Amid Final Election Push, Amy Walter and Stu Rothenberg Answered Your Questions

AMY WALTER: Yeah, I think that's a fantastic question. And the short answer, of course, is that we don't know. Either what we're assuming is that this is 31 percent of the total, but that the actual total - but it doesn't mean that the actual total votes cast will be 31 percent higher than in 2004. So I think that's the danger is that there are some assumptions being made that this is going to suggest the exponential level of turnout.

We don't know whether this is people who are saying, I want to make sure that these votes get in the bank now so that they don't have to worry on Election Day about being caught in long lines or unable to actually get that vote in on that day. But we do know some important things for Barack Obama - or some important things, especially for Barack Obama - in that most of these votes being cast, at least in a lot of these early states, are being cast by Democrats. You know, in places like Georgia or North Carolina, the number of African-Americans that are voting makes up a bigger proportion of the vote than it has in the elections, typically.

But I do think we have to wait to see what the election day looks like, because the early voter profile is not necessarily the profile - we don't know if that early voter is somebody that's new to the process and wouldn't have voted on election day, or if they simply are someone that was planning on voting all along - they just got their vote in a few days ahead of time.

RAY SUAREZ: Stu, this time around, early voting is allowed by 36 states. You've seen on television pictures of lines around the block and venues that just can't hold the number of early voters. Whether it ends up adding to the overall number of voters or not, does it make the job of covering elections just a whole different discipline, now?

STUART ROTHENBERG: Well, it makes it more difficult to cover and handicap elections. It also, Ray, makes it more difficult to run campaigns. I was just talking to a pollster, who happened to be a Republican pollster, the other day, who was bemoaning the early voting, not because he thought that the Democrats were turning out in bigger numbers - although they seem to be in this early voting - but because it makes it difficult to figure out when do you spend your money in a campaign. When do you deliver your most important message?

In the old days - I'm talking 20 years ago; ancient history, I guess, in politics and technology - in the old days, campaigns would go to Election Day. They would buy TV time starting with Election Day back. They'd save their best messages for maybe a week out before Election Day. And you could figure out when people were really watching the election and then know when they were going to cast their vote. Now, they're starting to vote weeks before the general election, and it makes it more difficult for the campaigns to figure out when they're going to spend their resources.

And I think it does make it more difficult for us, because, here we are, talking about the McCain and the Obama campaigns as if what they did today is affecting the entire electorate: Part of the electorate has already voted! So it's hard for us to evaluate.

This is a relatively new and developing phenomenon - early voting - we didn't have a lot of early voting 25, 30 years ago, and more and more states are adding it to their process, and I think it does complicate things. And, you know, if you voted two weeks ago and a big issue develops today, how are you going to feel? Maybe you would say, boy, if I had known that, I might have voted differently or I'm unsure. So it really changes the whole dynamic for voters, for candidates, and for journalists.

RAY SUAREZ: And if you're going to spend money on television, there's about 25 percent of the universe of voters who are - by definition - unmoved by what you have to say, now, because they've already voted.

STUART ROTHENBERG: Exactly.

AMY WALTER: Yeah, although the theory is that those people who have already voted were people who probably made up their mind long before and that they were unlikely to be moved by anything but really significant events.

So the most partisan of partisans - that's the assumption - the most partisan of partisans are the ones who turn out. These are people who are not the persuadable voters and then - theoretically - the persuadable people are still in the mix.

RAY SUAREZ: We got a lot of people writing in about what's happening in what used to be thought of as conservative states, or were assumed to be conservative states in earlier elections. Dale writes from Minneapolis: "What's happening in North Dakota? There have been very few polls in this reliably red state, but many pundits predict Obama might actually carry it." Stu?

STUART ROTHENBERG: Well, there are polls, so it's hard to know, but, yes, we've been watching North Dakota and seeing a poll here or there and hear some anecdotal evidence.

North Dakota has actually behaved somewhat differently than South Dakota. South Dakota is traditionally rock-red Republican in presidential balloting and North Dakota has a somewhat more populist political heritage. But North Dakota and Montana in particular appear to be flirting - at least flirting, whether they actually embrace and marry Barack Obama between now and the 4^th is unclear - but clearly they're giving him a closer look.

