Political Watchers Answered Your Questions on Battleground Virginia

CATHY LEWIS: Well, it really is. And I would say that I've done this program for 12 years, but I've been in this market for 26 or so. I don't think I've ever seen the amount of presidential attention - well, I know I've never seen the amount of presidential attention that we've had shortly after, I guess it's just last week, in fact, last Wednesday, Barack Obama was over at a local high school here not a mile and a half from where our station is doing a news conference on education profiles. And I think if I were watching the commonwealth and if I were employed by the Obama campaign, I would probably say he needs to do more of that.

But when he goes into Southwest Virginia, which may be a - I'd be taking Mark Warner with me. I would be having Mark Warner open doors down there and I would be appearing everywhere with him and having him really do that thing that he does very well, which is translating his relationships and sort of lending or extending his own credibility there because I think that's probably what may be helpful to him in Southwest Virginia.

Obama is running pretty impressively here in Hampton Roads at the moment. The latest polling data I saw, I think I saw one poll that said that Obama is up by 13 points in Hampton Roads. I was very surprised by that it was that much. I knew it was very close, but I was kind of surprised by that.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right. Since you've just cited a poll, I'm going to ask a poll question, polling question, that - because we often get these and I think people do wonder about it. This is from Colleen in Portland, Oregon.

She says, "Pollsters have been reporting that McCain and Obama are neck-and-neck with voters for the presidential election. But from my own personal experience, I don't know anyone who is voting for McCain. How accurate do you think these polls are, especially considering that, one, they only call land lines and many younger voters only have cell phones and, two, due to caller ID, et cetera, many people like me do not answer their phones?" This is one of those, you know, how good are polls and do we all in this business and your businesses over-rely on them. Cathy, do you want to start with that one?

CATHY LEWIS: Sure, I'd be glad to. I can tell you that I do get calls at home from pollsters. I've gotten several of them and, of course, we immediately say we're a media household and so that's sort of the end of that. One of the things I know that both camps are really looking at in this community is youth voter registration. And I think your viewer is right about the ways in which we really don't know how that tale will be told for younger voters because you're right; a lot of them don't have land lines.

There has been a huge get-out-the-vote effort here and I suspect that a lot of those folks may not be reflected in the polling data. And so, you know, the thing we often do whenever we cite polls, certainly in the context of our broadcast, is to say, you know, a poll is nothing more than one moment in time and that even - my gosh, Mark, you know so much more about this than I do, but I'm told that people who look at these things really look at them for trends over days and over several polls.

MARK ROZELL: Right.

JEFFREY BROWN: Go ahead, Mark. How do you look at it? It's interesting how many more there are now or it seems there are many more.

MARK ROZELL: That was the other question I think you asked, which is, do we all rely too much on polls? My answer is yes. I think there's just so much more to tell about campaigns than the horse race.

And it's a long-standing criticism of political observers that we're all obsessed with the game of politics: who's winning, who's losing, the strategies of the candidates, what this or that candidate is doing to increase his or her chances in the latest polls. And so I understand the frustration of many voters who I think really care most about, how is this election going to affect me and my life?

JEFFREY BROWN: Do you see that happening this time?

MARK ROZELL: I do. And I think Cathy - we were just speaking about this before we decided to take this interview - that there is such a serious level of interest in the public in this campaign that neither one of us has ever seen it this intense before.

And it's people asking, how is it going to matter to me and my life whether this or that candidate wins? Don't you think, Cathy, that people are interested way beyond the horserace and the fascination of who might win or lose; it's about how this campaign will affect them.

CATHY LEWIS: And I'll tell you, I also sense some frustration with some of that horserace coverage in our community from the standpoint that, you know, when you look at the fact that the major news organizations have these tremendously large news holes to fill and there frankly just may not be all that much going on, that - or what is going on requires some real depth and effort to report - that the polling data is easy to report. And I think that's a piece of why we have so much of it.

But I will tell you that in this community, what I'm hearing from people who call in to the broadcast is a real hunger for issues conversation. Today, in fact, this very week on our broadcast, we're doing a week of shows about education in the community. And one of the things we've included in this program is what are the presidential candidates' positions on education and what will they do that will be different or the same. So I do think people are really hungry for that. They want to know what's happening with the housing market.

