12:00 P.M., EST
THE WASHINGTON FOREIGN PRESS CENTER, WASHINGTON, D.C.
MODERATOR: Welcome to the Foreign Press Center. We’re happy today to have with us John Zogby, who will give us a readout of the Iowa caucuses, the latest polls from New Hampshire and the state of the Obama reelection campaign.
I just wanted to note that the opinions expressed by Mr. Zogby are his own and are not a reflection of U.S. Government policy.
Mr. Zogby.
MR. ZOGBY: Thank you. Oh, I thought I was speaking on behalf of the government. I – (laughter).
Hi. Miriam , thank you so much. This has become a tradition. The Foreign Press Center is family. Hello, New York, wherever you are, if you can see me.
A lot is happening, and so what I’m going to do, as Miriam (ph) pointed out, I’m going to, number one, briefly outline what I think the meaning of the Iowa results are as we move forward. Secondly, I have some fresh polling that was done yesterday in New Hampshire, and we’ll get an early read – not a prediction; there’s still plenty of time to go. And as we’ve learned, anything can happen in New Hampshire, especially when New Hampshirites decide that anything can happen. So let’s – it’s Thursday, and the election is Tuesday, but we have some interesting movement in New Hampshire. And then thirdly, let’s take a look at where the President stands today and what we can look forward to in the future.
But first, Iowa. There, I think, are six major takeaways from the Iowa caucuses. The first is the Romney ceiling. Twenty-five percent is what he got in Iowa. It’s very interesting to me that he received 25 percent of the vote in Iowa in 2008. And while initially he did not plan to campaign in Iowa, the reality is that over the last three weeks, he spent a lot of time, he spent millions of dollars. On top of that, groups supporting his candidacy spent millions of dollars. And he went very, very negative in his campaign, particularly against Speaker Gingrich. And so the fact of the matter is that he campaigned very heavily in Iowa. And so after a lot of money, a lot of energy, and a lot of negative campaigning, he ended up at 25 percent, which is where he began, and which is the number that he never superceded in any of the election polls.
So it does beg for us a question: Did he raise expectations for a better performance and not meet those expectations? That’s the first point: Is there a Romney ceiling? And particularly outside of New Hampshire, where, of course, he’s projected to do quite well.
Number two, and building from the Romney ceiling, is that the Republican Party at this point appears to be fractured. And there appear to be three co-equal wings of the Republican Party. The first is the anti-government – the anti-statist libertarian wing of the party. That’s represented by Ron Paul. And on behalf of Ron Paul, as we’ll see, there was for Republican caucuses a record number of independent voters and moderate voters who showed up to the caucuses. There was a significant number of young people. And 40 percent of the voters in the caucuses were first-time Iowa caucuses voters, and Ron Paul won that group.
The second co-equal third of the party is the Christian traditional wing of the party, and that’s represented for now by Senator – former Senator Rick Santorum. There – that was hotly competitive, but Santorum has picked up from Mike Huckabee from four years ago and, going way back, Reverend Pat Robertson in 1988, the evangelical television minister. Santorum represents that Christian conservative element of the party, which is substantial in Iowa, not so substantial in New Hampshire, but is certainly in South Carolina and a number of other states. And those two groups are co-equal.
And then the third co-equal branch is the establishment, more moderate conservative branch of the party. And that’s about a third of the party as well. And that’s represented by Mitt Romney.
So the issue is, we’ll see in a moment, that Romney does well in New Hampshire, and it’s – there is a real potential for Romney to win the nomination. He’s still the frontrunner. But the obvious question from point number two is: What does he win? And is it possible that he can bring these three wings together in a united party to defeat President Obama? We’ll get back to that later.
Number three – very important, I believe – this is my opinion, from the numbers – that a third party may have been born as a result of Tuesday’s results. And that is the anti-statist Ron Paul libertarian wing. I found it very interesting. If you look at the numbers, record numbers of independents showed up to vote; Ron Paul received 44 percent of the vote among those independents. Moderates showed up to vote in record numbers. Ron Paul got 53 percent of moderates. Eighteeen-to-29-year-olds, who were about 15 percent of the vote, Ron Paul got 48 percent of that group. What am I getting at here? Those are relatively new voters. Those are Ron Paul voters, libertarian voters. I’m not sure that those are voters that would support any other Republican presidential candidate.
