number come through, if i don't know it, i may not answer it. do you run into that a lot? and how many samples, for instance, if you call, how long would typical phone call take? and how many phone calls does it take to get this number that you require? host: just to recap, the you call a line land lines, how long to the polling calls usually last, and how many calls do you need to wait before you can get a representative sample? guest: we are a communication focused institution my whole area of study is a different modes of data collection.

i'm sending text we are sending emails, recruit people online. we do call land lines. so we use all of these different modes which is a little bit different than with some of the other pollsters are using. we are a little bit more innovative in the different modes and data collection. and then we test those applicants actually letter results to see which one of those modes work better than others. how many people do we have to contact in order to get our samples of 1000 people in the survey? it depends. but generally speaking, we have to send it at 15,000 to 20,000 text messages. we usually call one or two rounds to landline at about 40,000-50,000 people to get a chance to take the survey, and when we recruit online for panels and email solicitations.

so it is a large swath of people that we reach out to, and we get a low response rate, but we combined all of these different modes into our surveys and again, we test them out for each election against actual results to kind of inform our larger survey program. it takes about 5-8 minutes to complete the survey on your own, but when you send it as a text message, i don't need to take a survey at that moment. you can take it within 24, 48 hours which allows us to have a larger representation of folks from our sable because they do have that ability to take it on their own time. there are shops out there allowing people a call that number when they surveyed as he mentioned. the traditional idea of calling folks at 5:30 during dinner to take the survey kind of has fallen backwards.

in the future, there is a lot more do-it-yourself method that we are testing out here. host: can you talk a bit more about how polling has changed in terms of how we reach people? cell phones, land lines, text what is most effective? guest: sure, and i apologize for disappearing there for a second, we had a power outage here. sometimes i refer to: right now at the wild west. at this point in time, spot rates of course after plummeting. it's difficult to reach people. it's really quite interesting. there's never been more interested in what we do but it has never been hard-to-reach people. we are on pre-election polling, we will make, for example, if we're doing the battleground state of pennsylvania, we may make as many as 75,000 calls.

the vast majority of those calls are going unanswered. but another thing that we do is we have a written misquote assistant. so if we take a state like pennsylvania and divided up into six regions, within each region we will have a specified number of men, women, people who are known to be democrats and republicans, people who have not had a college education, and we have quotas for each of those to try to minimize the risk that we would have if we just did a wide-open sample, and all of a sudden if democrats are more enthusiastic, they will be more likely to respond to a pole, so we protect against those threats. there is a variety of methods that other photo using. he just describes in his methodology. doing letters, sending out

postcards, inviting people to either go online and/or call in to take the survey. it's kind of funny, when we started our methodology of calling the registered voter list including the probability of those voters who take part in surveys, we were the disruptors and now a little bit we are the old guard call on cell phones another nice thing about cell phones is it is a personal device. you're no longer calling households and asking for a specific person or type of pressure can we are calling you on your cell phone and he may very well reach you at 1:00 in the afternoon. we may reach you at the dinner table or we may reach you in the evening. so that cell phone has opened up the possibility to reach individual voters by name throughout the day. and we continue in this cycle to be devoted to our phone methodology. in non-reelection: we have certainly explored text to web

where the useless panel. interesting, and not sure expensive noted this in my absence, because we are friendly colleagues, during the new york state gubernatorial election, we decided to experiment simultaneously using each other and using our own methodology polling in the state of new york. and when it was all said and done, we had very similar findings. we were slightly more on the de-side. it's exciting now, insofar as the challenges reaching people, it is difficult but we are all working on it. in one of the nice things as what we share that information but at this point in time, we continue to call and have people conduct the survey. we also not only call you once,

but we are quite aggressive in calling that number back a second time, a third time because some voters are more acquiescent, more participatory than others. so we do all phones and we do multiple callbacks using that quote assistant that i described. host: and we have multiple call is waiting to ask you both lots of questions about polling. the tear from anthony from detroit on the line for independent. >> good morning. i haven't voted for a democrat or republican general election since --, i always go third party. i think they are both so low in part because the media really feeds into it. excluding the third party from debates. i know there are requirements, but the only requirement should be if you have enough ballot access to get votes. they don't like as is. host: many media organizations

when they are given the requirements for debate, they rely on holding to determine who gets a spa state. -- spot on the stage. guest: it's a very important aspect of the campaign process. at emerson college, with next our media which does a lot of local races. in the issue that we come up with it a gubernatorial race or a senate race is that there are sometimes t, 15 candidate that want to run for office. and they do get the signatures to get on the ballot within the question is are you going to have 50 people on baystate? so we use these poles to kind of qualify folks to get at least 5% to show that they have some public support in order to get on the debate stage, which is sometimes a very high hurdle for races that people are not paying attention to. at times there's 50%, 60% of voters were undecided eight months out in the election.

that is a challenge for candidates to get that name recognition high enough that they do place in these poles, but there has to be some sort of balance for these debates to be able to have a form of, but not a form of people where it is just too large to have a conversation. host: market isn't new york, new york on the line for republicans. good morning, mark. caller: i actually teach politics and history. i have two questions. first of all, the margin of error, is very confusing because if you are 50%-50 1% margin of error is three and then the margin of error is in a footnote, it is very confusing because the second point is how do you frame the questions that you asked people? for example, you asked me are you a celebrity, i would say yeah, 100%. but sometimes the way the pollsters write the question will have an impact on the answers and there's also push

polling. where the polls actually directed to get people to vote for your candidate. it's a little complicated and it would be very interested to hear on how you structure this and how you analyze margin of error and how do you get there and how do you get that number mathematically? thank you. host: i will let you take a couple of those. if you could explain again the margin of error and how you determine how you phrase questions and then i will go to you, spencer, to explain what push polling is. certainly writing questions is the art component of this art and science makes that we are engaged in. i think what we do is try to be as utterly nonbiased. we avoid push polling like the plague. can you explain first what push polling is?

