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the report comes days before the historic election and a key federal reserve meeting. the unemployment rate remained at 4.1% according to the labor department. e welcome back david wasserman of cook political report, senior editor and elections analyst to talk about the house races and things connected to campaign bank 24. -- 2024. what is holding your attention most from here to tuesday? guest: the house is especially fascinating. we have a situation where democrats might have a better shot in the house. certainly then in the senate. their chances in the house of argued we improved a little bit in the last few weeks and months even as the presidential race has gotten tighter. we have seen harris's lead narrow. there are reasons democrats have an opportunity to flip control of the chamber.

there are 221 republican seats, 214 democrat seats. democrat need to pick up four to make hakeem jeffries the speaker. the house is being fought on friendlier terrain for democrats than the senate or possibly the electoral college. 16 republicans are running for reelection in districts that voted for joe biden four years ago and only five democrats running for reelection it democrats the votive that this trick that voted for donald trump. trump districts have decent brands. the 16 republicans, most are in two blue states were democrats underperformed in the 2022 midterms, california and new york. the second reason is you have a decent number of check and balance voters out there who dislike both presidents a candidate. they don't want either party going too far in the next congress. that dynamic in 2016 and 2020

was a lot of voters, particularly suburban independents and women want donald trump but they were open to voting for a more normal republican down ballot. this year voters are conflicted about their expectations of who is going to win. to the extent the same voters want a check or insurance policy on trump going too far, they are opting for a democrat down ballot. we're noticing a handful of key races were democrats are outperforming harris in pulling. the third -- polling. house republicans have been a mess for the last two years. it took them 15 votes to elect a speaker last january. we have seen downstream fundraising from the leadership turmoil. democrats have clobbered republicans at the candidate fundraising level. a disparity unlike anything we

have seen in a long time. the median, craddick and comment as of october -- the median incombent democrat had raised just as much as the median income at republican. a lot -- incumbent republican. they have controlled it in the final weeks of the campaign. host: if you want to ask our guest questions about what to expect when it comes to the house race, senate race, top of the ticket, (202) 748-8000 for democrats. (202) 748-8001 for republicans. (202) 748-8002 for independents. you can text us at (202) 748-8003. if everything you said boils down to specific races that illustrate what you are talking about, where would you look to first? guest: when you add up all the

seats that lean to democrats, 205 districts. when you add up all the seeds that lean towards the republicans, 208 districts. we have 22 tossup in the middle. our house editor has an excellent overview of all this this morning at cookpolitical.com. we moved several race ratings, six in democrats favor and two in republicans. anthony d esposito on long island, brandon williams and syracuse, don bacon and omaha. -- in omaha are slight underdogs reelection. there are other vulnerable republicans who are polling even at best. people like john duarte in california's center valley. lori chavez-deremer in suburban portland. the insurance policy for republicans is open seats. republicans don't have any vulnerable open seats to defend.

democrats have four. two in michigan. one of the seats we moved this morning is alyssa slotkin's in lansing. she's leaving to run for senate. we believe republican tom barrett might be entering election day with a slight advantage over democrat curtis hurtell. that is why republicans might still be ever so slightly favorite for control of the chamber if you have the 22 tossup's break evenly down the middle, republicans would end up at 219, 216 for democrats. what we know from history is it is likely most of the top subs will break one direction. host: colorado's third district. guest: this is the seat where republican lauren boebert left to run in a much redder district

on the opposite end of colorado. the democrat in the race, adam fish, he came within 504 votes of beating her never stopped running and raised over $14 million for this house race because for much of the cycle he was running against boebert, probably the best fundraiser the democrats have ever had. now he's running against a more conventional republican, however pu -- an attorney named jeff hurd from grand junction. in 2022, it would never have been that close. because fresh has such a head start. that has kept it somewhat close. we believe the republican hurd has an advantage. host: you mentioned representative dunn bacon. what makes the race this

