WEBVTT - John Zogby 0:00:08.640 --> 0:00:12.600 Welcome, welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast. 0:00:13.000 --> 0:00:17.560 My guest today is the legendary pollster John Zogby. John, 0:00:17.680 --> 0:00:20.680 we scheduled this podcast a couple of weeks ago, and 0:00:20.720 --> 0:00:25.360 in the interim the Iran War started and your schedule 0:00:25.440 --> 0:00:28.560 got crazy. So when a crisis like this happens, tell 0:00:28.560 --> 0:00:29.960 me how your world changes. 0:00:31.360 --> 0:00:36.479 Well, for starters, this media media calling around the clock 0:00:36.600 --> 0:00:42.919 literally New Zealand, Ireland, Malaysia yesterday. But you know, good 0:00:43.000 --> 0:00:46.440 bit here in the United States, so that takes some time. 0:00:46.800 --> 0:00:50.600 And then secondly, a little less so these days because 0:00:51.000 --> 0:00:55.200 much more of our work as private sector and you know, 0:00:55.960 --> 0:00:59.720 not non governmental agencies and so on. But in the 0:00:59.840 --> 0:01:03.160 day it was not uncommon for one of my media 0:01:03.240 --> 0:01:08.520 clients New York Post, Reuters, NBC News, Hey, can you 0:01:08.560 --> 0:01:10.800 get on the phones right away or can you get 0:01:10.880 --> 0:01:12.920 us a poll in twenty four hours? 0:01:13.520 --> 0:01:17.280 Okay, these media outlets are calling. What are they going 0:01:17.319 --> 0:01:20.920 to ask and what information do you have to give them? 0:01:21.520 --> 0:01:27.000 Well, my expertise is not to discuss presidential strategy or 0:01:27.040 --> 0:01:30.120 any of those sorts of things. Public opinion, what do 0:01:30.200 --> 0:01:33.800 the American people think? And I am fortunate that I 0:01:33.840 --> 0:01:37.840 can go beyond the guys at the barbershop or the 0:01:37.880 --> 0:01:41.920 folks in the grocery line. I can take samples, which 0:01:41.959 --> 0:01:46.080 I did. Interestingly, my son and I are together, and 0:01:46.160 --> 0:01:48.720 we pulled the American people after the State of the 0:01:48.800 --> 0:01:51.040 Union message, remember that one. 0:01:51.040 --> 0:01:52.680 That was oh yeah last week. 0:01:53.120 --> 0:01:59.040 Yeah, And so we pulled Wednesday and Thursday night then 0:01:59.160 --> 0:02:02.480 and released a on Friday morning. We asked a question 0:02:02.520 --> 0:02:06.680 about Iran. Do you support the president's handling of Iran? 0:02:07.440 --> 0:02:13.040 And it was tied forty five percent supported, forty five 0:02:13.080 --> 0:02:16.880 percent opposed. And then we went to bed Friday night 0:02:17.360 --> 0:02:21.320 thinking that, hey, there's some movement in the negotiations, right, 0:02:21.400 --> 0:02:28.120 and the negotiations are going to start again today when 0:02:28.880 --> 0:02:31.880 reality intervened and we went to war. There is a 0:02:31.880 --> 0:02:35.400 poll out, but it's not by us, and the poll 0:02:35.600 --> 0:02:40.240 is far different than you would find normally when a 0:02:40.320 --> 0:02:45.040 president announces a war. This time, twenty seven percent support 0:02:45.320 --> 0:02:50.040 going to war with Iran a military action in Iran, 0:02:50.440 --> 0:02:53.600 and forty nine percent the pose. The rest are not sure. 0:02:54.000 --> 0:02:58.560 That's Reuters and a company called Ipsos based in France. 0:02:59.240 --> 0:03:04.080 Okay, State of the Union happens, You're doing a pull. 0:03:04.560 --> 0:03:07.840 What questions are you asking what information are you trying 0:03:07.880 --> 0:03:08.280 to clean? 