push polling is to frame a question in a way that tries to move someone to answer the question in a certain way. if you knew that a candidate -- more or less likely to vote for them, i will give you an extreme example. and sometimes the campaigns will engage in that sort of polling or third parties. i don't think any reckon of does that. the easiest way to keep track of it is we are all very transparent. if you can look at the cross tabs on our website the exact wording of every question that we ask in the exact order in which we ask it and make your own decision as to whether or not we have a biased orb initially the respondent in any manner, shape or form. the horse race, the questions about who are you going to vote for relative to the third party

issue that was just brought. that's always a concern. third-party candidates tend to over-poll in polls, especially when you have top of ticket candidates. we ask those questions right up front in the polls. the first time we ask your horse race it will be the democratic candidate, republican candidate, we will rotate the order in which we frame them, and then we will move onto to the third-party candidates. having done that, we will say of those people who told us they either didn't know who they were going to vote for where they can't ever going to vote for a third-party candidate, a blast again if your only choices were trump or harris, who would you vote for? just to watch polls, to look at the exact wording that we have engaged in. test for yourself when you think that we are a fair and unbiased question.

it is a statistical computation that takes the consideration the size of the sample as well as the degree to which you've waited the sample after you collected the data to make a representative of the voters they do believe will show up and vote. and as spencer pointed out, on either side of the numbers. so it is a confidence interview. our frustration is that our good friends in the media simply don't want to talk that much about margins of error. they are far more comfortable reporting a pole as if it were a sports score and say 50-46. it is less satisfying for meaty entities to say it is 50-46 but it could be 45-47 the other way. we are kind of living in that world where we will qualify, we

will say it is a potentially statistical dead heat, but when we reporting number, that is the number that virtually all journalists are going to report regardless of our, number, or a discussion of margin of error. host: just for a concrete example of what you were just talking about in terms of being able to see the questions, if we look at the emerson college poll for pennsylvania and the swing state there in terms of the outcome being trump 49, harris 48, of course there is that margin of error, and you can see that margin of error. down here at the bottom, it says moe, -3%. that's how you can tell the margin of error. and then if you scroll all the way down to the bottom of this, you can click on the full results which shows the exact questions that were asked and the outcome. do you approve or disapprove of

the job joe biden is doing as president, do you approve or disapprove of job josh shapiro is doing as governor, and you can go all the way through and see all of that. i wonder if you can talk a little bit more about how people can be polls to make sure that they are getting a full understanding of them, and since groups like yours run polls, and there are also both economic and political campaigns, political action committees and others. how can people know which pulled trust? guest: those are some great questions. i would start with polls to trust this based on transparency. you open our survey and you see cross tab, i can trust these numbers because there is backing to those numbers. sun. only for that will be called the top line results, which are what

you see to the main question, they don't include the breakout by segments of age and race and gender. and that is very important data for us to look at to be able to see if the underlying data is accurate to be able to make these extrapolations from these results. so that is what we are looking at in that regard. what was the other question you had? host: in terms of how we know which polls to trust, which is kind of address. guest: if it comes from a campaign, it obviously raises an eyebrow because the campaign has an interest one way or the other. it doesn't always raise an eyebrow, but generally media polls and academic polls, we are trying to seek out the best methods. sometimes we are working behind the curtain doing polling and talking to each other and saying what are you seeing in new york? not just in the gubernatorial

race, but a congressional special election. so this many times as posters we are talking to each other because we are evolving in air methodology and it is important that we have those conversations. if you are not a well-known pollster i would give it some time to be able to trust those numbers. guest: one is it a citizen wants to really follow polling, there's a couple ways to do it. one would be to take a look at the trend line. to what degree has the candidate favorability, the horse race, when the public sees them on issues, how have they changed over time? you can see that one pole could be an outlier. we will admit that. we could be wrong on a specific call. look at the second trend over time.

on one, whether it is 538 or real clear politics, take a look at all the polls in one quick look, and even just to run a simple average for a few we want to be an aficionado, to take each pole simply as a data fall, you get a really complete look. if you really want to go crazy and ask about the data, we are happy to share data with people. you might believe let me take and look at people who think the country is headed in the wrong direction, and try to analyze where they stand. there is a wealth of information beyond just the horserace that the consumer of polls can get to. host: one of those examples just

mentioned, real clear polling which has some aggregations of some of the latest presidential general primary polling here. you can see that it lists several different polling all at once. john in pennsylvania on the line for democrats. good morning. caller: i was wondering why there is so much polling going on. years ago i used to get calls, political calls, and i live. i keep on lying when they do call. i'm not interested in what they know about me. it seems like you polling, like you are working with a gambling operation. your guy mentioned horses. i don't listen to what the bettors say. i go to the horse, i look at the track.

i can beat this guy or this guy. host: this is something that often comes up especially in narratives around polling, whether or not people are telling the truth. guest: that's been a problem that we had for a long time in survey research. we did face to face collection in the 30's, 40's and 50's. people actually collecting the data. this is a concern that we can in the industry since its inception, almost. and we look for this in part to check out the validity of answers. if they are being consistent, maybe consistently lying, they may be able to get themselves in the survey. but there are things that we asked to try to verify if a person is telling the truth, if there is consistency about attitudes. that is definitely a challenge that we have, the time it takes a person to take the survey.

and a lot of our surveys are do-it-yourself. when you open that when you close it, it is done in a minute we probably raise an eyebrow and sadie didn't actually read these questions. those are different techniques that we look at verify those who are taking the survey. but to the other point about the horserace, yes, we use the surveys in political polling, but it is part of a much larger field of survey research that we use for health communication to better understand hesitancy is about vaccines. there is a whole other area of survey research that this knowledge informed in the political world, everyone is dressed in that horserace. host: let's hear from sarah from new york on the line for independents. caller: how are you this morning? host: good, just make sure you turn then the volume on your tv. caller: basically with the polling, i don't have much faith in polling.

