E-mail a friendJennifer Duffy
airdate November 3, 2008
Jennifer Duffy has been described as one of the best political handicappers in the U.S. As senior editor for The Cook Political Report—which The New York Times calls "a newsletter that both parties regard as authoritative"—she's responsible for national senate and governors races. Duffy formerly served as press secretary for the National Republican Senatorial Committee and as the newsletter's first assistant editor. She's also provided off-air analysis for NBC News on election nights from '96 through '06.
Cook Political Report senior editor predicts what will happen during the congressional races and discusses the uphill battle that Sen. McCain is facing. (3:47)
Full interview. (9:28)
Jennifer Duffy
Tavis: Jennifer Duffy is a senior editor at the "Cook Political Report" who specializes in Senate races around the country. One of the big questions tomorrow night is how many seats Democrats will pick up in the Senate. Jennifer Duffy joins us tonight from New York. Jennifer, nice to have you on the program.
Jennifer Duffy: Thanks, Tavis. Nice to be here.
Tavis: The pollsters, with all due respect, have been so wrong in this election season about so many things. Was that arrogant of me, to suggest that one of the big questions is how many seats the Democrats will pick up?
Duffy: Not at all. At this point, I'm saying they'll pick up somewhere between eight and 10.
Tavis: Eight and 10?
Duffy: Eight and 10 seats.
Tavis: And for those who don't know the numbers now, they are what?
Duffy: Democrats have a one-seat majority - 51 to 49 - and of that 51, two are Independents that caucus with them.
Tavis: Before I walk through these key states and some of these tight and tough races, your sense of why the Senate is in a position now to pick up this many seats. This will be a huge gain for them, obviously.
Duffy: It's a huge gain, particularly following an election where they picked up six seats, which is another pretty significant gain. Republicans walked into this election cycle at a disadvantage. They have to defend 23 of their seats; Democrats only have to defend 12. While Democrats talked all their 12 incumbents into running for reelection, Republicans have five open seats - three of them that they are very likely to lose.
And then finally, they are, if it's at all possible, running in a political environment that is more hostile to them than 2006 was. So the field is really tilted in Democrats' favor almost anywhere you look at it.
Tavis: To your earlier point, Jennifer - you made so many, but just one of those I want to grab a hold to right quick - to your earlier point that there were five Republicans who decided not to run for reelection, is it this time around that the Democrats are really that good, that they've handled their business that well in the Senate, or the fact that they're stealing some seats that Republicans are walking away from?
Duffy: Well, I think that when you look at some of these open seats, like Virginia, for example, where John Warner is retiring; New Mexico, where Pete Domenici is retiring, if those two incumbents had run, Republicans certainly would be favored to win them.
Now, are Democrats doing a pretty good job? Obviously, voters don't think so, necessarily; they just tend to place more blame on Republicans. Congress' approval rating is a whopping 12 percent these days.
Tavis: Give me your sense of a story I've been reading a lot lately, and that is some advice that I saw people giving John McCain in the final days of this campaign, given that he was down - is down - in pretty much every poll, every survey, every study; by one percentage or another, he is down.
And I've been reading some advice others have been giving him, Jennifer, about how he ought to strategize to make sure that he goes to places that help Republicans hold on to some of these seats as opposed to just picking places where he's staking his claim on his presidential race. What do you make of that strategy, and is there any evidence that John McCain has been doing that over the last few days?
Duffy: Not entirely - spending some time in North Carolina, which could help some down ballot races there. But really, here's what McCain is up against - Senate Republicans, to a lesser extent, in the House, have abandoned John McCain. They're out there running TV ads, including one in Louisiana that says, point blank, face it - Barack Obama's going to be our next president. We can't give the United States Senate a blank check for Democrats.
I've seen those ads running in North Carolina, in Georgia, in Oregon. That is Senate Republicans' new message, which tells me that they have all but given up on John McCain.
Tavis: So since there's so much talk, obviously, about the race between McCain and Obama, how important are these House and Senate races against the backdrop that Democrats might, then, be given the keys to pretty much everything in Washington?
Duffy: It is important. Obviously, they'll have a very healthy majority in the House. We're estimating that Democrats will gain another 25 to 30 seats. The key in the Senate, in the minds of many Democrats, is getting to this number of 60 seats, because if they have 60 seats, they can theoretically prevent Republicans from filibustering legislation.