And I couldn’t help but notice the following, that as you watched Ron Paul give his speech, he did not appear to congratulate the winners, and he did not talk about winning. Here’s what he said: “This movement will continue. We will raise the money.” And he said, “We will continue to score,” not continue to win – leads me to believe that he’s more interested in launching or continuing his movement-building, and that this is a segment of the party that, should there be the third party formed, this is the segment that would be the base of that party. Young people – I don’t see young people voting Republican in November. They may not vote for Barack Obama, but they could vote for the libertarian party.
I also noticed – and this is just merely a visual – that when Ron Paul spoke, behind him over here was his son, the Republican Senator Rand Paul, who looked on one hand like “I do love my father, but otherwise I’m not sure why I’m standing here.” So it leads me to think that Paul won’t run as a third-party candidate, but he could consider campaigning with other notable libertarians – the former governor of New Mexico, Gary Johnson, who has stated that he’s going to campaign side-by-side with Ron Paul – that they will get a lot of publicity over the next few months and that perhaps Ron Paul passes the torch of the libertarian party over to Gary Johnson. Just some thinking, on behalf of the State Department – no. (Laughter.)
Rick Santorum. Senator Santorum will now get a lot of scrutiny. Perhaps the ugliest position that anyone could be in over the last six months is to be the Republican frontrunner in the primaries. He will get a lot of scrutiny, and we don’t know if he could hold up to the scrutiny – or anyone, for that matter, could. Right now, he’s the anti-Romney conservative. That has been a thankless position. Ask Herman Cain. Ask Newt Gingrich. Ask Michele Bachmann. Ask pretty much everybody else.
Now here are the questions that I have. Can he maintain this position? I don’t know. Will he be the Pat Buchanan of 1996? Pat Buchanan went on to defeat Robert Dole in the New Hampshire primary in 1996, and then he completely imploded after that as the conservative candidate. Is he a placeholder? Is he someone who represents that wing of the party for now but maybe can’t sustain it and is holding that important position for a new candidate, or perhaps for a resurgent Newt Gingrich? I don’t know. These are questions.
Number five – and there are six – New York, there’s not 31; there’s just six. There’s an enthusiasm gap in the party, in the Republican Party. For all of the anger and distrust that Republicans have of the Obama presidency and Administration, only about as many voters showed up in Iowa on Tuesday as voted in 2008. There was no increased turnout. Hundred and eighteen thousand voted in 2008; about 120,000 voted in 2012. I find that interesting. And I find it interesting also that Governor Romney, who won by eight votes, 44 percent of those who voted for Romney in Iowa said they voted with “serious reservations,” unquote.
Lastly, who was the big winner Tuesday? I’m not the only one to suggest this, but it clearly was notable. I think Barack Obama was the winner. Basically, the process unfolded and it was, I think, a fascinating process, but essentially you couldn’t help but conclude that the Republican Party is fractured, that there – were still in an anger and bitterness phase. In addition to Santorum, who will be in on the attack against Romney, and Ron Paul, who has been on the attack right along against Romney, you would have a very angry Speaker Gingrich, who has vowed to go into North – or South Carolina.
So that’s phase one. Phase two, let’s talk about Obama, and then we’ll get into New Hampshire. Right now in my polling, I have the President at a 46 percent job approval rating. Generally, my numbers have been a couple of points lower than some of the other polls, though mine is right now and generally has been at the – what we call the Real Clear Politics average, which is 46 percent. Context? I’ve had the President as low as 38 percent, and so he’s up 8 points. That’s substantial. In a nation, an electorate, where 42 percent tell us every week we hate this guy’s guts, to be at 46 percent positive is fairly substantial. He’s now at a point in some polls where more give him a positive rating than a negative rating. However, when we ask does the President deserve to be reelected, only about 40-41 percent say yes, he deserves to be reelected. That is a troubling number for any incumbent.
Now there are 12 states that Barack Obama won in 2008 that have voted Republican either for the U.S. Senate or the majority of the House or state legislators or governor, have voted Republican in 2010 – 12 states. If you look at those states, those – they’re all critical. And just three, three-and-a-half months ago, those states were still leaning Republican and Barack Obama was either losing or tied in those states. As we go into today, in all those 12 states, the President is either leading or tied. And so his reelection prospects are not glum. They’re not good but they’re also – there is no assurance here that the President can be defeated.
The states? Or don’t you need those.
PARTICIPANT: Yes.
MR. ZOGBY: Yes. Okay. New Hampshire, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Iowa, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada. Don’t anyone dare say, “Could you repeat that?” (Laughter.) You got ’em? Okay. (Laughter.)