someone could call me and asked me a question and at that moment i might yield a certain way, but maybe two months down the line i might have who i'm voting for or something like that, i might change my mind. the three with the guy from pennsylvania, and i'm wondering how many people actually take the time to do these polling? what percentage of people do this? i know a lot of people are not really into politics and they don't know a lot about politics they get their information from fox news, msnbc, which i visited both because i want to hear regardless what the other side is saying. and a lot of it is just name-calling and putting the other person down, which totally

turns me off. i'm undecided. trump, kamala harris. trump, i will say people see him as a stronger leader. kamala harris, i don't know too much about her. but what i can say is i think people nowadays have forgotten about morality. host: i want to let him answer your question that you asked about how many people are actually taking the time to meaningfully engage with these polls? guest: thank you for that question and i hope if we call you, you will take a few moments and respond. the first question is do people change their minds? we've got to remind people that a poll is a snapshot in time, and certainly the results that we have may very well be different than the ones that we

have in october. that said, there is tremendous consistency right now in about 80%, 85% of voters and we are interested in those few swing votes. as far as taking the time, we find it is hard to get people on the phone, but when we do it is not uncommon to respond and say thank you very much, that was very interesting. people like to be listened to just like calling into this show. people like to have their opinions heard, and we don't have a bias, so we simply ask the questions, listen to your response and recorded, and then we feel as though it is part of our democratic process to report that information back to the entire public. i think a great contribution that we posters make to inform every american how each other group of americans feels on these issues.

so i hope after listening to the show that if a pollster does call you, that you will take the 7-12 minutes to answer questions and that your voice be heard. host: there was an interesting point that she also made talking about whether or not to believe polls. we had a former north the carter center joining us on washington journal during the dnc, and she was talking about rural voters, particularly democrats losing support for them and made an interesting point about polling. >> the one thing that i would say, and this is more from a political pundit standpoint, split ticket voters. somebody who would vote for trump and then go down ballot and vote for a democrat for senate when i ran in 2012, i was able to do 22 points better than barack obama. barack obama lost north dakota by 22 points and i still got the senate seat because romney

voters were willing to cross over and vote for ray. and a lot of those voters were in verl north dakota. that has changed as our politics has become more nationalized and that is the trend that we are trying to fight. i'm not trying to tell people how to vote, i'm trying to tell people make sure that you have a choice. because when rural america becomes a voting block for one political party, it will not get the attention that it deserves. a great example right now is we don't have a farm bill. we are two weeks into the old farm bill, we need that certainty. we are not getting that out of washington. who can deliver it? that is the question we should be asking, not pleasure already lesion, but what are you going to do? don't talk nonsense. a lot of the reason why democrats have lost rural america is this idea that you can say good morning, honey or hi, dear.

the kind of hypersensitivity and political correctness, as not we are. and i like to say, give each other grace. we don't assume the worst of each other when someone says something that might argue offensive. as not how i look at it. host: spencer, i wondered if you could talk a bit about how you go about capturing these sorts of dynamics. a split ticket of the difference between rural and urban voters and things like that. >> let's start with rural and suburban versus urban. we ask the question where you live, and then we match up with their zip codes. a lot of people don't actually know where they live. they think they are in an urban or rural area, suburban area. the question itself i take issue with. but then we've just done a study of the bird flu and we have to

separate rural america and urban and suburban america. berlin is more white and it different demographic than maybe some of the urban/suburban areas. sabbatical here looking out for the demographic standpoint. and you have to keep that in mind because you were going to have a different voting base. even in 2021 of this whole things with the rural vote was the early voting. we have record-breaking early votes in 2020 but democrats learn how many more votes were coming out on election day and were going to get out from urban vs. rural vs. suburban areas. those are concerns that we have as pollsters and we look at it. they are not easy answers and particularly in a sample, certain regions to ensure that you are not missing out on particular groups of voters. and in verl area that might not have the best outcome, there other forms of communication, pr

reaching out to them. but those are things that we think that the sampling process. host: eric is in new york on the line for democrats.

6-inform 1 i would ask that and lo and behold, they would turn around, gold teeth and whatever say, yes. and we'd have a. >> interesting. let's here from done particularly about conducting a personal poll. to get a sense of the people around you. >> well, i believe that's brave. either that -- it's certain speaking to me. i'm inclined to do that myself. what we're trying to do is do that for you. you know, we're trying to get a rave sample of americans of every different age, race ethnicity, religious out look. and to ask them the questions and report it back to you. because let's face it. not everybody is ass courageous

as you are and willing to ask the person in the gas station or supermarket. i'd like to make a comment on the former senator of perspective and ticket splitting. we see quite a bit of that. one of the things we're measuring is the degree to which either candidate at this time either harris or trump is under or overperforming. the candidate in their battleground in the battleground states. the candidates in most cases are better known than some of the harris. in may, we saw biden drastically under performing senate candidates in places like pennsylvania, wisconsin, arizona, and so we watch ticket splitting carefully. it's a phenomenon on the question of issues. i know spencer does this, we do this as well. we'll ask in addition to who you'll vote for, who do you think is doing a good job. we'll ask where do you stand?

do you support or oppose each of following initiatives and quite often we'll analyze those issues. relative to who they told us they were going to vote for and try to get deeper insight into where they stand on the important issues of the day. host: donna isn't weather ford texas on our line for republicans. good morning, donna. caller: it's fort worth but that's fine. close enough. host: thank you. caller: they were mentioning that sometimes they word questions differently when taking polls from different callers. that's how they add up or a summarize how honest the answers were. i just want to say that i have had that done to me several times on a poll.