0:03:10.400 --> 0:03:14.120 Well, for starters, we tried to stick close to the 0:03:14.120 --> 0:03:18.320 president's speech, and so we want to know overall, do 0:03:18.320 --> 0:03:23.639 you support or oppose his job as president, the job 0:03:23.680 --> 0:03:26.640 he's doing as president. And of course we ask it 0:03:26.720 --> 0:03:31.919 with a scale, so strongly support, somewhat support, somewhat opposed, 0:03:31.960 --> 0:03:35.400 strongly opposed, so we can get levels of intensity to 0:03:35.480 --> 0:03:40.440 which are very important, not just majorities or pluralities. But 0:03:40.480 --> 0:03:45.880 then how about is handling an immigration, crime and public safety, healthcare, 0:03:46.640 --> 0:03:50.720 the environment and so on. And what we found, not 0:03:50.880 --> 0:03:54.880 surprisingly at all, because this is the state of our world, 0:03:56.360 --> 0:04:00.440 is that the president is upside down. In all of 0:04:00.480 --> 0:04:03.560 his numbers these there are more people who are opposed 0:04:03.600 --> 0:04:08.640 to him than support him. The one exception this time 0:04:09.640 --> 0:04:15.880 was on immigration, where this time he was forty seven 0:04:16.000 --> 0:04:22.120 percent support and forty five percent oppose. We have been 0:04:22.160 --> 0:04:26.520 seeing him upside down, but close like that. But the 0:04:26.640 --> 0:04:33.360 nation is not simply split or hyper polarized. It is 0:04:33.880 --> 0:04:36.440 divided in a way that we have not seen before 0:04:36.440 --> 0:04:37.320 in our lifetime. 0:04:38.240 --> 0:04:40.520 Go a little deeper. How is it divided in a 0:04:40.560 --> 0:04:41.840 way we haven't seen before? 0:04:43.160 --> 0:04:47.640 So you know, there used to be some flexibility you 0:04:47.680 --> 0:04:52.200 know there were conservative Democrats. There were Believe it or not, 0:04:52.400 --> 0:04:56.279 I'm here in New York and here in California. 0:04:56.320 --> 0:04:56.880 I think. 0:04:58.160 --> 0:05:03.680 There were liberal Republicans Rocketype, Yeah, Rockefeller is the first 0:05:03.800 --> 0:05:07.720 name that comes to mind. There aren't, make no mistake 0:05:07.760 --> 0:05:11.320 about it. There are no conservative Democrats, there are no 0:05:12.400 --> 0:05:17.560 liberal Republicans, and so essentially we have a partisan split 0:05:17.760 --> 0:05:23.920 and little to no flexibility on those numbers. We are seeing, however, 0:05:24.560 --> 0:05:28.599 that the president's support among Republicans is that about in 0:05:28.680 --> 0:05:33.280 our last poll last week eighty three eighty four percent. 0:05:33.960 --> 0:05:38.680 Usually could expect ninety to ninety two percent. That's a 0:05:38.960 --> 0:05:43.280 drop that we're watching. By the same token, there are 0:05:43.520 --> 0:05:48.599 growing numbers of independents, and independence are very difficult to 0:05:48.760 --> 0:05:54.039 pigeonhole as a unit. There are so many different sources 0:05:54.080 --> 0:05:59.000 and grades of independence, but as taken as a whole, 0:06:01.839 --> 0:06:07.880 President has about mid fifties who oppose him on every 0:06:07.920 --> 0:06:15.000 issue among independence, although on some issues, notably immigration, crime, 0:06:15.080 --> 0:06:18.679 and public safety, it's upwards of sixty sixty one percent 0:06:19.040 --> 0:06:21.120 among independents who oppose him. 0:06:21.760 --> 0:06:24.560 So tell me about methodology In the old days, Well, 0:06:24.600 --> 0:06:27.240 I'm sure people stopped at people's doors at one point, 0:06:27.279 --> 0:06:30.080 but it was phone. Now people don't pick up their landlines, 0:06:30.400 --> 0:06:33.040 then people don't pick up their phones. Then there's text, 0:06:33.320 --> 0:06:36.960 there's other companies use polls at the bottom of websites. 0:06:36.960 --> 0:06:37.920 How do you do it? 0:06:39.839 --> 0:06:43.240 Okay, so I do go back to the days when 0:06:43.279 --> 0:06:46.640 we used everybody had a landline and sixty five percent 0:06:47.480 --> 0:06:50.360 we're happy to do a poll. That was a response rate, 0:06:50.839 --> 0:06:55.880 and we evolved, not surprisingly due to technology and social 0:06:56.000 --> 0:07:01.200 change in this country, to single digit or low double 0:07:01.240 --> 0:07:06.000 digit response rates. And so we were among the pioneers 0:07:06.040 --> 0:07:11.080 in developing online polling. And it was a long slog. Basically, 0:07:11.840 --> 0:07:16.920 we would gather as many email addresses and a coalition 0:07:17.040 --> 0:07:20.160 of the willing as possible, that is, those who would 0:07:20.240 --> 0:07:23.720 tell us in our telephone surveys back twenty five years 0:07:23.720 --> 0:07:26.760 ago and so on, that they'd be willing to take 0:07:26.800 --> 0:07:31.360 a poll. We gathered internally at the turn of the 0:07:31.400 --> 0:07:35.280 millennium about a million one point two million. 