A lot of our folks in this community are military and I've been really surprised by the number of people that I've heard all over the ranks and rates and all over the age and demographic spectra that are talking about this issues of what this election means in terms of the conduct of the war and where we go from here. And you can understand that because a lot of people in this community have done multiple deployments. So those issues are always very important in this community.

We have a question from Katarina in Silver Spring, Maryland: "How do the youth outreach strategies and actions of the two major parties and candidates compare in Virginia?" Mark, you're on a college campus yourself. What do you see happening?

MARK ROZELL: Well, very similar here to other college and university campuses around the country: young, college-aged people, but college attenders in that age group are very enthusiastic about Obama, in particular. He's doing extremely well among these students.

But I think it's important to point out that college-attending young adults is not the young-adult voting population overall. You know, I haven't seen the latest data, but I think it's maybe somewhere around 55, 60 percent of people in the college-aged bracket actually attend or have attended college. So you've got a big segment of the so-called youth vote that is not college attending and is more divided between the two candidates, I understand, you know, not as strongly for Obama as the college students are.

But, yes, on college campuses - I do lecturing elsewhere - I've sense there's a real enthusiasm for his candidacy. But, of course, the concern for Obama is that this is a notoriously low-turnout voting bloc. So he has to energize that population because they are strongly behind him, but they're not reliable in terms of how well they turn out.

JEFFREY BROWN: So do you see a big effort to get out that vote?

MARK ROZELL: I do, I do. And, in fact, there were some stories today in the news about in Virginia, on Virginia campuses and statewide, that the state registrar is running out of registration material.

JEFFREY BROWN: Right. That's what Moses Wilson said in our - said to me, I was - he thought that was a good sign for the Obama campaign.

MARK ROZELL: You know, it's good anecdotal evidence on the ground that people are seeing that there is a huge upsurge in interest in this campaign, many more people registering. And the people who do the registering are having trouble keeping up with the demand. It's a nice thing to see in American politics for a change, isn't it?

CATHY LEWIS: It's a happy problem, no question about it.

MARK ROZELL: Yeah.

JEFFREY BROWN: Cathy, what would you add? Are you sensing more interest? And what are you seeing in terms of getting out the vote, the registering of those people?

CATHY LEWIS: Well, I think I would absolutely echo what Mark said. I had already heard that before about Hampton, the fact that they were running out of registering paperwork and whatnot. And I certainly see that all over the place.

I don't spend as much time on college campuses, clearly, as Mark does. But my sense from my call volume is that there is a lot of interest in Barack Obama on the college campus.

JEFFREY BROWN: We had a few questions about ads and the role they're playing in Virginia. Jamie, in California: "What kinds of ads are being shown in Virginia right now to sway voters?" And Tim in Richmond says "Virginia has moved toward the blue over the last few statewide elections. I, for one, voted Dole; but since then, have voted Democratic. To what degree do you see negative ads trying to erode Obama's position in Virginia now?"

MARK ROZELL: What's interesting is the extent to which candidates are actually running ads in Virginia, which has traditionally been a non-competitive state at the presidential level. And I've noticed that one cannot turn on the television and not be inundated with television ad after television ad by both of the candidates. I'm not sure the candidates are running distinctly different ads in Virginia as opposed to much of the ad campaigns that they're doing elsewhere.

So we see a lot of ads with McCain emphasizing his experience, the negative ads that we all have seen about Obama's celebrity status, supposedly. Obama's been running a number of ads linking McCain to Bush, picturing them together, emphasizing the extent to which McCain has voted for Bush's policies. I'm not sure that it's distinctly different in Virginia. Cathy, do you have any different sense than I do?

CATHY LEWIS: Yeah, I would agree with that. I think the volume of ads on the air is - the only job I would love to have more than my own right now is a sales rep at a local television station handling political accounts, because I think it's going to be a very big, a very big fourth quarter for them.

JEFFREY BROWN: Not used to that - not used to that in Virginia, huh?

CATHY LEWIS: Not at all. And I would say the only thing I would add to that is that - the one thing I would add is that at the moment, you know, we also have a Senate race, which has also gotten linked to this presidential race.

