Chuck Todd Quotes

So my concern is that - what the campaign has to do is to pull those folks [negative to Donald Trump] out and make sure that they actually get to the ballot.

My focus as part of the leadership is to keep talking about the independent voters, independent voters - how do we get the independent voters back?

Let's not just look at it as taking votes away from Gore. Our support comes from a lot of people.

Our opponents struggled manfully, desperately; but wind and tide were against them. They had campaign and other papers, good speakers, and large meetings; but we were far ahead of them in singing and electioneering emblems and mottoes which appealed to popular sympathies.

Democratic candidates who run from President Obama in red states where he is unpopular are making a big mistake. Their holding Obama at arm's length deprives voters of a clear choice at the ballot box.

I realise that in an electoral campaign, you don't want to antagonise large groups which are highly motivated.

Democrats fell in love with the idea that winning elections was a matter of talking to voters about the one issue we think impacts them, instead of our plan to move the country forward as a whole.

President Trump's coalition clearly involves creating massive turnout in areas where he's popular.

For federal races, being able to carefully navigate the Trump Era is a significant challenge.

The key to winning any general election in the USA is to excite your base and then expand your base - get independent voters and voters who haven't been voting for your party to come to your party.

One strange quality of writing about political campaigns is that it's a little like writing about a baseball game inning by inning. We presume we can say something about the final result from the state of play a third of the way through. You can when a game is a colossal blowout, but you can't when it's close.

Simply because you're a Democrat doesn't mean you can't speak to these issues in language that appeals to voters, particularly independent voters.

Most pundits regard an election year session as an opportunity for the two parties to frame issues and garner political advantage in advance of the approaching election.

And when you start talking about the practicality of winning a race like that - you've got to remember we're not talking about winning 51 percent of the vote. We're talking about winning 36, 37, 38 percent of the vote.

Nobody understood better than Mr. Lincoln the obvious truth that in politics it does not suffice merely to nominate candidates. Something must also be done to elect them.

So our problem is not Labour, it is us, is making us attractive enough to gain disillusioned Labour support and to compete effectively with the Lib Dems for those loose votes.

Divide the floaters [undecided voters] into blocks of five and put a trusted man with necessary funds in charge of these five and make him responsible that none get away and that all vote our ticket.

We're not going to get the Negro vote as a bloc in 1964 or 1968, so we ought to go hunting where the ducks are.

Middle class voters are the mega-prize in American politics.

When you run a campaign the idea is not to appeal to pundits but to appeal to people.

The Republicans always looked bad three years out of four. But the year they look good is election year.

You can't win an election unless you have a message.

When a party loses a national election to someone such as President Trump, it's time to rethink everything.

Among the reasons Donald Trump is president is that he read the nation and the world better than his rivals.

Don't fall in love with the map. The map doesn't win elections.