0:07:35.120 --> 0:07:35.520 At the. 0:07:37.840 --> 0:07:41.240 Within a couple of years of email addresses that were 0:07:41.360 --> 0:07:46.640 validated demographically and behavioral characteristics. 0:07:48.360 --> 0:07:51.600 How do you validate them by telephone? 0:07:51.640 --> 0:07:56.920 Interestingly, so when it was one or the other, we 0:07:56.960 --> 0:08:00.320 would either use our usual telephone surveys and at the 0:08:00.440 --> 0:08:04.040 end ask if they would be willing to take a 0:08:04.080 --> 0:08:07.480 survey online and give us an email address, And so 0:08:07.600 --> 0:08:10.240 we plottingly collected that way. 0:08:12.000 --> 0:08:13.400 Or the other way around. 0:08:14.200 --> 0:08:19.040 We would purchase tons of email addresses and have four 0:08:19.240 --> 0:08:25.600 servers going at the same time inviting people at random 0:08:24.960 --> 0:08:30.640 to sign up to take surveys. And today we have 0:08:30.720 --> 0:08:31.560 fifteen million. 0:08:32.240 --> 0:08:34.319 Okay, So then you called them and asked them what. 0:08:36.080 --> 0:08:42.240 Well if the online surveys, we would send out a 0:08:42.360 --> 0:08:47.760 random sampling of the email addresses that we had, and 0:08:47.800 --> 0:08:52.280 we would ask them, well, beyond political surveys, but you 0:08:52.320 --> 0:08:55.600 know our registered de voter, they're likely to vote, what's 0:08:55.640 --> 0:09:01.080 their party identification? And then we'd get into politically the 0:09:01.120 --> 0:09:04.720 president or the governor, whatever our universe was, the mayor, 0:09:05.920 --> 0:09:10.800 job performance, job performance on a number of issues, personal 0:09:10.920 --> 0:09:16.840 favorability of them, and possible candidates running against them. In 0:09:17.080 --> 0:09:24.640 proprietary a private polling for candidates, individuals or retail brands. 0:09:25.320 --> 0:09:29.600 We would ask what would move them, what drives you, 0:09:29.960 --> 0:09:32.840 what would make you more likely to support, what would 0:09:32.920 --> 0:09:36.959 make you more likely to oppose? And if you knew 0:09:37.000 --> 0:09:40.079 this about that, would it make you much more likely 0:09:40.200 --> 0:09:44.320 somewhat more likely, somewhat less likely, much less likely to 0:09:44.360 --> 0:09:48.320 support or purchase or whatever. But a typical poll could 0:09:48.360 --> 0:09:49.760 be forty fifty questions. 0:09:50.280 --> 0:09:54.600 Okay, I have never answered a pull. I remember before 0:09:54.640 --> 0:09:58.280 people meeters, they once mailed a form to us and 0:09:58.320 --> 0:10:02.520 you filled out what you watched. So in the people Meter, 0:10:02.640 --> 0:10:07.320 of course, being Nielsen in television, the question becomes there's 0:10:07.360 --> 0:10:13.319 always a margin of error, But how do you ensure accuracy? 0:10:13.400 --> 0:10:19.439 So you start with the sampling procedure. So today talking 0:10:19.480 --> 0:10:22.960 about online polls as an example, but the same principles 0:10:22.960 --> 0:10:28.359 will hold true for those who are still doing telephone surveys. 0:10:29.600 --> 0:10:35.120 Is that we have a list of fifteen million Americans 0:10:36.440 --> 0:10:41.200 and who have been validated, and in their entirety they 0:10:41.240 --> 0:10:46.520 are representative of the American people demographically. If we're doing 0:10:46.520 --> 0:10:50.160 a poll, say we want a thousand likely voters, we 0:10:50.280 --> 0:10:56.560 will take what's called a random stratified sample of about 0:10:56.600 --> 0:11:01.480 ten thousand email addresses from that fifty million. The keyword 0:11:01.480 --> 0:11:05.400 there random. Everybody has to have the same chance of 0:11:05.480 --> 0:11:10.760 being selected from that pool as everybody else. And secondly, stratified, 0:11:11.280 --> 0:11:15.160 we don't draw them nationally. We draw them by region. 