type this time around? guest: in bresky by congressional district. this omaha seat has been trending blue for some time. polls show kamala harris is a close favorite over donald trump to carry the one electoral vote from this district. that undertow could drag republican congressman don bacon under. he's been a survivor. he has been there since 2016. he has won the seat as joe biden was curing the district in 2020. this time around he has the same opponent as in 2022, state senator tony vargas. this has been a high dollar raise with democrats accusing bacon of getting closer to trump and the maga wing for endorsing

the change that would have converted the state's electoral votes to winner take all. it was highly controversial in omaha. bacon is emphasizing bipartisan credentials. he has an ad featuring the widow of his democratic predecessor brad ashford endorsing his reelection campaign and hitting the democrat as excessively partisan. host: david wasserman, a lot of information when it comes to the down ballot races. call the line that best represents you. beverly in wyoming, democrats line. good morning. guest: yeah. i was wondering why they don't have democrat candidates in wyoming. maybe if they had diversity they might have a free election. it is going to be so hard for these republicans to get a good base. they are all backing each other.

the ones, the rhinos, i hope they win. guest: wyoming is a state where the orientation of the at large district was really decided by liz cheney's reelection race in the republican primary a couple of years ago when she lost a harriet hageman. that moved the seat essentially from one that was a trump skeptic republican seat to say the least to a maga held seat. what we are noticing a lot of republican open seats, and there are 23 republicans who opted not to seek reelection this year, is the direction that republicans are headed overall depends a lot on who comes through the

primaries. there are open seats work candidates allied with trump ended up availing and people like brandon gill in texas 26th district, and we saw districts with more conventional conservatives who would have fit in the party in the pre-trump era prevail. people like julie put your check -- padorczack in north dakota. host: james in north carolina. caller: it reminded me when you are getting so excited about how much the democrats have outraised republicans. i was wondering if you care or if you thought about all the money people like george soros that hate our country and is really a bad guy that funds the democrat party in these deeply

states -- deep blue states where they burn their cities down in 2020? this morning i saw on the ticker thing speaker johnson said there are serious issues with the democrat party taking money from our adversaries. the democrat people are good people. my neighbors are good people. the party does not give a damn about america and will take money from anybody. host: money comes in from a lot of outside sources. talk about where the money is coming from and some of the races where the -- guest: there are bogeyman on both sides here. republicans love to point out the soros family. democrats are increasingly taking aim at the spending elon musk has injected into the super pac realm. yet there is a broader array of

donors that are funding super pac's that are spending hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars on races at all levels. those pac's have less of a punch than the hard dollars that candidates spend. candidates are raising funds that are subject to limits and have access to better advertising rates than super pac's. one thing we noticed early on in the reset of the presidential race when kamala harris was nominated after joe biden withdrew from the race is that democrats leading super pac which will spend upwards of $600 million on this year's campaign -- don't get me wrong, there are comparably funded pro-trump pac's, but they launched a reintroduction ads introducing

kamala harris as a change agent which is hard to do when you're talking about the sitting vice president. it was very effective in turning her image around from negat -- -16 where it had been for the past couple of years to net neutral. now that we are finally seeing trump's ad take theirs toll in battleground states, we have seen harris's favorably come back down to maybe -2. that's an important difference between what we saw in august and september versus now in october. host: one race you highlight is minnesota's second district, angie craig versus joe terab. guest: get to see where republicans were hoping to give a democrat incumbent a tough race in the minneapolis suburbs. what we are seeing there is that the president of race is tighter than it was in 2020.