We have Mark Warner, the former governor, running against another former governor - Gilmore. Mark Warner succeeded Jim Gilmore in the governor's office. That's been very interesting too because I would say - and Mark, I wonder if you would agree with this - certainly, in this area, we are seeing a lot of ads around that, even Mark Warner certainly has a pretty respectable lead at the moment. But I saw a Gilmore ad the other day that had a photograph of Mark Warner and Barack Obama, and the linkage was around tax increases. So you just see the sort of piggybacking thing going on.

JEFFREY BROWN: What do you - do you see that, Mark? And you know, I mean, it's actually interesting with - we were talking about Mark Warner earlier - how much of a factor is that in the presidential campaign in Virginia?

MARK ROZELL: Yeah, that's something not a lot of people have really talked about as a factor in Virginia that we have a Senate campaign with an enormously popular former governor who is running - by the polls I've seen - 25, 30 points ahead of another former governor.

So Mark Warner, the Democrat, is considered way, way out ahead in this campaign. So there is some talk of the possibility of reverse coattails, that Mark Warner's popularity will in turn actually help Barack Obama in Virginia. And certainly Mark Warner is hugely outspending Republican candidate Jim Gilmore in this race. And so that's just helping to get the Democratic message out generally much more in Virginia than would be the case otherwise. So that's a marginal factor, but one that could be important in the end if Virginia turns out to be very, very close.

CATHY LEWIS: You know, Mark, that's such a great point. And I'm reminded when you were saying that of some of the Warner spots that I've seen on recently that really seem to focus on the numbers.

First of all, they feature prominent Republicans who are saying that the state was in fiscal crisis when Mark Warner came in and he worked across the aisle to make things happen. I mean, they really are sort of positioning that whole bipartisan argument. I guess you've seen those in Northern Virginia as well?

MARK ROZELL: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. And that's part of his popularity that he was considered somebody who led in a bipartisan way. He had support in the business community, traditionally Republican-leaning groups. And so, he retains, I don't know what it is, around 80 percent popularity level in the state. And the last guys in Virginia who had that probably were named Jefferson or Washington or something. So it's like he is the guy who can do no wrong in Virginia right now.

MARK ROZELL: We were just talking about that before -

CATHY LEWIS: Sure . . .

JEFFREY BROWN: Okay, Cathy, go ahead.

CATHY LEWIS: Well, I've been very interested in this and what I'm hearing on the air, what I'm getting in my e-mail. I'm hearing from a lot of military people who are saying, hey, I can't go on the air but I just want you to know that I'm hearing a lot within the ranks of the military that suggests that it may not be quite the military monolithic vote that it has been in the past.

In fact, just this morning, I got an e-mail from a guy who is retired military who says that there are, quote, "amazing number of military folks involved in the Obama campaign who, if you met them on the street, you'd not suspect are involved. Career retired pilots, Marines, ship captains, spouses, parents of warriors, a lot of disabled warriors, that sort."

So, you know, I think that that certainly - the military community is not - one would be mistaken, I think, if one just assumed that as a bloc they would vote Republican. At least that is certainly not what I'm hearing on the air. It's not what I'm reading in my e-mails. And I know there are a number of military people. I've been shocked by the way that the spouses have actually become much more front and center in this campaign in terms of declaring political allegiance, which just in the military culture was not something that was typically the done thing.

I mean, if you were a military spouse, you cleared anything you were going to say with your husband's command, typically husband's command in those days. And now, you see a lot of these spouse groups out there pretty front and center on the issues with very partisan stances.

JEFFREY BROWN: And you distinguish this from 2004, 2002, especially as this caller, this viewer rather, says? You did have a veteran in 2004 on the other side.

CATHY LEWIS: Right, I think that's certainly the case. That was also four years ago in the conduct of a war that is having a pretty dramatic impact on the community. And I think that's been the change I've seen since that time to this.

The other thing to note is military people in this community - and my goodness, I think military people across the country - are really powerfully moved by John McCain's POW experience. He has a son who lives in this community. His ex-wife lives in the community. There are a number of settled POW families from the Vietnam era here in this community. And so I think there is a way in which this community has a tremendous degree of respect for that experience. And so they may have put John McCain, because of that, and John Kerry into two sort of different camps, even though they share military experience.