0:11:16.120 --> 0:11:20.200 So if thirty percent of our sample is from the south, 0:11:21.040 --> 0:11:23.880 a thirty percent of the population or the electorate is 0:11:23.880 --> 0:11:26.920 from the south, as an example, then thirty percent of 0:11:26.960 --> 0:11:30.440 our pool is from the south, twenty five percent of 0:11:30.480 --> 0:11:34.480 the northeast twenty five, twenty six per and so on. 0:11:35.120 --> 0:11:40.880 And then we begin the invitation process knowing that we're 0:11:40.920 --> 0:11:45.440 targeting regions and knowing after all these years that those 0:11:46.559 --> 0:11:52.680 responses will come back within those levels of stratification and 0:11:53.400 --> 0:11:59.920 be somewhat somewhat representative of people in those regions by ray, 0:12:00.679 --> 0:12:05.720 by age, by educational level, by gender. It's not a 0:12:05.720 --> 0:12:10.679 perfect world, so that when those numbers do come in, 0:12:11.520 --> 0:12:18.600 there may be some groups that are slightly underrepresented, normally Blacks, Hispanics, 0:12:18.960 --> 0:12:25.000 poorer people, normally men, young men. And what we do 0:12:25.160 --> 0:12:29.880 is we apply waiting, just simple waiting, to bump them 0:12:29.960 --> 0:12:36.480 up to what the expectation is for voter turnout or 0:12:36.520 --> 0:12:43.040 for retail shopping the adult population in general. But you never, 0:12:44.200 --> 0:12:48.720 let's say, you hardly ever get a situation where you 0:12:48.760 --> 0:12:53.240 have way too many women, or way too many whites, 0:12:53.679 --> 0:12:57.199 or way too many of any group. The waiting generally 0:12:57.360 --> 0:13:00.560 is slight. 0:13:01.600 --> 0:13:04.600 Okay, you do a lot of market research. Steve Jobs 0:13:04.640 --> 0:13:08.839 famously said he didn't believe in market research because people 0:13:08.960 --> 0:13:11.520 didn't know what they wanted until he gave it to them. 0:13:12.000 --> 0:13:15.200 Other people say market research will tell you where you've been, 0:13:15.640 --> 0:13:18.360 but not where you're going. How would you respond to those? 0:13:19.720 --> 0:13:25.200 Well, for starters, I've got an Apple phone, so sorry, Steve, 0:13:27.800 --> 0:13:29.680 what was the other the other question? 0:13:29.960 --> 0:13:32.640 People say that it will tell you where you've been 0:13:32.720 --> 0:13:33.800 but not where you're going. 0:13:34.640 --> 0:13:41.520 No, Now, we believe in and we do projective polling. Now, look, Bob, 0:13:41.920 --> 0:13:46.080 nobody sees the future, at least clearly. But there is 0:13:46.120 --> 0:13:50.079 a way of using analytics, and I might add some 0:13:50.120 --> 0:13:55.480 good artwork involved too, to ask questions about how would 0:13:55.559 --> 0:14:01.400 you respond to a certain situation, and from the tabulation 0:14:01.559 --> 0:14:05.600 of those responses on how folks would respond, or how 0:14:05.600 --> 0:14:09.679 they would anticipate, or how they would behave or how 0:14:09.720 --> 0:14:14.560 their minds would change, you get a a reasonable reading 0:14:15.200 --> 0:14:21.760 of what people will do under certain circumstances. However, there 0:14:21.800 --> 0:14:26.240 are other variables in our world, and so look, I 0:14:26.240 --> 0:14:30.440 could have done continued my poll through Friday night about 0:14:31.200 --> 0:14:36.360 how do you feel about Trump's handling of Iran? I 0:14:36.520 --> 0:14:39.560 did not know that we'd be bombing the hell out 0:14:39.560 --> 0:14:41.440 of Iran Saturday morning. 0:14:49.360 --> 0:14:52.080 So you're not the only Polster. You have a high 0:14:52.120 --> 0:14:56.480 profile amongst the small quadre. What is the special sauce 0:14:57.000 --> 0:14:58.280 that you bring to the table? 