joe biden carried district by seven points in 2020. i would not be surprised if kamala harris only won by four or five. we are seeing the democrat angie craig win comfortably or lead come to be in the polls over teirab, a former federal prosecutor and also comes from a family of sudanese heritage. yet this is a prime example of where republicans have not been able to match democrats dollar for dollar. craig has raised $7.4 million this cycle to teirab's $2.6 million. she said a communication advantage in portraying herself as a bipartisan problem solver and her opponent as part and parcel of trump and the maga wing. host: the ones you don't mention specifically but you did mention

in the introduction is the fourth district of new york. anthony de esposito. guest: this race has been rocked by scandal and revelations of de esposito apparently putting his mistress and fiance's child on his congressional payrolls. long island has probably a higher tolerance threshold for patronage politics and most parts of the country. yet the democrat running against him who fell 3.5 point short in 2022 has run a much more aggressive campaign to get ahead of republican attacks that she is soft on issues. we expect there to be a higher nonwhite turnout then there was in the midterms. it's a district that somewhat half nonwhite. particularly in the five towns area of nassau county.

if there is a more normal democratic turnout in those kinds of places, districts in and around new york city and l.a. and california's central valley, democrats would have a better chance of taking back the house. host: ron from iowa on the democrats line. caller: i would like to hear his take on the race in the first district of southeast iowa. i will hang up and take his answer offline. guest: fantastic question. this is one of the races we are watching closely. marionette miller-meekes ran for the seat three times of forgetting elected. even though this district will likely vote for trump and voted for trump by about 3.4 years ago, -- three points four years ago, voters have not warmed up to the republican incumbent.

she only won her first term by six votes by the closest house vote in the nation in 2020. the democrat here, christina bohannon, is running a much more aggressive race this time, particularly on the abortion issue. marionette miller-meeks got a primary challenge from a religious conservative candidate who attacked her from the right. that really dented her favorability with republican voters. what we are seeing now is she's having a problem consolidating her own base heading into the general election which is giving the democrat bohannon an unusual opportunity. i would have guessed at the beginning the of the race would find its way to our top column. we are seeing polls that show it either tied or even bohannon with a small lead. if miller-meeks wins, it's only because trump's performance pushed her across the finish line. host: moishe from new york.

caller: how do you look at polling? you interview people. when do you move things to the tossups? can you give us details how you conduct interviews -- i mean polling? guest: to be clear, except for a series of swing states that we did in conjunction with the democratic and republican polling firm, we are not polling the districts. there is a lot of public data about the presidential race and coverage of how precarious polls are these days given low response rates. it is through the pollsters are having a harder time reaching voters. they are having to weight samples to adjust how they think the electorate will look at the end of the day. those assumptions may or not prove correct.

all polls are subject to error. that has always been the case. the vast majority of data we are seeing is data that the parties have compiled privately. the reason why partisan polls taken by the parties can often be better than a lot of the public service or of higher quality is that is what the parties are using to make investment decisions into where they will allocate their resources across a wide array of battleground districts. in some cases the parties' poll paint a similar picture. then others have a very different notion of where races stand. we are trying to see how everything lines up and making a best estimate over the races stand. there are always surprises on election night. host: you are known to say i have seen enough. what is that moment when you're analyzing data? what is the moment you make that

conclusion? guest: there is not a hard and fast rule. i don't have a secret sauce. my approach is more straightforward than a lot of people think. i am taking a look at the data coming in at the county, the precinct level, and assessing whether the trailing candidate has a reasonable path to overtaking the leader or not. if you have watched the races long enough, there are clear patterns across demographic groups, across geography that can give you a good idea of how races are shaping up early on election night. i will actually be part of a larger team on tuesday as i have been in every major election since 2008. i will be a consultant for the nbc news decision desk as a size of races at all levels. the challenge for the presidential year especially is there is so much data coming at you at once that if i were trying to do it myself there is

too much to cover and is possible to make mistakes. i prefer to be part of a larger team to evaluate what's going on and communicate it to our on-air talent. host: we have been talking about down ballot. what is your sense of where we are at the top of the ticket? guest: this is been the closest presidential race i have covered in my 17 years. we have got seven states that a basically tied over than a point or two point. that backs the question, who the heck are these 3% to 5% of people who still have not made up their minds aft >> we are going to leave this to take your life to portage, michigan where republican vice presidential nominee in jd vance is delivering remarks on a campaign stop. live coverage here on c-span. ♪