when it's done, i call them on it. i say, hey i answered that question. you worded it different but i answered it. so you got the answer. and i know there's a lot of people that don't pay attention to the way words are given or spoken. but i leap to be one of the ones that are. not only that, you can tell by the inflection of their tone and all that. how they want you to answer. i just don't think the policy are all that good, because they can tepper my answer any way they want like i can tepper approximate my question. if i asked you if you were

smoking cigarettes or were going to involvement those are social desirable answers. if i let you answer on my own without me looking or talk to you, perhaps you're more willing to give me the accurate answer. so that's one way that we try to avoid that social desirability push on responding and do it yourself with a text message where you can answer the question. and at the end of the day you're not talking with another person to put that pressure on you. those are concerns that we have. even in the order of which we ask the questions, do we ask a name recognition question or an issue question before the ballot test question could poison the well on how voters think. host: paul is in atlanta on our line for independence. good morning, paul. caller: good morning. i have a question for both of your poll center of circulationsteres there.

how do you determine a likely voter. host: go first, don don i think i described a little bit unique approach. we commute a probability based on past performance as to how likely you will be to vote. so we'll take a look at whether, of course, don't know who you voted for but i know whether you voted in presidential elections, congressional elections. local and state elections and so i'll compute a as you head out the door in effect as to your probability to vote. when i get you on the phone, i ask you how likely is it that you'll vote in the upcoming election on november 5th? i then combine those two. your stated probability and your computed probability. i use the computed probability at about 65%, 35% on your stated. i combine those two with a score and apply those as a weight to the data. our view is that every single registered voter has a greater

than 0 probability of voting. we seek to compute that probability and apply that as a weight. old model was simply to say how likely is it for you to vote? they may have asked do you know where your polling place? how interested are you in politics? if you score low on those questions, they can it you out and deem you not to be likely. i include everyone. a weight determined based on what you told me and what i computed and use that as a likely score. host: spencer what about you. >> not as innovate as don on the waiting of previous vote total. by these voters. but what we use is registered voter list and we use the standard screen question of how likely are you to vote. and we give them four, five options. and only include those who say they're very likely or they've already voted. because voting is coming up earlier. in any hesitation in their answer will take them out. so if they're 50-50.

somewhat likely, we take that out as not going to be likely voters. it is a difficult challenge that we have particularly with the early vote. obviously way to catch people when they tell you they've voted and you ask them who you voted for and they say they're undecided. those are some trick use to weed out the fake answers. host: mark asks how do you get paid for your work and do you use push polls designed to get put pre damar hamlined results. >> we obviously don't use any form of push polling and we certainly publish the exact order, exact wording of every question and clearly open to the comment of anybody in the media or citizens if they feel any question we ask was in any way manipulative. as far as how we get paid for our work it's a challenge.

you know, as i said, there's a tremendous interest in what we do. but what we do especially our methodology is more expensive because we employ hundreds of interviewers make the phone calls. we're in pre election polling by and large the financial contribution from the new york times who we partner with is what pays the freight for the new york times sienna poll. >> what about empirer son. >> we don't use push policy. we want to gain knowledge. that doesn't gain us anything. we go out of our way when clients give questions to try give them the best way to ask the question to get good information. regarding pay, yes, we it's a program. and we have media that we work

with the nexstar media group, real clear politics. we also work with private organizations and groups that need good public opinion survey. we did a study in san antonio about housing for a group to advocate for lower housing cost. group in minnesota buy use rates. we get a lot of competition about different issues around our poles. we do work with grants, department of health and those studies to help offset the cost of these programs. host: jessica is in arlington on our line for democrats. good morning. >> good morning, i wanted to respond about the question regarding vice presidents. that came up earlier in the show. the vice president is an extreme. important position. they take over for the president if the president becomes

incapacitated or passes away. and that individual is key. they also perform a lot of functions behind the scenes, more than most people realize. host: jessica are you saying polling about vice presidents aren't reflective of reality. >> no i'm saying they don't pay attention about who the vice president is, who's running. i think they need to pay more attention to that. if you compare nominees jd vance against walz, walz has considerably more experience. so you know, something to consider. on the poll earlier about the

rural versus urban voter, i would encourage pollsters to look at what's called the urban rural interface, that's the point where the two come together. rural america and urban america. it's beyond the suburbs. but it's on the edge. host: ok. let's hear from paul in minneapolis minnesota on our line for independence. good morning, paul. caller: good morning. one of your guests touched on land lines versus cell phone numbers, for instance in rural areas where cell phone coverage may not be so great. my first question is how are cell phone versus land line calls weighted and secondly how do you account for a person's inclination to answer a call for an unknown number for instance by age, where older americans may not choose to answer unknown

phone calls or social economic status where some may think it's a bill collector, for example, how do you account for those type of differences? host: don i'll let you take those. how you weight cell phones versus land lines and carolina for people's not wanting to answer the phone. >> certainly nonresponse is an issue we face. we made an interesting change in this cycle. we found that anecdotally in 2020 and 2022, there were a number of people who would pick up the phone and say hi, this is don calling from sienna college, and they would just simply yell at us. they would say. trump. and then hang up. and in previews election cycles, that person what do you mean included in our final sample because we hadn't gotten them to ask enough questions.