0:15:00.040 --> 0:15:05.640 Indititionally, it was accuracy. That's where I gained my fame. 0:15:06.320 --> 0:15:11.080 I got races on the gubernatorial level here in New 0:15:11.160 --> 0:15:14.920 York that no one even came close to. I was 0:15:15.760 --> 0:15:19.240 hired by the Murdoch Empire, Liberal Democrat that I am. 0:15:19.320 --> 0:15:23.200 I'm polling for the New York Post and Early Fox 0:15:24.000 --> 0:15:27.480 in ninety five and ninety six. Then I was hired 0:15:27.520 --> 0:15:32.160 by the largest news agency in the world, Reuters, and 0:15:32.200 --> 0:15:37.800 the Reuter Zogbee Pole was born in nineteen ninety six. 0:15:38.520 --> 0:15:41.200 And it did not hurt me at all that my 0:15:41.440 --> 0:15:45.760 colleagues at the networks and at the universities were attacking 0:15:45.800 --> 0:15:49.200 me because I was standing alone saying that the Clinton 0:15:49.280 --> 0:15:53.440 Dole race is a lot closer than people think. And 0:15:53.520 --> 0:15:58.120 when the numbers came in and the attacks continued, I 0:15:58.200 --> 0:16:02.480 got that race right to anywhere between one to three 0:16:02.600 --> 0:16:05.520 tenths of a percent. I'd already gotten some other high 0:16:05.560 --> 0:16:09.440 profile ones right and that at. 0:16:09.280 --> 0:16:11.080 That point things just soared. 0:16:11.400 --> 0:16:14.000 But then I went on to get other races right 0:16:14.280 --> 0:16:18.440 and ones that no one else got right in Mexico, 0:16:19.640 --> 0:16:26.760 in Israel, in Albania. And now I'm a strategic planner, 0:16:27.480 --> 0:16:31.560 and I know that you cannot keep a reputation as 0:16:31.600 --> 0:16:36.640 the most accurate polster in the world forever. So that's 0:16:36.680 --> 0:16:41.040 when we started to focus on our strategic thinking and 0:16:41.160 --> 0:16:44.240 on thought leadership, and a number of books that came 0:16:44.280 --> 0:16:51.520 out talking about the future and what we see from 0:16:51.960 --> 0:16:55.240 at that point, twenty years of polling, thirty years of polling, 0:16:55.280 --> 0:16:57.120 and so on, why. 0:16:56.920 --> 0:17:00.640 Were you more accurate than your competitors. 0:17:00.120 --> 0:17:03.440 There were you know, ninety plus percent of what I 0:17:03.440 --> 0:17:08.639 did was like everybody else. But some of the things 0:17:08.640 --> 0:17:14.640 that were different was that I would apply a slight 0:17:14.800 --> 0:17:19.960 weight for political party identification. Many of my colleagues don't 0:17:20.000 --> 0:17:25.760 believe in that. They called it a trailer variable, something 0:17:25.800 --> 0:17:32.480 that's very soft. So look, if I'm for George W. 0:17:32.560 --> 0:17:38.960 Bush today, I'm a Republican. If I'm for al Gore tomorrow, 0:17:39.400 --> 0:17:44.080 then I'm probably a Democrat. I believe that party is 0:17:44.520 --> 0:17:47.960 a lead variable. Many of us are born with it. 0:17:49.160 --> 0:17:54.840 Most of us filter our information through our party identification. 0:17:55.440 --> 0:17:59.359 And so I found that some of my colleagues were 0:18:00.280 --> 0:18:06.400 actually getting much larger fluctuations even on a day by 0:18:06.520 --> 0:18:12.639 day basis in their samples. Too many Democrats, too few Republicans. 0:18:13.040 --> 0:18:16.520 I had noticed early, and again I'm a liberal Democrat, 0:18:16.840 --> 0:18:20.919 but I noticed early a tendency for Democrats to answer 0:18:20.960 --> 0:18:25.239 the phone more than Republicans. That's why I feel that 0:18:25.480 --> 0:18:29.119 to a great degree. That's the one thing that I 0:18:29.160 --> 0:18:32.320 did differently that helped propel. 0:18:31.960 --> 0:18:36.320 Me in the last ten years. Nate Silver has gotten 0:18:36.359 --> 0:18:41.440 a lot of notoriety for pull averaging, pull balancing. What's 0:18:41.480 --> 0:18:42.639 your opinion on that. 0:18:43.680 --> 0:18:50.600 Well, he kind of bounced me out, and so they're 0:18:50.600 --> 0:18:51.560 a little bit of bias. 0:18:51.800 --> 0:18:53.880 But my sense. 