Frankly, 60 is a pretty arbitrary number. Things are a lot more complicated than that. You could even argue if they had 62 seats, they might not be able to stop every Republican filibuster.
However, to give Democrats their due, if they get those 60 seats, which means picking up nine seats tomorrow night, it will be a major psychological blow to Republicans.
Tavis: Before I walk to some of these specific states, as I promised earlier, give me some historical context for this. When is the last time something like this happened for Democrats in the House and the Senate?
Duffy: Well, you'd have to go back to the '50s to look at back-to-back, really gruesome elections for a political party. The last time the Democratic Party had 60 seats in the Senate was in 1978. The last time any party had lost substantial seats in the house, putting 2006 aside, was obviously 1994.
Tavis: You mentioned a couple states already in our conversation, Jennifer. Let me just start with the ones you mentioned already and ask you to top-line what's happening in these states as we speak, vis-à-vis these Senate races. We'll start in Louisiana.
Duffy: Mary Landrieu, Democratic senator, was really the only vulnerable Democrat this cycle. She has run a very good campaign, she has not let her opponent, John Kennedy, who was actually a Democrat until about 15 months ago, get much traction here. She should win fairly comfortably, which for Mary Landrieu could be 52 percent. She's always, always just eked out victories.
Tavis: For someone, though, who has been so out front, so aggressive, to her credit, on Katrina and all of the issues that she's raised about that, how is she in a tight race to begin with?
Duffy: Louisiana is one of the only states in the country that's actually tilting towards Republicans, and this is something that started pre-Katrina. You saw in 2007 that they elected a Republican governor, elected some Republicans to the legislature. This is a state that's changing.
Landrieu has always struggled in her races, partly because she didn't run very good campaigns. They've corrected a lot of that, but Katrina really is one of the reasons she's in decent shape. She now has a much more substantive record to run on than she's ever had.
Tavis: You mentioned Virginia, and I come back to that because there's so much talk about whether or not Obama can steal Virginia as a Democrat, which hasn't happened in god knows when. Mark Warner's race - talk about it.
Duffy: Well, Mark Warner got into this race as soon as the seat was open. It wasn't much of a race. Republicans didn't really get the candidate they wanted, they got another former governor, Governor Jim Gilmore, who ran what one can only kindly describe as a lackluster presidential race. But I think the real question in Virginia is whether Barack Obama will ride Mark Warner's coattails into office.
Tavis: (Laughs) We will see whether or not Obama does, in fact, do that tomorrow. In Minnesota, Senator Norm Coleman, Republican, running against a guy we've all heard of and seen for years named Al Franken.
Duffy: I don't know a strategist on either side of the aisle who would bet more than a dime on this race. It's very, very close right now, mostly because there's a third party candidate in this race - a guy named Dean Barkley, who has the distinction of having served in the Senate for 52 days back in 2002.
Barkley is getting about 18 percent of the vote, and that is going to impact one of them. I think it's going to be a close race. I don't think we're going to have the answer early. It's anybody's game.
Tavis: Finally, in Kentucky, the minority leader in the Senate is in a tight race, and Democrats would love to steal this one, because you're not just knocking off a senator, you're knocking off a senator in leadership.
Duffy: Well, exactly, and this would be a huge trophy for them. Not only would they leave the Republican conference in some disarray, but they would avenge the loss in 2004 of Tom Daschle in South Dakota, who was the Democratic leader then. There is very few people in this world who's a better political strategist and run better campaigns than Mitch McConnell.
His opponent has some pretty high negative ratings - his name is Bruce Lunsford, he's a businessman. I think McConnell's going to eke it out, but 51 percent may be all he gets.
Tavis: So again, repeat for me again the numbers you expect Democrats to pick up in the Senate and the House.
Duffy: I think Democrats in the Senate are going to pick up eight to 10 seats; they need nine for that magic 60. In the House, we're looking at 25 to 30 seats, although we've had strategists today predict even higher losses.
Tavis: Jennifer, nice to have you on. Thanks for your insight; we'll be watching, of course, tomorrow night to see, in fact, how on point you are around those numbers. But it should be a fascinating night, and Jennifer, we're glad to have you on the program.
Duffy: Thank you, Tavis.
Tavis: It's my pleasure.
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