and we went back through and kept a record of all of that. had we counted all those people. it would have moved about a point and a half in trump's favor and surprised we haven't had this question, but if 2020 virtually every reputable pool center had about a three point overstatement of biden relative to trump. so one of the things we did we called the folks partials now. not everyone is interested in finishing the entire poll. as far as cells and land lines, we work as we've been talking about off the voter list, we'll look at each and every state. and determine the percentage of folks who have a cell versus a land. we'll default if they have both numbers on the list. cell and land. we'll call the cell first and subsequently the land. but we continue in some areas where there's less density or

you know, less accuracy among cells to continue to call land lines and try to meet voters, meet respondents where they are, we're calling both. at this time, overwhelmingly calling cell phones rather land lines. in some rural areas where cell phone service is poor, then we'll be calling just strictly land line in those areas. host: last call for the segment is tony in los angeles california on our lines for republicans. good morning, tony. caller: good morning. from my understanding, the top three issues that concern voters are the economy, immigration and abortion. there correlation between those issues and how voters actually will vote? host: spencer? >> on economy, when we ask the question what's your most important issue, they say economy 40%, immigration roughly

15% abortion 6%. a top issue you didn't mention is housing affordability. it will be interesting to see how the two parties work on that. it does add to the economy. housing afford able to. when we ask voters, they think the democrats will be better. but when can he ask them about the economy as a whole, they think republicans would be better. i think in our last poll in new mexico came out last week, we asked the top issues. begin immigration was 15% and those who said immigration were breaking for trump 90-10. but when we asked which candidate do you think is birdie on immigration, they were split. 48% for harris, 46% trump. sometimes the top issue is what is driving that vote. but generally speaking, voters have a pretty positive opinion about the other person. it's just not the top issue. that's what the campaigns are fighting over. is to to say this is what the campaign is about.

and that's we'll see the next couple weeks and months, because it didn't transpire during the primary period. as can we get for the general election with the new candidate we'll hear new messages and see what the top issues for voters. host: don closing thoughts on those areas? particularly how the top issues translate what people do in the voting booth. >> the economy tends to be the number one issue. people will frame it in a variety of different ways. what we've seen since harris entered the race and we ask the question, who do you think is better on economy responding to cost of living and inflation, trump had as much as a 20 point advantage over biden. now, in most recently we did in pooling across the battleground states appears harris closed that and down about six points to trump. so those are key issues.

the economy, abortion, immigration, protecting democracy, that the campaign in each case are going to try to describe how their candidates, their party is going to do a better job on those issues. in many ways, barring some major event in for a reason policy between now and the election or some other surprise, it appears as though the economy is where the election will be won or lost. host: done levy. thank you so much. and spencer kimble of emerson college polling. and we'll have the wilson center jennifer witranto discuss the incursion into russia and possible peace talks. we'll be right back. ♪ ♪.

he. >> we're in the midst of a springtime of hope for america. >> we are the party that shalls in the american dream. read my lips. no new taxes. >> i still believe in place called hope, here's the question for the american people. who do you trust in this election? the real choice is whether we'll build a bridge to the future or a bridge to the past. >> i have unlimited confidence that the wisdom of our people. >> i stand as my own man and i

want you to know me for who i truly am. >> they that their chance. they have not led. we will. i'm john kerry and i'm reporting for duty. . >> these four years broad moments i could not foresee and will not forget. >> it's time for us to change america. >> i wasn't my own man any more. i was my country's. >> i don't believe the rolling back regulations on wall street will help the small business woman expand or laid off construction worker keep his home. we have been there. we pride that and we're not going back. we're moving forward, america. >> under my administration, our friends will see more loyalist and mr. putin will see less flexibility and more backbone. >> he wants to make america great again. well, he could start by making things in america again. >> we will make america safe

again. and we will make america great again. here now i give you my word, if you entrust me with the presidency, i will draw on best of us, not the worst, towering american spirit prevailed over every challenge. and lifted us to the summit of human endeavor. >> c-span your unfiltered view of the convention, powered by

cable. host: joined now by jennifer wistrand who is deputy director of the cannon institute at the wilson center. thank you for coming in. >> thank you for having me. host: tell us about the center and the wilson center? >> sure. the ken en institute is part of the woodrow wilson center for scholars. it was established six years ago this year by director of the wilson center. and historian frederick star and it's named after georgia kenan, one of his relatives who was an explorer through russia including siberia. and the ken nan family we're

focused on the study of russia, ukraine and other states successor soviet union. host: give us a lay of the land in terms of where we stand in the ongoing war between ukraine and russia? >> sure. it's been about 2.5 jetliners full scale invasion of war. so rush launched the invasion in february, 2022 and it's important to remember at that time russia had a decade earlier in 2014 illegally annexed the peninsula as well as launched incursions into the eastern parts of ukraine in an area known as the don't bass, which encompasses parts of the regions. as. host: as of february, 2022 when it launched a full, 68 invasion it occupied about seven to 8%

ukraine territory. it launched an invasion in february, 2022 and within a month takes significant advances in the country. 25% had been occupied about a month later. ukraine was very successful in pushing the russians back. so by the fall of 2022 and reducing the territory. about 18% in that has been the status quo roughly the last year and a half. what we saw this year, anticipated last year in 2023 that there would be significant attempts on part of the ukrainians that didn't take place. the spring, the russian started slowly pushed in eastern part of the country in this area. when we look at 18%. host: we have a map from the bbc so folks can have a sense of what you're talking about this area russia over here and ukraine's this red area showing

the area of russian military control, these red hash marks with limited military control and the purple area regained by ukraine. >> absolutely. and i'm glad there's maps. otherwise it's difficult to understand so 18% it is parts or all of those four relief packages you mentioned. parts are kharkiv, donetst and the kremlin symplasm what happened in the spring, russia started to make more significant advances in the eastern poverty country. coincides with ukrainians were waiting for additional arms from the west. which were slowingly coming and moral started to drop. we get to what happens in august, many accounts think it's an offensive on part of the ukrainians. they were able to push now not only be able to push the

russians back but but push into russia itself. host: why was it a surprise and what specifically have the ukrainians done? >> sure. i think the surprise when i was mentioning is that seemed that whereas we hoped ukraine would be able to push back in 2023 and they weren't. it was kind of a status quo and then the spring the russians started making advances in the eastern part of the country. coincides with the lack of aid coming from the west, which changed which in april and may, suddenly the u.s. passed the 6.1 billion dollars aid package. that seems to have given, not surprisingly. we'll say material boost to the ukrainians but morale boost. so it's a surprise given what had been a down turn in the