0:18:56.119 --> 0:19:03.400 Is I pull people, I don't poll numbers. I get 0:19:03.440 --> 0:19:07.000 a feel for polls. I mean, when when I had 0:19:07.000 --> 0:19:11.600 a call center, I would visit the call center during elections, 0:19:12.359 --> 0:19:16.879 and what did you hear? What were they really saying? 0:19:17.280 --> 0:19:22.280 These are the the telephone callers that I would talk to, 0:19:22.840 --> 0:19:25.520 and they would tell me, you know, there were people 0:19:25.560 --> 0:19:29.080 who were really soft, there are people who were not 0:19:29.119 --> 0:19:32.480 paying attention but intended to vote. There are people who 0:19:32.480 --> 0:19:35.960 are very hard. But I got a sense that those 0:19:36.080 --> 0:19:39.959 numbers were really an aggregation of people not simply an 0:19:40.000 --> 0:19:41.880 aggregation of numbers. 0:19:42.359 --> 0:19:44.480 I think with Nate. 0:19:46.600 --> 0:19:52.240 There was too much emphasis on analytics and an algorithm. 0:19:52.840 --> 0:19:57.280 That are algorithms that he used that could be applicable 0:19:57.760 --> 0:20:03.640 sometimes and not so applicable. I'm sorry at other times, 0:20:04.240 --> 0:20:07.160 and then I do feel and you know, I wish 0:20:07.280 --> 0:20:12.000 him all the best he's had, all the best. In fact, 0:20:10.920 --> 0:20:17.040 that he was a bit too much like Icarus in mythology. 0:20:17.080 --> 0:20:21.280 He flew with wax wings too close to the sun, 0:20:21.440 --> 0:20:24.720 and that sooner or later, just like Zogby, you get 0:20:24.720 --> 0:20:29.920 one wrong and people start looking at you funny. And 0:20:29.960 --> 0:20:31.840 I'm not sure he handled it all well. 0:20:32.200 --> 0:20:38.200 That well, good analogy. Okay, many people were surprised by 0:20:38.240 --> 0:20:42.920 Trump in twenty sixteen. There was less surprise in twenty 0:20:43.119 --> 0:20:49.560 twenty four. But were you surprised based on your numbers? 0:20:51.119 --> 0:20:55.280 Well, surprised, yes, of course, But on election night, no, 0:20:56.240 --> 0:20:58.919 And you'll find I didn't poll in twenty sixteen. We 0:20:59.000 --> 0:21:03.640 had just started a transition new company after a non 0:21:03.720 --> 0:21:06.800 compete for a few years. I sold the original company, 0:21:07.040 --> 0:21:10.239 so we were not in the polling loop. But I 0:21:10.280 --> 0:21:15.240 was analyzing the trend lines in the well, the whole election, 0:21:15.600 --> 0:21:19.320 but particularly in the last ten days, and there was 0:21:19.440 --> 0:21:25.000 clearly a momentum against Hillary Clinton, a momentum towards Donald Trump. 0:21:25.320 --> 0:21:30.560 And I published a piece on Forbes in the early 0:21:30.640 --> 0:21:35.920 afternoon of election day saying, if anybody knows, if anybody 0:21:36.000 --> 0:21:39.800 claims that they know what's going to happen, they're lying 0:21:40.400 --> 0:21:43.119 because we don't know what's going to happen. There's a 0:21:43.160 --> 0:21:44.840 trend line here that I'm watching. 0:21:45.880 --> 0:21:49.920 Okay, couple of questions in twenty twenty four. You may 0:21:49.920 --> 0:21:52.720 not have done research, but you're an expert in this area. 0:21:53.280 --> 0:21:58.160 If Biden had stepped decide would a Democrat, if there 0:21:58.160 --> 0:22:04.159 was a primary process, would they have won? Secondarily, was 0:22:04.240 --> 0:22:08.000 Kamala af flawed candidate from minute one? 0:22:09.000 --> 0:22:12.760 Those are two very good questions, and we will be 0:22:12.840 --> 0:22:20.000 asking them for years. If Biden had stepped aside, and 0:22:20.119 --> 0:22:25.520 most importantly, had allowed for a primary system to develop 0:22:25.920 --> 0:22:29.080 and for candidates to be out there and for Democrats 0:22:29.119 --> 0:22:33.080 to have a real choice, it could have been a 0:22:33.119 --> 0:22:40.399 far different election. Was and in fact, we didn't see 0:22:41.040 --> 0:22:46.040 since a final break of those battle ground states, and 0:22:46.119 --> 0:22:49.119 many of them until the very end, you know, until 0:22:49.320 --> 0:22:54.600 a few days before those were competitive. Secondly, I thought 0:22:54.680 --> 0:22:58.520 she was a good candidate. But she had one hundred 0:22:58.560 --> 0:23:02.280 and seven days. Now, those of us who follow politics 0:23:02.359 --> 0:23:07.640 very closely, you know, knew Kamila Harris. Anew of Kamala 0:23:07.680 --> 0:23:12.600 Harris had followed her career. Yes, there were flaws that 0:23:13.000 --> 0:23:18.720 liberals would would not identify with her. Yes, there were flaws. 