Transcript of David Winston for 06/20/2008

Chip Griffin: David Winston is president and founder of the Winston Group, a Republican polling firm. He's got a lot experience in Washington politics, having worked for the House Republican Congress, Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, and the Heritage Foundation. I look forward to our conversation today about the upcoming elections.

So how do you see this election season shaping up, based on the numbers and data you're looking at?

David Winston: Well, I think the first thing that's interesting about this particular election in terms of Obama versus McCain, is you're seeing a structural change in terms of what the election is going to look like. And that is, unlike previous elections we've had recently in 2004 and 2000, where you had candidates who I would argue have minimal reach in terms of the electorate, so they can get to 50%, 51%. The actual group of people being fought over is relatively small. There really isn't a middle, not because the middle isn't big, it's because neither candidate had particular reach to get to those voters.

What you're seeing in this particular race is both McCain and Obama have a large reach, somewhere in the neighborhood of maybe 60%, maybe 65 % for both, which will take full advantage of the middle.

What will happen as a result of that is that the political discourse will be pretty different. When you're fighting over or 2% or 3% and just focusing on your base, that's one sound. When you're really in an argument over a large swath of voters, that's a very different sound. So I think on a structural basis, the election itself is going to be quite different.

Chip: It sounds like you're saying it will be quite different from the past, where in the past you got your base motivated and that was really the key thing. Turn out your own troops and get as many of those middle of the road people as you could. But now the fight is in the middle, and what does it do to the sides though?

Does that mean that the real partisans are going to sit this one out, or do you think they'll turn out?

David: The thing about the base is that they're the base. Unless you do something really horrifically wrong, they're ultimately going to be there for both sides. What is something really wrong? Back in 1992, Bush Sr. decided to renege on his one major pledge that was a key construct of the Republican party, and that was, "Read my lips: no new taxes." And then he proceeded to increase taxes.

It takes something really of that scale to really impact, and in that particular case that generated a whole primary challenge from Pat Buchanan that left Bush somewhat weak. And even so, he got most of the base vote. It wasn't that huge of a drop-off, even something of that scale.

But the other thing, too, in terms of contrasting with 2000 and 2004, what people forget is how big margins used to be in terms of the electoral college. Bush won by about 6.5% in 1988, and ended up getting somewhere in the neighborhood of 420 -- I think he had 426 electoral votes. Clinton won by about by about 5% and got 370 electoral votes.

I mean, this closeness in terms of the electoral college is more of a recent phenomenon, and the one you have to go back to in terms of it being this close is maybe looking at something like Nixon in '68. But there you had a third party with George Wallace.

So typically, candidates have focused on sort of developing broad coalitions. It's only been recently in these last two elections where it's been sort of ignoring those broad coalitions and just turning out the base.

Chip: Now you mentioned Buchanan perhaps weakening Bush Sr. in '92. What dynamic do you see the Clinton-Obama race having here? Does that weaken Obama? Does it strengthen him? How does it play it that they had such a long season?

David: It separated off a group of voters from Obama that he has got to figure out how to go back and reengage. That's part of the old Reagan coalition that actually Republicans lost in 2006. That's Independents, Catholics, blue-collar working class. That whole group of sort of Reagan voters.

And McCain sort of has a chance at them in terms of going after them. Obama's going to have to clearly do a whole bunch of activities to sort of nail those folks down. There's a certain portion of them that will come back, but there will be a certain portion that are sort of open to McCain.

But McCain's got to do something about it. They'll take a look at him, but if he doesn't do anything active then they'll probably default back to Obama.

Chip: What do you see him doing that would active? What are the issues that would move those people?

David: I think that's where Obama has some difficulty. He's got his overall sort of message of change, which people like. The reason people like it is when you have a right track/wrong track which sort of reflects the optimism and pessimism of the country, at this point you've 80% of the country thinking the country is headed in the wrong track, which means they're really pessimistic. So of course they want change.

They don't like what's going on. If it was the other way around, and 80% thought the country was headed in the right direction, why would you want change?

So the overall message of change is a positive message. The problem Obama has is, in a right-center country, he's not merely offering left-center, he is from the left. And so when you actually get to the substance of what he's talking about, his appeal is much more complicated to those voters. Whereas McCain would sort of have a much more natural appeal to them, being a right-center candidate.