trajectory but at the same time, finally ukraine had munitions and other wherewithal to be able to advance into russia. what makes this significant is it's the first time it's been talked about elsewhere in the news that russian territory has been breached since world war ii. ukrainians haven't pushed very far into russia and the region that's been the focus. host: let me bring up another map of that area in particular. with this area with the purple hash marks demonstrating the area of the ukrainian incursion, which you know, if we look back at this area that russia controls, it's pretty small in comparison. but tell us about this area and why here. >> and to under score you've had we have to look back we're talking 18% of the ukrainian territory occupied russia versus which estimated to be anywhere from 1200 to 1500 square kilometers. not a large area. but significant in that one it's within russia's territory.

and not only is it in russia's territory but it's created a bit of anxiety in that part of the country. you've had 120,000 to 200,000 russians forced to flee from home becoming internally displaced. russia in way that wasn't anticipated. they thought the war would be consistently fault onion soil not russian soil. host: can you talk about the scale of this conflict in terms of the loss of life on both sides. the damage that's been done so far. >> absolutely. step back. feeling just a look at how mismatched this is going back to your question about surprise. if it is surprising. in the incursion into russia took place but at the same time, ukrainians have consistently defied the odds. if you look at russia versus ukraine in terms of land mass,

russia is the largest country in the world it's nearly two times larger than canada the second largest country. population-wise. russia ranks 9th or 10th in terms of population with a population of about 145 million. ukraine about 48 million people. russia's economy. launched full scale invasion was about ten times larger than ukraine. military significantly larger. more equipped. quantitatively russia had the advantage but qualitatively ukraine has been able to consistently surprise not only russia but the west. to your point about destruction and loss of life it's been difficult to ascertain members on the russian side because they don't want to be forthcoming about the number of people who died. certainly not to its own populus because of what's going on but i

have read reports president zelenskyy estimates 30,000 ukrainians died, probably higher. russian side i've seen figures of over 100,000. what's astonishing if you look back at wars in which russia has fought since world war ii which was very devastating for russia. if you look at the late 70's, the wars in the 90's in the early 2000s and 2014 onward it's lost more life at this point in this war with ukraine than it had in the preceding wars. host: this move by ukrainian troops, this incursion into russia, how much does it change the way the war is going? >> it's an excellent question. i think it's yet to be seen. you can look at on the one hand from the military perspective is it making significant changes but on a political perspective. military as you pointed out with the maps, we're not talking about a large part of russia

that's been occupied. very small if you compare the 18% of ukrainians. that said, it is significant that it's on russia's territory. and presumably one of the objectives of ukrainian in doing this is as i mentioned earlier was kind of the advance take place in the eastern part of the country. is to force russia to divert some troops in the eastern area back up to russian soil in the region to be able to propel the ukrainians out. that's one possible military objective. another is that for the first time in the past three, four months, you've seen moral dropping. and is it possible? and for the unfortunate people questioning should ukraine have to negotiate a settlement and would that negotiated settlement agree to basically definitively handing over a portion of ukrainian territory? well, this gives ukrainian a bargaining chip they didn't previously had. it has a little bit of russian

territory and gives it a comparative advantage if and when it has to negotiate. so those could be potential military objectives on the more political or socio cultural side, moral has been low in ukraine last couple months. whereas in had not previously been the case and there's very good reasons why moral dropped. the war has been going on two and a half years. mentioned that upwards of 30,000 ukrainians potentially lost their lives. if it's a war produced large numbers of refugees, more than 6 million people. if you look at that in the world's competition of refugees, that places ukraine up there with afghanistan, iran and sedan. and because the major of the population and fact that ukrainian mandated men 18 to 60 years old stay in the country so refugees are primarily women and children. and you've had are a lost family

separations. we're going into the third school year that kids will be off. so it's a strain on families. it's temporary separation that could lead to long-term separation. so there's both military and political reasons for launching this incursion. but i think we have yet to see if it will be meaningful in long-term. . host: i want to circle back to the potential for negotiations. and remind callers if you have questions for jennifer, the in a bit for republicans is 202-748-8001, independence, 202-748-8002. what is the likelihood of peace talks of the two parties coming to negotiate and end to this conflict. >> i think a lot of people would help if there was an attempt to have some type of negotiated settlement. i believe right now, that's unlikely. at least any type of comprehensive long-term settlement. if we look at other conflicts in

the world, take for example the case of north ireland. you had multiple before came to the 1998 peace agreement. you can look for the soviet space which had a 30-year conflict in the territory. there again, you have cease fires, you have interim agreements yet to reach a comprehensive agreement. i think it's two and a half years that's an extremely long toumey already for ukrainian to have been fighting and again you have to go back to 2014 when that initial illegal annexation in crimea took place but i think it's unlikely you'll have any type of meaningful peace agreement. especially as i think president putin has been pretty quiet many would say since this incursion took place in east. but i believe i read in certain

places cities he will absolutely not negotiate as long as there are ukrainian troops on russian soil. that would seem to be a nonstarter. host: you mentioned the moral issue in ukraine. the associated press said poorly trained recruits contribute to a loss of ukrainian territory on the eastern front and some new ukrainian soldiers are refusing to fire at the end me. others struggle to assemble weapons or coordinate basic combat movements. few walked away from their post abandoning the battlefield altogether. can you talk about some state of the ukrainian military this far into the conflict? >> it's tired. it's very tired. the population again going back russia had a much larger military than ukraine did. ukraine was not building up for