0:23:20.119 --> 0:23:27.119 I believe with Democrats and independence and public opinion about 0:23:27.200 --> 0:23:31.800 Gaza shifting that Kamala Harris may have done a bit 0:23:31.920 --> 0:23:36.000 better if she had shifted, and probably gotten more younger 0:23:36.840 --> 0:23:39.240 voters in the process and more. 0:23:39.680 --> 0:23:41.800 Black voters as well. 0:23:42.280 --> 0:23:47.120 But with that said, no, I don't I don't think 0:23:47.160 --> 0:23:52.080 that there were any built in flaws that in her 0:23:52.160 --> 0:23:57.000 persona or her career that may that pointed her out 0:23:57.040 --> 0:23:57.760 to be a loser. 0:23:58.640 --> 0:24:01.680 Well, I would say her fear failure in the previous 0:24:02.200 --> 0:24:07.560 presidential primary circuit to get even one delegate was indicative 0:24:07.560 --> 0:24:11.240 of me. But let me jump forward. Bill Clinton selected 0:24:11.280 --> 0:24:14.920 in nineteen ninety two, it's a disaster in nineteen ninety 0:24:14.960 --> 0:24:22.440 four congressional races. Then he famously triangulates based on information. 0:24:22.720 --> 0:24:26.720 My question here is not specific to Bill Clinton. To 0:24:26.880 --> 0:24:33.560 what degree do politicians make their decisions based on the polls? 0:24:34.760 --> 0:24:38.440 To what degree eighty. 0:24:40.400 --> 0:24:40.840 Plus. 0:24:42.720 --> 0:24:45.760 You know, no leader can afford to be. 0:24:47.280 --> 0:24:55.880 Totally ignoring the public. Will the vox popular. 0:24:57.080 --> 0:25:03.280 That's where you know, I think our president today has 0:25:03.320 --> 0:25:08.119 been playing very successfully to that hardcore base of MAGA. 0:25:09.359 --> 0:25:13.320 But there is evidence in the Reuters poll today that 0:25:13.440 --> 0:25:18.879 there's a chipping away of that built in you know, 0:25:19.000 --> 0:25:23.040 forty two percent that he Trump just gets for showing 0:25:23.119 --> 0:25:29.480 up and for continuing his style of campaigning. So I 0:25:29.560 --> 0:25:34.600 think that you know, it wasn't invented with Bill Clinton. 0:25:35.640 --> 0:25:39.000 George H. W. Bush, to be sure, had a briefing 0:25:39.040 --> 0:25:41.639 book with the latest polling numbers from the night before 0:25:41.960 --> 0:25:47.479 every single day of his presidency, and if Ronald Reagan didn't, 0:25:47.520 --> 0:25:51.760 then Jeffrey Deaver, is behind the scenes image maker and 0:25:52.119 --> 0:25:57.720 communications person, certainly was reading the polls. 0:25:58.480 --> 0:26:02.280 Now, these may be so questions compared to your statistics, 0:26:02.680 --> 0:26:05.639 but what do we know. You have these polls that 0:26:05.720 --> 0:26:10.480 are starting to lean against Trump. He does not seem 0:26:10.600 --> 0:26:15.480 to be changing his behavior. And in addition, there have 0:26:15.680 --> 0:26:22.240 been authoritarian tendencies we've never seen previously. So traditionally we 0:26:22.359 --> 0:26:25.639 might say the polls are against them, the person's in decline. 0:26:26.400 --> 0:26:29.800 But we have a unique situation with the way he's behaving. 0:26:31.960 --> 0:26:35.720 I could go through all the facts, but you know them. 0:26:35.760 --> 0:26:38.840 So is this a different thing or the poll if 0:26:38.880 --> 0:26:44.040 the public ultimately is such that he's going to lose out, 0:26:44.040 --> 0:26:48.320 his party, his mission, etc. Or can we say that 0:26:48.520 --> 0:26:52.320 this is a different landscape. You know, they're talking about 0:26:52.400 --> 0:26:55.879 him controlling the elections. There are all of these things, 0:26:56.160 --> 0:26:58.159 those supersede poles. 