JEFFREY BROWN: Mark, you want to weigh in on - I mean, at least the role of vets and military in Virginia is greater than most states. That's for sure.

MARK ROZELL: Well, that's right, and where Cathy works, there is a huge military employee population. And as she points out, traditionally, in the past, they tended to consider the Republicans the better party on national security and military affairs issues. But the Iraq war, I think, has changed the perspective of many military families.

So you have people who are maybe a bit younger. They know friends or family, acquaintances who have had multiple tours in Iraq or they know somebody who has not received the kinds of benefits from the government in health care and so forth upon returning from the war with injuries, that they feel that these people should be better supported. And there's also a good deal of discontent with some of Bush's polices.

So I agree to what Cathy said. It's not a monolith. It's not just a solid, reliable necessarily Republican bloc of voters. The Iraq war has changed, I think, perspectives of many military families. And I think there is some potential there for a Democratic campaign to reach out to military families to say that the Democrats might know a better way on these issues.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, oh, go ahead.

CATHY LEWIS: Mark, I'm really glad you mentioned that about the treatment of veterans, because that certainly has been a theme in some of the conversations we've been having on the air too, in terms of people really coming back with some pretty significant psychological wounds and the slowness of the ramp-up in this community to really respond to those effectively.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, before I let you go, because we only have a couple minutes here, I don't know if either of you or both of you want to - since a few people asked, I'll just ask. And here is one from William Massi in Alexandria, Virginia. "Would you give a general estimate of the chances of either candidate winning the state of Virginia?" Looking for some forecasting here or prognosis. Cathy, you want to - how much do you want to say?

CATHY LEWIS: I'll tell you, that's one . . . I think it really is too close to call. And I think so much of it is going to depend on these next couple of weeks. I think a lot of it is going to depend on what happens in Southwestern Virginia.

One of the things we haven't talked about is what they call the Wilder effect, you know, whether people will say, yes, I will vote for Barack Obama, but when they get in the booths, the question is will they be able to vote for an African American when the little curtain closes and they're in there with just themselves.

And I think those are issues we are going to see play out in the coming weeks. And I would never make a guess. How about you, Mark?

MARK ROZELL: I agree with everything Cathy said. If I were working with the Obama campaign, I'd be very hesitant about his chances if he were up by only a few percentage points going into Election Day exactly because of the Wilder effect that Cathy mentions. This has been a reliably Republican-voting state for four decades at the presidential level, so it is going to be a challenge for the Democrats to get this state to break its Republican voting habit in presidential campaigns.

And like Cathy, I can't venture a prediction about what's going to happen. It depends on so many things that will take place over the next six weeks. But I think I could point out safely that some Democrats have gotten very excited about their chances in this campaign because of how well the party has done in some statewide and state-level elections in the most recent election cycles. Well, part of that success for the Democrats have been because certain Republican candidates have just run really bad campaigns. And so, we have to be careful if we project from those campaigns onto this presidential one what the likely outcome is going to be because of changing voting patterns, for example, shifting more Democrat may have been due just in part to the fact that Democrats ran better candidates and ran better campaigns in those election cycles.

CATHY LEWIS: Mark, would you agree that in the Senate race that put Jim Webb in office, had it not been for the Macaca moment and all the controversy that ensued that we would be talking about Senator Allen?

MARK ROZELL: That's right. I agree with that 100 percent. That singularly changed the dynamic of that entire campaign. And George Allen would still be U.S. senator right now, had it not been for a colossal gaffe that he made in that campaign. So those are the kinds of things you can't account for.

JEFFREY BROWN: That's for sure. So we'll see if there's any singular moments in the next few weeks. Well, Mark Rozell of George Mason University, Cathy Lewis of WHRO, thank you both very much.

CATHY LEWIS: It was a real pleasure. Thank so very much.

JEFFREY BROWN: And let me thank all of our viewers for writing in . We got to a fair number of the questions. Apologies to the ones we weren't able to get to. Everyone can be sure to check our Web site where you learn more about our upcoming guests in these forums. Thank you for listening. Until next time, I'm Jeffrey Brown. Thanks.