any type of military conflict. it's built down. so you had people who never anticipated having to fight in a war fighting in a war. we actually have had extensive focus and collaboration with partners looking at the arts and unclear and the number of people director, poets, artists who went to the front lines to fight. never thought they would be fighting. when you're drawing from all segments of society and circle back to the family taking place, lots of accounts of people saying it's difficult to go into battle but more difficult to know their family is somewhere else and only communicating with them through some media type of television or zoom call. and so i believe it's not for desire to be well trained and again, the west, specifically the united states, provide a lot in terms of actual military equipment but training as well

but that take time to properly train people. host let's go to questions. communicate in alabama on our line for independence. good morning, chuck. caller: good morning. as a combat wounded veteran from vietnam, i generally vote on for rent policy and looking at what's happened in the past 12 years, i think that the obama biden administration and the biden harris administration really messed up. their foreign policy is disastrous. how anybody could want to put them in control is beyond me they're responsible for millions of deaths. host: the point chuck is making

is interesting. how the upcoming presidential election is playing in ukraine given the potential different outcomes of what the depending on who wins will mean for that conflict. >> it's a great question. and i think ukraine on the one hand was stressed in the spring waiting for military equipment to come. and dysfunction in the american congress. that causes stress. and knowing that there's an election coming up in the fall. and not know putting, per se, who at the time the now we know who the candidates will be. i'm sure that somewhat reduces stress. and fact they know it's a candidate harris and a candidate trump. in terms how both have projected how they would deal with the situation in the ukraine, the harris campaign has come out unequivocally in support of ukraine and offering support not

only for ukraine but for nato. that's where i think this is interesting. the harris campaign is unequivocal support for ukraine, unequivocal support for nato. the trump campaign by and large support for ukraine. trump had candidate trump had relations with president zelenskyy during his previous term and onward and they've had an on and off relationship with one another, warm and cool. but at the same time, candidate trump seems he's supportive of ukraine being victorious, although he has not come out and condemned president putin. but what's more important is the split between the harris campaign, supportive of nato and the trump being less supportive of nato and i think since nato is very much a part of this mission in supporting this

mission is important. host: spencer on our line for republicans. good morning, spencer. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. my question to your speaker kind of involves the ukrainian incursion from what i've read part of the reason for that was to disrupt the supply lines in russia by not only forcing the troops out of ukraine so they have to go on the defense, but the actual supply lines to the country as a whole. both to ukraine and their supplies in russia. so i was wondering if you could kind of explain that and if it's working. what kind of effect that might have. another excellent question. getting back to military motivations. someone said that it is for ukraine not only to breach frontier russia but to be able to get further inside so that it

can have greater ability to make more tactical disruptions in the country. whether it's supply chains or whether it's attacking power stations. military munition factories. that's likely an objective in terms of how effective it will be too soon to know. only a couple weeks into the incursion into the east. so it will have long-term effects. it's too soon to know getting back to the size of russia. there's a number of places on which it can rely. the economy, which still sanctions in place. i think people say sanctions have a greater impact than they have. they have impacted the russian economy but the russian economy has been able to with stand because of for example places like india and china, places like turkey or central asia which are enabling other good civilians. so i think it is obviously when you have objective to the

ukraine to be able to disrupt the supply chains in terms of whether it will have long-term efficacy, i don't think we know now. host: david on our line for independence. >> i'm an active veteran. i'm in the reserves. so maybe i have my ear a little bit different possibly than what you heard. i was wondering number one, do we know that zelenskyy is in the ukraine, so many rumors that he is standing in front of green screens and actually not in ukraine. number two would we be open for a forensic accounting where we would know where every dollar goes, because there's an overrule lot of rumors he's buying real estate in monte carlo and last. do we think it's time for janeny and johnny to be called up into a you know some sort of a draft if we think that the war is unjust. thank you. host: you mean a draft of americans to go. caller: if we're spending all this money but can't win the war, is it time to get janeny and johnny trained up send them

over. how would america react to that? i'll hang up and listen. host: interesting points's do we know that zelenskyy is actually in ukraine? should there be or is there some kind of forensic accounting of how u.s. funds to ukraine are being spent? and then what i guess is likelihood that there would be troops involve in this. whether from a draft or current military. >> the first question is zelenskyy actually in ukraine. my assumption i think most people's assumption is that he is there. if we go back two and a half years ago, when russia launched its full-scale invasion. president zelenskyy was given the opportunity by u.s. and other countries to leave ukraine for his safety so he could be able to help. and he chose not to. i think it's unlikely at this point that he would have abandoned the country so i don't think there's any reason to believe he's not actually in

ukraine. you'll routinely see him meeting with different elements of whether it's the military, accomplice throughout the country in terms of accounting where the money goes my understanding it does due diligence, most recent 6 billion dollars which brings it to 175 billion. it did not all go exclusively to military equipment. there are economic associations or humanitarian aids, so it's multi-facetted the recently 61 billion had parts to it and intended to be accounted for as everything else in the u.s. spinning is accounted for. so i'm sure there's an entity that sees what percentage of that 6 billion is spent on military, humanitarian and otherwise and who's accounting for it.

in terms of a draft of americans or otherwise calling americans up, one hand, with respect to this kentucky as all conflicts you have what are called foreign fighters, so people of their own volition have gone in support of ukraine. but woman lead to a draft americans? i think that's highly unlikely going back to the u.s. experience of vietnam. i think again, you we don't have to see what direction the war goes moving forward. but seems highly unlikely. that you would have a draft. . host: joe is in mckeen pennsylvania on our line for democrats. good morning, joe. caller: yes. i was just speaking about the benefit that nato and america is getting from the ukrainian war. on research and development, strategy and technical problems. they're seeing what works and what doesn't.