0:27:00.320 --> 0:27:02.200 There are other variables. Yeah. 0:27:02.520 --> 0:27:06.679 Now, just by way of context, let's understand that Barack 0:27:06.720 --> 0:27:11.199 Obama won with majorities in two thousand and eight and 0:27:11.240 --> 0:27:17.000 twenty twelve. In between, he lost almost record numbers of 0:27:17.040 --> 0:27:22.119 seats for his party in twenty ten in twenty fourteen, 0:27:23.560 --> 0:27:29.119 his success did not translate into his party's success. In fact, 0:27:29.160 --> 0:27:35.160 he lost numerous state legislative seats and majorities during that 0:27:35.280 --> 0:27:39.359 time period. So back to President Trump. If the election 0:27:39.480 --> 0:27:45.159 were held today today, the Republicans would probably take a beating. 0:27:45.400 --> 0:27:50.800 What do I base that on? For starters, that semi 0:27:51.200 --> 0:27:56.000 artificial reading that we take the congressional generic who was 0:27:56.080 --> 0:27:58.080 to vote for in your district today? 0:27:58.080 --> 0:27:58.840 The Democrat of. 0:27:58.840 --> 0:28:05.680 The Republican We know that Democrats in the polls need 0:28:05.760 --> 0:28:08.320 to have a four and a half to five point 0:28:08.520 --> 0:28:12.840 lead that's the threshold, and from there we can translate 0:28:12.920 --> 0:28:17.480 that into gaining seats in Congress. Today they hold about 0:28:17.480 --> 0:28:21.719 a five and a half point lead. But we also 0:28:21.880 --> 0:28:32.560 know that in eleven fifteen special elections for state legislature 0:28:33.000 --> 0:28:38.720 or Congress, or mayor or courts throughout the country, that 0:28:38.880 --> 0:28:42.360 Democrats have won every one of those seats, and that 0:28:42.400 --> 0:28:45.480 there are other elections that have taken place where Democrats 0:28:45.520 --> 0:28:53.640 have outperformed Republicans in solid or outperformed their previous election 0:28:53.840 --> 0:28:58.719 to that seat or the president's vote count in that 0:28:58.880 --> 0:29:03.320 state or district. And so evidence is pointing to if 0:29:03.320 --> 0:29:06.320 the election were held today, we'd be looking I think 0:29:06.360 --> 0:29:11.040 at solid Democratic victories that in fact, there are a 0:29:11.200 --> 0:29:13.959 number of states that weren't even on the radar screen 0:29:14.280 --> 0:29:17.280 that are now on the radar screen as possible Democratic 0:29:17.320 --> 0:29:21.440 pickups in the Senate and also the House. But Bob, 0:29:21.480 --> 0:29:29.960 the election is not today, and one miscalculation that may 0:29:30.160 --> 0:29:33.920 very well hurt the president is not only that Reuter's 0:29:34.040 --> 0:29:40.280 number that, instead of basking in the success of killing 0:29:40.320 --> 0:29:44.760 the Ayatola and numerous other leaders, only twenty seven percent 0:29:45.480 --> 0:29:50.520 support the president forty nine percent oppose, but it's it's 0:29:50.680 --> 0:29:56.400 also in the sense that what are Americans talking about 0:29:58.120 --> 0:30:01.000 the prices at the grocery store and the prices at 0:30:01.000 --> 0:30:05.480 the gasoline pump, And interestingly, the prices at the gasoline 0:30:05.520 --> 0:30:10.040 pump had actually come down and been coming down. Projections 0:30:10.080 --> 0:30:13.840 are very soon we're going to see the cost of 0:30:13.880 --> 0:30:18.600 oil barrel going up dramatically, and probably at the gas 0:30:18.600 --> 0:30:20.000 pump as well. 0:30:20.160 --> 0:30:23.840 Let's go back. Why did Democrats need that four and 0:30:23.840 --> 0:30:25.200 a half percent margin. 0:30:26.160 --> 0:30:27.960 Oh, that is the way. 0:30:29.600 --> 0:30:35.520 That districts are reapportioned or gerrymandered. You know that in 0:30:35.640 --> 0:30:40.480 states every ten years, the mandate from the courts are 0:30:40.640 --> 0:30:46.600