The Ohio white vote and Sandy's impact on the election

>>> okay. now, we have nbc news chief white house correspondent and host of "the daily rundown." watching you all weekend, you're so good with all the numbers.

>> he's got a command center .

>> it's a fun studio. you guys ought to go in there tomorrow. tomorrow, aren't we all -- we're one big family for 25 hours or 6 hours. you should go play in the studio.

>> will you have us?

>> yes.

>> yesterday david gregory goes, and now let's go over to the command center .

>> command center .

>> and chuck laughs the first time. if we're going to spend that much money on a command center --

>> we've got to say yes, we are here.

>> how about go to the command center .

>> go with it. you've got to act like you're at nasa.

>> admiral gregory.

>> knowledge cave.

>> a knowledge cave. and a white lab coat for chuck .

>> i almost said drop zone .

>> so this is how it goes.

>> mike murphy 's here.

>> now over to the command center . and seriously, chuck goes like this, pffft.

>> chuck , i think that's very transparent.

>> we want to make everybody feel as if they're welcome.

>> chuck , we've got one thing. and we are going to drive it like a nail. floba.

>> benghazi .

>> voter suppression .

>> somebody brings up voter suppression , benghazi three times and call me in the morning. we've got what we're calling on the set of " morning joe ,"

>> yes, sir.

>> and what historians will look back in 50 years and say we were calling on the set of " morning joe ."

>> this is going to be stupid.

>> we had a hard split. you talk to all the romney people, talk to them especially on saturday, they say we're going to win this. no whistling past the graveyard. they were saying it. but you look at every one of these polls, your head and the data tells you barack obama is going to win.

>> that everything, whatever move happened right at the end, it moved there. if you were to go back in the recent past and say, so this is what happened for bush, right, everything moved to the final weekend, and it turned out. the one time that you saw a move in one direction in the final weekend and the other guy win was '76. carter/ford. ford had the momentum at the end.

>> he did.

>> it was a very tight race, but carter won. and it was the same thing. similar campaign. basically spend 60 days calling into question whether jimmy carter was ready to be president.

>> ford was moving.

>> ford was moving. and he may have -- the last state, gallup had him, i'm quoting gallup so be careful. gallup , i think it was the sunday before, was the first time ford led. you know, my old boss, doug bailey , said he was doing the ford campaign, he said that was the worst thing that happened to ford. the minute people thought, oh, ford can win? they went, wait a minute.

>> they took a third look.

>> they said, ooh, i forgot, we've got to kick nixon to the curb one more time.

>> yeah, i'm not so sure. the only problem with these polls are, they tell us exactly what would have happened last thursday. maybe yesterday. and i agree, if the election were held at the end of last week, i think obama would have won. now we're within the margin of error.

>> what breaks through? there's nothing breaking through. here they come, there they go, same message.

>> ceiling. just is any undecided going to go to obama or has he maxed out?

>> this is what's in our poll, all the undecided did not -- they looked like they could go obama and split at least 50/50 obama , if not more.

>> just on the demographic question, the percentage of the white vote, right? is it '72? is it '74? we have very big turnout. we do generous turnout for romney similar to 2004 . but whether he's going to get two-thirds of the independent vote, we don't think that's going to happen. even if you have minorities and younger voters not as fired up, you've got to see this shift going on in the electorate.

>> how about asking it this way. think about this. you covered bush. so you know he was obsessed with hispanic votes.

>> yeah.

>> if mitt romney got the hissman vote that george w. bush got in 2004 , the percentage --

>> this race would be over.

>> right.

>> it would be over.

>> exactly. if he were doing bush numbers there, he'd be in a lot better shape and we'd be nevada which we ought to be doing.

>> actually, if he were doing mccain numbers with hispanics.

>> the race is close enough.

>> are you serious? holy cow .

>> what does the white vote look like?

>> the white vote is the secret to ohio . this is the interesting thing. romney is performing so much worse with white voters in ohio than he is even in other states he's in trouble with.

>> how about white men.

>> across the board. you took romney 's white vote chair in virginia where he's tied and there's a lot of worry we may not get there in virginia and you apply that to ohio , he'd be ahead in ohio . you have to think, does ohio mean a little more which often happens in statistics, or have they turned ohio into a pennsylvania-type state.

>> is this the future for republican candidates' future to learn the lesson of this year, if mitt romney loses, if somebody is trying to goad you to bash hispanics in iowa, do you take the bait?