We're generally seeing independent kinds of voters taking longer looks at Democratic candidates, whether it's for Congress or Senator Obama. I think this is just one of the states that maybe we've lumped it in with the rest of the Upper Midwest a little too often. It is certainly Republican-leaning, but if you look, both U.S. Senators from North Dakota are Democrats, and there is a strong, populist, rural tradition there.

RAY SUAREZ: Keith writes from Ackley, Iowa: "Obama is strong here in lily-white and culturally conservative Iowa. Yet Obama has struggled among white voters elsewhere." Amy, why?

AMY WALTER: I think there are a couple of reasons here. The first is, of course, that Iowa has swung back and forth between Democrats and Republicans at the presidential level. We saw this as one of the handful of states that went from blue to red or red to blue between 2000 and 2004. In the case of Iowa, it went blue in 2000 and then red in 2004.

I think you have a number of issues here working to Barack Obama's benefit. The first is the Iraq war, which was something that he obviously was able to connect with and - with voters there early on in the process - especially with Democratic voters in the primaries. I think that was a key issue for him.

You also have a state that, as Stu pointed out in North Dakota, Iowa, too, has a more populist heritage. You also have, you know, some significant college populations - especially around Iowa City. Des Moines is known as a place where you're seeing Democrats getting elected from there, which is Pope County. So Democrats have been doing well there.

STUART ROTHENBERG: Can I add one more thing? I don't want to interrupt you, Amy, but you'd certainly agree with this, I'm - if not, bite my head off - feel free. But Barack Obama spent a year in Iowa, meeting voters, talking to voters, organizing in the state, so I think many have seen him up close and become comfortable with him, while voters in other areas haven't. So I think the fact that that was such a focus of his early efforts has paid dividends for him.

AMY WALTER: This is what McCain had hoped would happen with - of course, with New Hampshire. With the amount of effort that he had been putting in there and yet, what we've seen, certainly in the most recent polls is, that state is now slipping further and further away from McCain.

AMY WALTER: Well, I think - I would certainly offer a different perspective on this, which is to say that cultural issues have become really defining for so many voters and for some people, the - one person's cultural views are considered narrow-minded and you know, and another's are considered more broad and so I think it's very dangerous to get into those sorts of assumptions.

But it is clear that for many voters in states that - like - were at one time Democratic, for many voters who at one point might have put economic issues sort of at the top of their list of concerns - that cultural issues have trumped that. I think what we're looking at right now for Barack Obama is, yes, he's hoping to do better among college-educated voters than traditional Democrats do. Traditionally, Democrats do much better among high school or less than high-school educated voters and Republicans do, although George Bush in 2004 ran pretty well in that capacity as well.

But for Obama, his strength, really, comes down to three things: one is the strength among African Americans, the strength among younger voters, the strength among Latino voters. And we have to wait and see in terms whether he's able to improve his standing among some of these other groups that have traditionally gone one way or the other.

STUART ROTHENBERG: Right, Ray, could I just add that I think if the person who wrote that questions checks into polling data and there's a lot of polling they have done that breaks out people by education and religion and income. But if you look at the education stuff, you'll see for Democrats, kind of a bimodal distribution of Democrats do very well among voters at the lower end of the educational level and at the highest end of the educational level.

So people with the post-graduate degrees, Democrats do very well. Republicans do quite well with college educated, some college, and so I'm not sure it's a function of intelligence. It may be, in part, a function of the kind of formal education and frankly, that the kinds of people who go and get Ph.D.'s in sociology and English tend to be more liberal. So I think there are other factors that explain some of the educational distribution of voters.

RAY SUAREZ: Al writes from Falmouth, Maine: "Do you have any concern that the polls could be off by a large margin given the swings in some polls and all the guesswork that goes into them with cell phones or who a likely voter is and so on?" Stu, have you been kept up nights by whether the polls are right?