Those are the ones. And right now, they’re very, very competitive. And so what else? On behalf of the President, the unemployment rate is down. Perhaps not for the best reasons, but the unemployment rate is down. And if it continues a few points down, to 8.2 or 8.3, we get into the territory where voters responded to one of our polls saying if the unemployment rate is at this level, would you vote to reelect the President, they told us 8.1, 8.2. So if it goes down a couple of points, looks a little better for the President.
In addition, you do have some economists saying that the market could grow. You do have some economists who are suggesting that we’re not in a recession, and barring anything unforeseen, we will continue slow growth, and the appearance that stimulus now is working a little better.
On the other hand, you do have a President who’s viewed as flawed as a leader, and weak. And you also have a President who can make a case that he pushed successfully some legislation, but there appears to be a gap between pushing through legislation and solving problems. A lot of this is going to depend on the economy.
One thing the President has done successfully, however, is he has neutralized what has traditionally been seen as a weakness for Democrats, and that’s the issue of national security. He will forever be the President who got Usama bin Ladin, and that in itself is important, and ended, by the time of the election, two wars.
Okay, I hope that’s balanced. Let’s look at New Hampshire now quickly. What we did was we took a benchmark reading of New Hampshire on Sunday, January 1st. We talked to approximately 500 likely Republican voters, and then we went back Wednesday, 500 – 498 likely voters in New Hampshire all day Wednesday, so the full reading is a day after the Iowa caucuses. Traditionally, that’s a little soon to get a good reading, but then we also live in a period where news travels a whole lot faster. We saw some movement, which I think is important. Here are the results that we received, and they’re in the booklets that have been distributed.
We have Mitt Romney at 38, Ron Paul at 24, Rick Santorum at 11, Newt Gingrich 9, Jon Huntsman 8, Rick Perry 1, and Not Sure 10. But what does that mean?
Also in the booklet --
PARTICIPANT: Page six.
MR. ZOGBY: Page --
QUESTION: Which page, please?
MR. ZOGBY: Six. Yeah.
PARTICIPANT: Of the second set. (Inaudible.)
MR. ZOGBY: And that, to repeat, is page six of the second set in the booklet. Do they have it in New York? Okay, good. All right.
And what you see then on the bottom of page six is the difference from pre-Iowa in New Hampshire and post-Iowa in New Hampshire, one day after. Remember, these things unfold. You see Mitt Romney climbing 7 points; we only had him at 31 on Sunday; Ron Paul staying about the same, just dropping 1; Newt Gingrich from 15 to 9; Jon Huntsman from 12 to 8; Santorum from 7 to 11; Michele Bachmann, of course, did receive a couple of votes, but no percentage; Rick Perry, of course, and Not Sure actually doubling.
In terms of support, what’s impressive about Romney’s lead as of today is that it’s a lead almost across the board. He leads very well among those who describe themselves as Republicans, but he also does well among the 39-40 percent of the voters who regard themselves as independents, and that’s traditionally what the breakdown is in New Hampshire, about 39-40 percent in a GOP primary.
We see Ron Paul leading, actually 35 to 30, among independents, but Romney at 30. But Romney gets 40 percent and leads among Tea Party supporters. That’s very important. He came in only at 1 percent among Tea Party supporters in Iowa. He’s now polling at about 40 percent of Tea Party supporters. Why? This is extremely important. Because we have seen a switch among Tea Party supporters. Before Iowa, the majority of Tea Party supporters were saying we prefer a candidate who shares our views, whether or not that candidate can beat President Obama. In this New Hampshire poll, 58 percent of Tea Party supporters say we want someone who can defeat Obama. And Romney is seen by them and by others as the candidate of all of them best positioned to beat Obama.
To close, what do I see? A lot of it obviously depends on who ultimately turns out to vote. And you know in New Hampshire, it’s fluid. You can declare that day “I want to vote” in the Republican primary. But so far, moderates and conservatives support Romney. But if there are a lot of young people that show up, if there are a lot of lower income who show up, if there are a lot of independents who show up, I don’t see Romney losing. But if the lead contracts and you see Romney going down below 35, and Paul and Santorum climbing up to the mid-20s, you might be able to conclude that Romney has been damaged in New Hampshire as he positions himself to move into a much more difficult state for him, which is South Carolina.
MODERATOR: Any questions? Wait for the mike, and please state your name and your organization.