how russia reacts to what we, ukraine does. and just all the things that work out, you know, war that you don't anticipate and all of a sudden, this works and this doesn't. and i know the war college have to be watching this and saying, ok, this happened here. this happened there. this would happen and so it's going to be lifetime education. that's all i have. that's all. host: an interesting point. there's been just so much new technology deployed in this conflict. can you talk about what we're learning, from a military technology perspective and tactics. >> the caller made a number of points. the benefit made on america from

watching what's playing out in the ukrainian field. absolutely this is why i'm going to back to surprise. should we be surprised by what happened in august? i don't know, because ukrainians have consistently shown this resolve that the incredible weather as the caller points out. taking existing technology whatever those might be, and reconfiguring them whether on the battlefield or area of tracked more education looking at you know, how do you create generators or other technical equipment as kids can be educated in a subway system or bunker, so i think it's the case that ukrainians taken what they have. developed domestic cally and i think there's a lot of assumption that everything is coming in from the outside to support ukraine. while ukraine received a significant amount of support from the u.s. and allies in europe. itself has been highly effective, highly creative in

developing its own technology internally and whether it hassed to with the battlefield, realm of education, energy infrastructure area. joe specifically mentioned how all of this learning might affect nato moving forward. what do you think? >> an interesting point mother i think nato is committed to wanting ukraine to win but certainly doesn't want the war spilling over into its territory and getting back to the earlier caller's question, drafts and things like that, whether it would result in draft but having to call out more soldiers from the west than currently involved. certainly nato benefits by ukraine either being able to effectively use the equipment given or being able to effectively develop its own tactics. in terms of how it specifically impacts nato. i'm not sure that's clear at

this point. host: in illinois on our line for independence. caller: good morning. retired military in my 70's vietnam era. and this is more of a broader concern but i think although there's talks about the actual tactical versus strategic view of what's happening in this recent event, i think i would refer back to that vietnam gentleman who called. policy of the united states is at fault. i think to even direct this as far as what side is for or against ukraine politically in this country, i think the general impression is that the fault of it is truly war with russia. war with the united states and nato using russia.

using ukraine and this is the beginning and has been, this is world war three. it hasn't become nuclear yet. it's end of nato. it's archaic. we need to go from the post world war ii orientation. and we refuse to do so. host: ambrosio made several interesting points. is this just a proxy war between united states and russia? >> he made a lot of interesting comments. i'm still trying to look through. host: couple key questions. are we in a proxy war and is this the end of nato, the beginning of world war iii?

>> he made a point about end of nato, archaic, instrument which was established in post world war ii period. i think what's happened with russia being able to invade ukraine does call a question a lot of questions we created in post world war ii period. at that time, that's when we established the u.n. and nato and a lot of other multi-level organizations with the idea that if we had these institutions, these were going to be effective at managing how our politics between countries. the defaults we're seeing now, russia is one of the five permanent members. so it has the ability veto anything. having invaded a sovereign country which was not supposed to take place after world war

ii. the call is right what has happened questioned a lot of the strength and long-term resiliency of these institutions that had lasted for 75 years. will they last in the future is in question now. i think a lot of people hope we'll be able to come out of this and still rely on it is not yet clear. in terms of is this are a proxy war? i'm not sure i personally would go that far. what's the motivation on russia's part? part of this is people different lenses in which they view international conflicts and russia if you look at the textbooks consistently presented this idea that it's under attack all the time. in the 1800s it was napoleon, 1900s it was hitler. now nato. always some aggressor.

look what it's done union collapse in december of 1991. this isn't the first soviet republic that it's attempted to destabilize. it occupies 20% of georgia territory goes back to the early 90's in the war it had in 2008. 20% what you occupied. it's med talled with armenia, moldova and now 50% of ukraine and one of the comments president putin made in the late 1990s was greatest evident catastrophing was the soviet union. i think from the russia perspective i think a lot of this is regaining things lost and regaining glory. to say that maybe it is at this point being perceived by a lot of people of the u.s. and russia. but i don't think that was russia's objective.

host: billy in texas on our line for democrats. good morning, billy. caller: good morning. i'll get back to is it saying america is, it's the leader of the world. because we're a nation of god. and we're standing up against russia because russia is aggressive if we don't have a nation like america stands up against russia, russia will do that violence and corruption all over this planet. they're the corrupt people. i wanted to acknowledge that kamala harris will be a great president. we don't need people like trump stirring -- afraid of people in due by, we are a nation of god. when you're nation of god. you don't fear anything. you do the right thing and because we're doing the right thing, that's why america is the world leader because we're not afraid of people. 's we're going to stand up to it and i want to acknowledge c-span

is doing a great job on letting us speak. you might have people say things, whatever, but at the end of the day, when you're under god and you're god's people, you'll control things. thank you very much. host: one of the points billy raised something i heard from several administration officials as well is that it's important to sort of make the point that russia should not be allowed to continue this. i wonder how you read this concern about the precedent it will set if russia is allowed to maintain the territory it's taken in ukraine. >> a fair point i think that goes back to the earlier gentlemen's comments. post world war ii apparatus we created. i think it going back to your questions about you know, is a settlement in the offing? is ukraine going to be pressured

to negotiate with russia? i believe a lot of people who say it shouldn't be pressured to negotiate with russia because russia should never have been allowed to invade a sovereign territory and occupy land. if the west sure it should have been more force. . that should be the status could we and i harken back we should have been a lot more condemning of russia's actions in 2008 in the war with georgia. so i think the problem is if it's allowed to negotiate with ukraine where does it stop? i don't think russian's ambitions will stop at ukraine. host: that's all of the time that we have for callers today. thank you so much jennifer wistrand who is a deputy director of the kennen institute at the wilson center. thank you so much for sharing your expertise. >> thank you for having me.

host: thank you to our callers for great questions and comments. we'll be back tomorrow with another addition of washington journal at 7:00 a.m. eastern. everyone have a great day. ♪. ♪.