STUART ROTHENBERG: I have nightmares about it Ray, yeah, absolutely. We don't know what percent of the electorate's going to be younger voters, African Americans. We have no, you know, guessing on - of Republican turnout. I was just talking to another pollster just other day who - often, these pollsters, when they do a sample, they weight to a certain distribution - what percentage of the electorate, for example, they think is going to be Democrat or Republican or African American and a lot of this is guesswork.

Look, I don't think I'm going to be surprised on the presidential race because even though we see some wide discrepancies in the national poll numbers, when you take the national numbers and you overlay that, the stuff we're seeing in particular swing states or what were supposed to be swing states, whether it's Colorado or Virginia or Florida or Ohio or North Carolina or Missouri and then you see where the parties are advertising and the candidates are going.

I'm pretty comfortable but Amy and I have a history, also, of doing House and Senate races and there are a whole bunch that I'm scratching my head. I've got conflicting polling and I'm thinking, what? How can this possibly be? How can the Democrats in the Louisiana Senate race tell me that Mary Landrieu is up big, double digits, solid lead. She's sure to win and the Republicans have the race at one point. How is that possible? And so in the presidential right now, I'm pretty comfortable with my view that Senator Obama's going to win but on the congressional, yeah, I've got plenty of heartburns still to come.

RAY SUAREZ: Amy?

AMY WALTER: I agree with Stu's point and the real question of crisis is not so much the national polls, where we see these wild swings between - some have Barack Obama up by 11 and then another one will have him up by two points. But the state polls really tell the story and you know, I think what we're all looking for is trends and so if what you see is the fact that there has not been a poll in Colorado yet, even as it may be tightening. When you don't see a poll that has John McCain ahead in Colorado, when you don't see a poll that has John McCain ahead in Virginia, you can start to make a pretty clear guess - I think it's more than a guess that this state is leaning toward Barack Obama.

What is problematic is when one poll shows one candidate ahead and another poll shows another candidate ahead. Stu's right. There are some Senate races, especially places like Minnesota, where we've seen all kinds of polling with one candidate ahead by five points and then the next day, a poll comes out and the other candidate's ahead by a couple of points. This, to me, I think - I still think we're in the realm here of it's just simply a question of the margin, whether you believe Barack Obama is ahead by a significant amount or a smaller amount.

RAY SUAREZ: As Stu mentioned, there are some terrific Senate races this year. And I'm wondering whether the status of these individual states as presumably for McCain or presumably for Obama ends up having much effect, let's say, in Mississippi or in Minnesota or in a race that has been very tied all along in North Carolina? Does the fact that, for instance, in North Carolina, Barack Obama's been putting a lot of effort in there and spending a lot of money there, work against Elizabeth Dole, the Republican incumbent? Stu?

STUART ROTHENBERG: Well, Ray, I've never been a huge believer - or I shouldn't say that. I've been concerned that coattails are often exaggerated. But I must admit I see some evidence, this cycle of places, where Republican weakness at the top of the ticket, that's John McCain, causes his candidates - candidates for the Senate or the House to get lots of votes of people who are voting for Barack Obama. Now I think people know how a ticket's split and your audience is very educated and they know that if you can vote for one party on one office and then switch to another party.

The problem is when one of the guys is running way ahead, it just forces a lot of people to switch their tickets and it may be easier for some people to say, well, I want change. I'm voting for Obama, I'll continue to vote Democratic down the ballot even though kind of normally, I would switch over.

So for example, I think McCain's growing weakness in New Hampshire has turned out to be a significant problem for John Sununu. I think that McCain's weakness, in my view, weakness in Georgia probably reflects the state's - the Democratic dent of normally swing Republican voters and that's, you know, maybe that's making it more difficult for Republican Saxby Chambliss in Georgia to be re-elected.

I don't know about - whether that's the case with Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina, though. The Democratic Senate Campaign Committee spent millions of dollars early on criticizing, attacking, demonizing, destroying Senator Dole as ineffective, it never comes back to the state, so I think more than anything else, it's that Democratic message that it's worked in North Carolina. But I do think there is other places where the Obama strength and the McCain weakness is having an effect and making it harder for Republican candidates.