QUESTION: Thank you for doing this. My name is Toru Takei of Kyodo News, a Japanese wire service. I’m just wondering – you just mentioned in New Hampshire – I’m wondering, what is the benchmark for Romney’s success in New Hampshire? You mentioned 35 percent. What’s the percentage that he should get to poll it as a success for him?
MR. ZOGBY: Do you know – that is such a fluid phenomenon. And it is established to some degree by a marriage between what the polls show and what the folks here in this town see. So if the polls are showing Romney over 40 percent – 42 percent – and 20 points ahead, and if he scores 35 and leads by 8 or 9, damage.
I’ll give you two historical benchmarks that are important. One was 1968. The incumbent president, Lyndon Johnson, whose name was not even on the ballot in New Hampshire, was challenged at the time by Senator Eugene McCarthy, anti-Vietnam. Johnson actually got more votes, 49 to 43 percent, but the pundits said that is serious damage to an incumbent president. And the headlines were McCarthy wins in New Hampshire. And within a few days, Senator Robert Kennedy said hey, this president can be defeated, and he announced his candidacy.
Same thing happened four years later. Senator Muskie from Maine was a neighbor, like Romney, and it was anticipated that Senator Muskie, the former vice presidential nominee, would just go into New Hampshire and get 60 percent. He was running against an antiwar candidate, George McGovern. It was the same thing. It was 47 Muskie, 43 McGovern. McGovern was declared the winner. And whoever is declared the winner gets the three Ms out of New Hampshire – media, money, and momentum.
So what is the figure? It’s going to be that combination of less than the number expected and the closeness of the race. I hope that helps.
QUESTION: Thank you for the opportunity. It’s very educational. My name is Sakoto Shimbori from TV Asahi. My question is about South Carolina. It’s – maybe it’s too early to tell, but it’s a conservative state, and what do you think about the Gingrich performance in South Carolina? And also that Rick Santorum, this Iowa, I mean, he – that made very well, so what do you forecast about that?
MR. ZOGBY: South Carolina, let’s just get a little portrait here. Everybody can vote. Democrats can vote in the Republican Primary, independents, and Republicans. Traditionally, it’s a conservative state. It’s also a state in transition. So you have the east coast of South Carolina, which is very developed, has a lot of transplanted northerners, midwesterners, high technology university and so on. The moderate candidate normally does well there. Western part of the state is mountainous and is very conservative. But very conservative means three things these days. It means evangelical. It means libertarian. And then it means classical conservative.
And so what happened in 2008 was very important. You had four candidates leaving New Hampshire. John McCain won a big victory in New Hampshire. You had John McCain and Mitt Romney battling it out on the east coast. McCain got a big victory in the east coast. And you had the three conservative candidates – that would be Romney, Mike Huckabee, the Christian, and Fred Thompson, more traditional conservative, splitting the vote in the west. That’s what gave the victory to John McCain in South Carolina, a state that he lost to George W. Bush in 2000. So there are variables here.
So what happens? Let’s say that Romney can do competitively very well in the eastern part of the state. That’s more to his image. But if you’re going to have a resurgent Newt Gingrich, whose apparent motive right now appears to be to beat up Romney as badly as he can, but also to hope that Rick Santorum fails and that those voters go over to Gingrich, if you have him, if you have Rick Perry spending some money and getting 5 percent, if you have Santorum with the Christian vote, and then you have Ron Paul doing well in the college towns but also doing well among the western voters who hate government, you heard it from me first. I don’t know. But – so anything could – we – this is very much a sequential process. We have to see who’s standing after New Hampshire, and who’s got money to wage a campaign, and then who’s serious. Very surprised that Rick Perry stayed in, incidentally.
Hey, Tom.
QUESTION: Hey, how are you?
MR. ZOGBY: Good. How are you?
QUESTION: Happy New Year.
MR. ZOGBY: And to you, too.
QUESTION: I’m Thomas Gorguissian with Al Tahrir, Egyptian daily newspaper. And my question is related to more you as a historian and following these elections over years. I know it’s January now. How it’s different from what happening four years ago, eight years ago, 12 years ago, or 16 years ago? I mean, you mentioned the young voters, you mentioned the Christian Coalition factor or the Tea Party. What are the main things that political, cultural, and all these things that are going to shape the election?
MR. ZOGBY: Well, there’s certainly the same amount of anger that there was in 2004 and in 2008, but it’s an organized anger this year. There’s a Tea Party, there’s anti-Wall Street. It’s also that among young people – traditionally, young people not a significant vote or a predictive vote as a constituency, but in 2008, heavily, as we know, towards Obama, and a lot of hope, a sense that, oh, he’s one of us. This is a global, international, planetary generation.