Let me just define why the country's right-center for a second. Looking at the last election, looking at the exit polls from the media, what you see is that the large percentage identifies themselves as moderates, 45%. Then the next group is conservatives at 32% and then liberals at 20%. Well, that 32/20 conservative to liberal margin of 12 points is what makes it a center-right country.

And Obama, on the other hand, is clearly the far left, when you take a look at his voting record in the Senate.

Chip: Stop here for a second. Is the conservative/liberal split -- is that a label thing? I know there's been a lot of talk over the years of people not wanting to self-identify as liberal and being more willing to do it as conservative. Is it really their mindset or is it just the willingness to label?

David: No. Let me give you an example of a center-right additive. I've asked the question in a survey, "Do you think raising taxes will hurt the economy?" Do you believe or not believe that statement. And what you see is by a 2-1 margin, people believe that statement. That gives you a sense of sort of the center-right nature of the country. It's reflected in real policy statements.

But there's a difference between that and -- I'm sort of doing extreme right or extreme left statements, where you tend to find that there's a large chunk of the country that doesn't necessarily agree with those. Again, when you say center-right, the emphasis is on center first and right second, in terms of that.

But Obama, on the other hand, is really off to one side. And so Obama's challenge -- and you're watching him start to deal with this -- is, OK, he's got this really sort of positive overall message of change, but when you begin to sort of delve into what is he actually talking about in terms of what's his vision of America, where is he taking it, that things get a little bit more difficult for him.

Chip: How informed does the electorate seem to be as far as where the two candidates stand on the issues, or is it really much more of a feeling thing? I mean, Obama, obviously he gives a great speech and people seem to be drawn to him. Even Republicans seem to enjoy listening to him, at least.

David: First off, listening to Obama is very entertaining. He's a very good speaker. And that's really helpful to him. I'm as partisan, potentially, as they come, and he's just fun to listen to. Anybody who can talk like that, you'll take time.

But here's -- and I'm going to give this a slightly different twist -- the American electorate at this point is actually very hungry for very in-depth issue discussions and information about it. They go online a lot, they're watching cable a lot, their awareness of what's going on in terms of the selection is significantly larger.

A lot of media folks a year ago were saying, "Oh, the America public will get bored by this race." Clearly they didn't. I mean, they were really engaged all the way through the primary process. This is where the campaigns are really behind the electorate to some degree. And that is the campaigns don't have enough content at this point to really feed the electorate in terms of their issue positions. They're still making up this stuff.

You're watching both Obama and McCain sort of engage in this economic fight, and having been in involved in politics before, you can sort of tell that they're kind of making this up a little bit as they go along.

So I would suggest that the electorate is actually ahead of the two campaigns in terms of wanting to know positions on issues.

Chip: So you think that the public will be truly engaged on issues this time, and it won't be sort of a surface election.

David: I think that actually occurred last time, and that's a problem Republican candidates ran into. It's one of their major failings. Again, last time it was "all politics is local," and what pork have you delivered back to your individual district, as though that was going to solve anything. But let's not talk about national issues.

And Republicans lost independents by 18 points. And part of that was because we weren't saying anything to the American people, and the American people turned around and fired us.

And to some degree, looking at this election, there are the platitude elements of what you say as an overall construct to what your issue positions are, but people want to hear about issues. And the reason they want to hear it is because they're going to the gas pump and they're getting hammered. They're looking at their healthcare situation and they're very nervous. They're looking at their property taxes, which are just skyrocketing out of control. And suddenly their home values have started dropping.

And so the American people, this is not, "Gee, who sounds best." It's, "I've got a whole menu of things that need to be dealt with and what are you doing?"

Chip: But can this focus on the issues, I guess, is that something that McCain can use to try to escape Bush's numbers or is there really just no avoiding Bush's current unpopularity?

David: He has to do two things. One, he wants to get this down to an issue fight, because again, then he can position as right of center versus, again, Obama, and really create that contrast that he needs. But he has to do both. He cannot simply attack Obama, he's got to have a contrasting position.

Sarkozy, when he won over in France, basically succeeding a president of his own party, had this line, "Propose a future and make it possible." That's the really the same challenge to McCain. But within that Sarkozy also used a phrase, you had to make a "clean break form the past," that he was pretty adamant about.