AMY WALTER: I do absolutely agree and it does go to a question of turnout. I mean, we've heard this argument now for some time that I do remember the discussion about the Elizabeth Dole race early one, which was that Dole had an inherent weakness, all those things that Stu pointed out that, you know, while she was well liked in the state, she wasn't particularly well known. She's too closely tied to Bush. She hasn't spent enough time back in the state. She can be portrayed as somebody who's, you know, sort of part of the Washington establishment. But I think what helps somebody like Kay Hagan is the fact that the turnout dynamics go completely in her favor.

This is also probably helping somebody like Bev Perdue, who's running for governor there who I think, in a "normal year," an election where we did not have a turnout, especially among African Americans as high as it now. We just talked about early voting a few minutes ago but in North Carolina, as in Georgia, we've seen that more African Americans now turning out. They're making up a larger percentage of the early vote than they have made up traditional vote. I think without those factors in play, that you know, these are races - maybe not for Elizabeth Dole, maybe the cake had been baked as Stu had pointed out, by the attacks that have been going on.

This is one of the most expensive Senate races in the country. But I think for the governor's race, where it was not that long ago that the Republican was looking as if he could pull off an upset here. The turnout factor, I think, is the thing that can help Democrats more than anything.

RAY SUAREZ: Pursuant to Stu's point about ticket-splitting. If the preponderance of polls are to be believed, there are a fair numbers of McCain-Landrieu voters in Louisiana, a fair number of Obama-Coleman voters in Minnesota, a fair number of Obama-Rossi voters in Washington, where they've got a donny brook of a governor's race there - a rematch of the 2004 race between Christine Gregoire and Dino Rossi.

AMY WALTER: Well, I mean, I think you have to look at polling and when we hear things - so-called generic ballot or the generic can - a generic Democrat versus a generic Republican. If you are an unknown Republican, i.e., that there's just no identity to you or if you're known for the wrong reasons, you're notorious know, you have baggage of any sort. You're in big trouble in this election.

In 2002 for example, it didn't matter so much if a candidate knew that much about you as a Republican - the Republican brand was a very strong one.

Now it's not. So the Republicans who I think can win even in an environment like this are the ones who have established their own identity. Maine's a perfect example, too. Susan Collins; surviving a year like this while her colleagues in traditionally Republican states lose looks very odd on its face, so you recognize how much Susan Collins has done to establish an identity there. Dino Rossi is the same example, although a lot of it goes back to the fact that Christine Gregoire has never sort of been able to connect with the voters in Washington state in the same way that some other Democratic candidates have.

The fact that Mitch Daniels is doing as well in Indiana, even as McCain is struggling there and these are folks who have their own unique identity, are ones who've never run a tough race, that's why you're seeing some house candidates - some house candidates who are in some big, big trouble, who are incumbents, who've depending on the lean of the district to help them. That's going to be a problem.

STUART ROTHENBERG: Can I just tell one other factor that's here - I mean, I agree with everything Amy said. There was another factor down ballot that makes a problem for some of these Republicans.

Not only do they have the fact that their brand is bad, that Senator McCain is not running as well in many places as we assumed, but financially, Democrats at the congressional level have the same kind of advantage that Senator Obama has at the presidential level and spending down the stretch here.

There's a wonderful website. It's by a group - a campaign finance institute - I think it's cfinst.org. It's a nonpartisan group and they're tracking the independent spending in all the races. And Mark Kirk is a very popular, very capable, moderate Republican who represents a suburban Chicago congressional district. His opponent is Dan Seals, also a very good candidate, very attractive, very articulate. So far, the Democrat congressional campaign committee has spent $2,030,964 on behalf of Dan Seals as the Democratic candidate.

So not only is Mark Kirk trying to defend himself, he's got Democrat groups pouring in lots of money - all legally - I'm not suggesting any of this, but this is the way the law works and he's got a problem at the top of the ticket. So you talk about ticket splitting. You not only have to have a good reputation, you have to have raised a lot of money and you have to - if the Democrats are pouring in money against you, you've got to swim awfully fast and awfully hard against an awfully strong current.