>> they wrote a column called "the coming ice age ." here's the problem, though. if romney wins, it will be forgotten. if romney loses, there will be a huge debate between the priests and the mathematicians. mathematicians are going to say hey, guess what, if we don't compete in 25% of the country, damn hard to win. the priests will say no, no, we never said kenyan socialist in the debate. that was the problem. glow in the dark bumper stickers.

>> benghazi , benghazi , benghazi .

>> exactly.

>> and kenya.

>> almost sounds like dirga dirga.

>> you suddenly see a conspiracy.

>> i don't want to do the obituary here. i think romney 's still in the hunt.

>> i do, too. what chuck just said was stunning to me. if romney even had mccain's hispanic percentage, he'd win.

>> but i guess part of my question was about which model do you believe? what is it that the romney campaign believes about who is coming out and what the electorate looks like that is so different than what the obama team believes, or do they really -- do they believe something different now?

>> this is the younger cohort where obama win 2 - 1 is not going to be as motivated so they'll shrink a little bit and won't turn out as much. the obama one is we're going to get all that and more.

>> here's an easy way to look at it. in '08, younger voters, 18 to 24, i think, outnumbered 65-plus. they were both right at -- one was 17% of the electorate, one was 16%. this time it's going to be this way. the question is, is it 18/15, 65-plus, or is it 17/16. 17/16, obama .

>> chuck , you played with your turnout models yesterday.

>> yes.

>> i thought it was fascinating. talk about on ohio especially.

>> say that again.

>> you talked about ohio was six points --

>> right, party i.d. so we had a party i.d., if you basically did party i.d., if you took the '04 and '08 and sort of average it had, and the party i.d. issue, it isn't something that is -- it moves more than people realize.

>> but it's static.

>> it's not as static. but if you went ahead and did it with our poll and applied it, a six-point lead gets down to three. but the president's still at 50. and this is a party i.d. that would be more republican than '08, but more democrat than '04 which honestly, that's probably what ohio 's going to be. it's going to be somewhere in between the two.

>> how important is the poll that shows the vast majority of people like the way the president handled the hurricane? i mean, does it play into -- does it move someone who's still undecided?

>> look, i think --

>> toward romney ?

>> i think that you see a case for government -- and don't forget, the role in how much government we want in this election i think is a critical issue.

>> right.

>> so here's the president, you know, with his actions making the case for what government does. here is a republican in chris christie outspoken saying we need government. we need what only the federal government can provide. you have a republican and a democrat working together. i think it just makes people feel good. it's what we want to see.

>> if you're someone who doesn't necessarily think big government's a great idea, you feel that way until you need the government, and sandy would give you an example as to --

>> only the federal government has the scale to help solve.

>> you don't like it till you need it.

>> i learned a couple lessons in 2000 and 20004 where in 2004 , i was skeptical that the bin laden tape would move people because, you know, we live this stuff so much that we don't think one little event in the end will do it. in 2000 , it was a real shocker. i am stunned that george w. bush 's dui story, friday before the weekend, kept a couple million evangelicals over at home or away from. i'm stunned, but that's -- for people sitting here going oh, people wouldn't decide based on one event the final weekend, they do.

>> it's hard to gain particularly when undecided voters think, they've got their own logic. i learned a little secret which is the ugly little secret of a lot of polling is it's a noise meter. whatever's in front of them at the moment coming through television the loudest. that's why we had a week where trump was going to be the president of the united states . teaching gary bussey to work the snow cone machine.

>> that was a big week.

>> it was pins and needles all the way. there could have been an explosion. so now sandy, the president just being on center stage was worth something. and the romney guys would say it was also an opportunity cost. you know, it just froze the election at a time when they were moving. the question is, are they moving right now?

>> tom made a great point over the weekend. he was talking about -- and we were all so many places, i can't remember where he said this -- but he talked about there is such uneasiness about both of them, and what you just described in 2000 and 2004 i'd argue by the end of the campaign, we got to that neither one of them felt like the perfect answer. that you're so easily moved by an event. i mean, think about it. debates moved. debates normally don't move. well, why? because there's been this uneasiness with obama . well, why did it move -- why did sandy move this? because there's been uneasiness about romney . so the fact that the electorate is a little -- is so about both candidates a little bit.

>> i also think people need encouragement or could be subject to discouragement in the final analysis how they vote. it's hard to make up your mind.

>> right. david gregory , chuck todd , mike murphy , thank you all for joining us.

>> thank you.

>>> straight ahead , senator john mccain join says the conversatijoins the conversation when " morning joe " continues.