Karl Rove and his 68 weekly polls

Hugh Hewitt interviewed Rove on what he is seeing in campaigns around the country.

...

KR: Well, for the past six weeks or so, I’ve been looking at as many as 68 polls every week, for as many as 68 races for the House, the Senate and governorships. And so I see the national polls, like everybody else does, but I get a chance to look at the data all across the country, and I see in these individual races that candidates have been able to create it as a choice between them and their opponent. Not just on local issues, but on big national issues as well. And as a result, it gives me a sense of optimism that we’ll have a Republican Senate and a Republican House.

HH: What would the margins be? Any ideas yet you want to predict?

KR: I don’t want to get into individual…into predicting that, but I’m not going to be a prognosticator there. But I just…I feel good about the Senate, and the House is a race by race, district by district battle, that when you add it up, I see us with a majority. And it’s not going to be pretty, and it’s required a lot of effort, but our candidates have been sterling, and the involvement of the national figures, the President, the Vice President, the First Lady, Senator McCain, Governor Romney, Mayor Giuliani, has just been terrific in helping make certain that our candidates have the resources to fight the battle, and then air cover to help them explain the message.

HH: Karl Rove, one week ago, Senator John Kerry said the following:

JK: You know, education…if you make the most of it, you study hard, and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.

HH: What’s the impact of that statement been, in the data that you’ve been examining?

KR: Well, it’s hard to say, because it happened so late in the week that people didn’t have much out there in the way of tracking. Most of the Republican candidates stopped tracking on Thursday night. Some of them went back into the field on Sunday night. But I think it’s been significant, just anecdotally, the speed with which the famed photograph from the Minnesota National Guard made its way around the internet. It just reminded people that there is within…there are elements within the Democratic Party, near the top of its leadership, who have a fundamental hostility to the American military. And he can dress this up all he likes. His immediate response was to say that anybody who thought this was an attack on the military was stupid. Well, the military thought that. Witness the picture from Iraq and a lot of others. And you’ll notice that he could make the charge in his own voice, he could make the issue, this inflammatory statement, backed up by a news conference, in which he went after the White House, saying he wasn’t going to be Swift Boated. He could go on Imus and continue to defend it, but when it came time to issue the apology, Senator Kerry issued a written statement.

...

KR: Yeah. Do you know the other thing, Hugh…

HH: Yes?

KR: …was I noticed the New York Times continued to repeat the same mindset in its editorial, in which it said of course the President of the United States knew this was a botched joke aimed at him, not an insult for the military. In essence, anybody…you know, they repeated the sort of tone that Kerry had, that everybody knew this was an attack on the President, and anybody who took it as an insult on the military were themselves stupid.

HH: That is, in fact, what also the Washington Post said and the New Republic. Karl Rove, expectations regarding turnout, vis-à-vis 2004 and 2002?

KR: Well, my sense is more than 2002, but significantly less than 2004. That’s just the nature of the cycle. We’re in the off year, so we won’t be close to the 60% turnout that we had in 2004, but I suspect we’ll be in the sort of the high range of turnout, meaning the high 30’s, maybe as big as 40%.

...

There is much more of the interview at the link. The reason I think his point of view is important goes back to 2004 when the exit polls were getting it wrong and Karl Rove came out and introduced "exurbs" to the political discussion. He had been tracking the vote in the exurban areas of the country and new they were voting in strong numbers for the President. The media and the exit pollsters had ignored this important segment of voters. He is a guy who knows where the votes are and how to count them. As he says he is not a prognosticator but he knows what he sees. I hope he is looking at the right data this time too.