The difference now with young people is that they are seriously jaded. In their own personal lives, they’re having a very difficult time getting started or building a career or have a sense of a future for themselves or for the country. They feel let down. While they’re not enamored with President Obama, that does not translate into support for Republicans. If they participate, it will be a movement. There’s an old Mexican peasant revolutionary saying, “Down with whoever’s up.” And that, I think, is the Ron Paul phenomenon. If they – every young voter you see in the next couple of months, you can pretty much bet that that is the feeling that they have, the majority, that Ron Paul represents their distrust in lots of institutions, not simply government and politics.
But I think the other thing is that 2008 was an election where, despite all of the noise, right and left, both party nominees were men who could lay claim to the image of being problem solvers. Barack Obama, the visionary, the community organizer. John McCain, the independent legislator. McCain was very interested in character. He was both the gadfly who raised issues but also the guy who could get 15 senators together in a room and say pass this or I’m going to beat all of you up. I’m not kidding, incidentally. (Laughter.) But when all is said and done, they went for Obama and that vision, but there was a sense this is Washington, and look at what happened, and were problems really solved?
One thing the President has going for him, if those numbers for the economy get better, or enough – you’re starting to see consumer confidence turning around, that sort of thing – that may be enough to close the gap. But let me give you some numbers, if that helps. Young people were 19 percent of the vote – under 30s – 19 percent of the vote in 2008. Generally, they’re 17 percent of the vote. That’s pretty substantial, to 19. But 67 percent voted for Obama. Right now, Obama is polling about 45 percent among young people – 45. However, that’s not translating into a bigger share for the Republican candidate. It’s translating into a larger undecided. When I see undecided among groups like that, they’re not going to vote, I don’t think, unless they see an alternative. And that’s why I was watching those comments by Congressman Paul the other night about the movement and the distrust for government.
Hispanics, 4 percent of the vote in 1992. They were 9.2 percent of the vote in 2008. Most projections, including my own, 11 percent in 2012. That’s huge. Now here’s another case. Sixty-nine percent of Hispanics voted for Obama in 2008. Now he’s polling 54, 55 percent. But there is no growth among Hispanics for the Republican candidate.
PARTICIPANT: Sort of a portrait?
QUESTION: (Inaudible.)
MR. ZOGBY: Women? That’s really intriguing. The – there is a gender gap. For a while, it disappeared, but there is a gender gap. The bigger gap is married women versus single women. That’s the huge gap. Married men versus single men. Married voters tend to be much more conservative than single voters. And it’s not only a factor of age.
QUESTION: Thank you. Sir, Nickolay Zimin from the Russian magazine Itogi. Some commentators and analysts are expressing their concerns that vote – elections 2012 might be a bit in sense more restricted than before. And for instance, the Katrina Vanden Heuvel in last piece in The Washington Post writes, in 2011, 14 states, including 12 you mentioned, passes – passed laws making it harder for certain Americans, particularly minorities and young people, to vote. So what is your take on these concerns? Thank you.
MR. ZOGBY: I don’t want to appear to be partisan, okay? But let’s state facts, that those restrictions were passed after the – mainly after the 2010 elections, where many of those legislatures and governors’ mansions were turned over to Republicans. That’s not exclusively the case, but – and certainly, no party wants to restrict a vote that it’s going to get. And so there – you’re not going to see any growth. That’s a prediction. Okay? But I do get to renew it every few months, incidentally. But you’re not going to see any growth, really, among Hispanics for Republicans. You’re not going to see any African American growth. And frankly, I don’t believe you’re going to see any young vote growth.
And so this is a way of institutionalizing what some have seen actually on the ground, where there have been, let’s say, some not so good things happening on election day that restrict turnout. Those have been unofficial. But now with identity cards and things like that, those are prohibitive. I don’t know what the impact will be. An angry voter will find a way to vote, or at least make a case about it. But at least for now, it does – those look like restrictive rules. And as you know, they’re being challenged in courts.
QUESTION: Thank you very much, Mr. Zogby, by your presentation. My name is Denise Chrispim. I’m a Washington correspondent for a Brazlian newspaper, O Estado De San Paulo. I wanted to know exactly what is the importance of New Hampshire in this process to choose the Republican candidate, and if you expect that the losers in this New Hampshire primary can give up of this dispute.