And it may be uncomfortable for McCain and a lot of people with him, but they've got to make a very tough, clean break from the previous administration.

Chip: How do you see things shaping up beyond the presidential level? Is it really going to be an election driven from the top of the ticket, or will the congressional results not necessarily mirror what we're seeing at the presidential level?

David: I think it's a little hard to determine at this point, because the shape and nature of the election is just starting to come into view in terms of the sense of, this is clearly going to be about the economy. I think you're seeing, actually, Republicans get out front at least in terms of the energy problem. You're seeing, out of the House, Republicans this sort of focus on drilling and exploration for new oil.

But I think you're just beginning to see that take shape. Having said that, the overall backdrop at the moment is more favorable to Democrats, because Republicans are still sort of suffering from the 2006 loss and the perception of their lack of not doing things when they had the majority.

And so to some degree what Republicans have to do -- and the onus is on them -- is to sort of show that they've learned the lesson in terms of what they did when they had the majority, and they're ready to earn back the majority and here's what they're going to go do.

So it's not attacking Democrats, it's how do you actually -- again, using the Sarkozy line -- propose a future. And Republicans, given the way they have run campaigns, aren't very good at that. One of the problems Republicans face at this point it they're running 1990-style campaigns, attacking the opponent, using network television in terms of purchasing ads. They're going to have to learn how to run a modern campaign.

Chip: Are the Republican problems that you're seeing now causing more people to self-identify as Democrats? In other words, are we seeing a party switch if not an ideological switch?

David: Now, interestingly enough, ideologically, this is an interesting number in 2000 -- and I gave you that number before where the margin was 32% to 20 conservative to liberal back in 2006. In 2000, that margin was 30% conservative to 21% liberal, only a nine point margin. So actually ideologically the environment in 2006 was better, yet we just got slaughtered.

I'm not seeing a party shift at all. What I am seeing is Independents voting Democratic. Again, we went from minus 2% or 3% in 2004 amongst Independents to minus 18%. And Republicans have got to figure out how to go back and grab those Independents.

If this were to extend for a long period of time, you might begin to see some party shifting, but right now it's a short-term situation where you're seeing some Independents -- or quite a few Independents -- some Republicans, perhaps thinking they may vote differently, but they're not translating that into an actual party shift.

Chip: What's surprising you most about the current election environment?

David: I guess at this point, the biggest item is how dramatically we've seen the way people get their news, and the level of consumption of political information has just increased at levels that have taken a lot of campaigns by surprise.

I think the whole concept of doing stuff at a micro-level, the campaigns have been so focused on process for so many years, is very 1990s, late 1980s at this point. People are looking for big ideas, big direction. They want to know what you're going to do, what's the future you're proposing.

And that's the direction that they're headed. And to some degree, particularly on the Republican side, the Republican side is only good at process, and when it comes to actually pushing ideas, they haven't had that experience really since '94 when Newt did that. And then prior to that back in 1980, when Reagan did it.

And so the sort of challenge for these political parties -- and I'm going to steal a David Cameron line now -- is I think where the electorate is at is sort of believing this concept, and that is, "The purpose of political parties isn't to win elections, it's to prove you're ready to govern." And that's an interesting transition in terms of where the electorate's at.

Chip: Is McCain the kind of candidate who can develop and communicate that kind of a big idea? I mean, obviously he's driven the discussion in the past on issues, although they've been more center-left type issues: global warming, campaign finance. But can he come up with the big ideas that will change this election?

David: I think to some degree he was. Oddly enough when he sort of ran into the problem last April -- the April before last, sorry -- when he sort of ran out of money and he sort of had to run with just him going and doing town halls in New Hampshire all by himself. He was actually able to portray that a lot better than he did when he actually had resources.

I think that now that he's sort of back in with having a lot of resources, what you've seen is a more traditional campaign. And he went from basically being even to -- I think he trails Obama nationally by about five points at this point.

That's going to be the challenge to his campaign. Can he create a different kind of campaign than 2000 and in 2004. And in 1996.

Chip: And unfortunately that's going to have to be our last word. While I know we could go on for quite some time, we've hit the end of this show. My guest today has been Republican pollster David Winston. Thanks for joining us.