MR. ZOGBY: Okay. First of all, the winners get those three Ms – media, money, and momentum – the winner or the winners. The losers get the exact opposite. Basically, they’re stamped as losers. So it’s a winnowing out process. If you don’t win, you don’t do as well as expectations, which is another thing, in New Hampshire, your campaign gets very little press attention, it’s very hard to raise money, and there are wealthy candidates who can continue on, but you see even in a case like Rick Perry, Rick Perry spent a lot of money, he has a lot of money, but he needs a lot more. And after Iowa and presumably – presumably – after New Hampshire, where does he go? Even though South Carolina may look like a decent state for him, it’s a problem.
Jon Huntsman defied the rules and bypassed Iowa – possible – and put all of his resources into New Hampshire. And I think for a moment, it looked like if Romney did poorly in Iowa, that those who had reservations about Romney would then slide over to Huntsman and that could Huntsman could do better than expected. But so far, that doesn’t look to be the case. If Huntsman gets what we’re looking at here, 8 percent, 10 percent, 12 percent in New Hampshire, he really doesn’t have anywhere to go.
So it’s the exact opposite of the three Ms. It’s hard to get money, it’s hard to get media, and you have no momentum. And that’s doom.
MODERATOR: Any questions from New York? Nothing? Anybody else here want to ask --
QUESTION: (Inaudible) question. Are you a Republican or a Democrat?
MODERATOR: Wait, wait, wait – wait for the --
MR. ZOGBY: Am I a Republican or a Democrat? I ask the questions, remember? (Laughter.) I’m going to ask you to guess, and then I’m actually going to tell you the truth. How’s that?
You don’t know?
QUESTION: I don’t know.
MR. ZOGBY: Well, that’s good. That’s exactly what I wanted to accomplish. I have --
QUESTION: (Inaudible.)
MR. ZOGBY: I have always, because it’s been public record, I have maintained my Democratic registration. However, I’ve done a lot of work for Republicans and have generally, for those who don’t like the numbers, been accused of being a Republican pollster. I’m polling for The Washington Times this cycle. My company’s history has been ruggedly independent, I hope. I hope. Well, the polling has been. I hope the interpretation.
QUESTION: Go ahead, New York, with your question.
MR. ZOGBY: Hi.
QUESTION: Hi. My name is Alf Ask. I’m working for the Norwegian paper Aftenposten. Is this the first election where the so-called 9/11generation has the possibility to vote, the youngsters that were about 10 years when the attacked – terror attack become – can you say anything about this generation? And do you find them supporting Ron Paul?
MR. ZOGBY: That’s really interesting, and I have thought about that. First of all, it depends on how we split the 9/11 generation, when one came of age. You could argue that 2008 was the first wave election of the 9/11 generation, those who were in their teens and 20s during 9/11, and so this’ll be the second election. But here’s the difference between 2008 and 2012. In 2008, this generation, this 9/11 generation, did not turn inward. When they saw there was a problem, and a problem with America’s image overseas, they began to look around them and to see technologically and otherwise, this is a planet. And how do we make war against people who dress the same way I dress, who listen to the same music, who I can contact just like this? These aren’t far out, way out people; they’re me. So that’s – that was the sense. And in many ways, Barack Obama was their candidate.
I asked this question back in late 2004. I thought it was a very important question. What will America look like – this was among 18-to-24-year-olds back then – what will America look like 20 years from now? And the number one answer was Barack Obama. That was late 2004. Why? Because he looks like us.
What’s happened between 2008 and 2012 is the recession, and that now this is one generation, age cohort, that has actually two defining moments. Moment number one was 9/11, but moment number two is, how do I get started?
I’ve seen it. I’m an employer. And five years ago, young people came in and said, “Can you tell me, in three years how I become the chief of operations of this company?” Now, “Could you just please give me a job? I’ll do anything. Maybe you don’t even have to pay me for three months; I need to put something on my resume.” This has been a huge change. And in that sense, Barack Obama was the candidate four years ago, I’m not going to say exclusively. Obama will still do well among young people because they have a planetary sensibility greater than another age cohort. But by the same token, there is a sense, at least for now, that Ron Paul and the libertarians are saying hey, we don’t street Wall Street, we don’t trust government, we don’t trust politics; that’s right where I am. Not me, but a 23-year-old who’s looking for a job.
MODERATOR: Any other questions?
Well, thank you so much --
MR. ZOGBY: Thank you very much.
MODERATOR: Thank you Mr. Zogby. And come back soon.
MR. ZOGBY: I hope so. I always have fun here.
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