Leading pollsters Kellyanne Conway, founder and president of the polling company, and Whit Ayres of North Star Opinion Research dissect the election of 2012. The two pollsters talk about the demographic challenges both Obama and Romney face.
Bio
Whit Ayres
Whit Ayres is the president of North Star Opinion Research, chairman of the American Association of Political Consultants, and co-founder of Resurgent Republic. He was honored as the Republican Pollster of the Year for 2012 by the American Association of Political Consultants. In addition to periodically appearing as a guest on FOX News, CNN, and NPR, his comments and analysis appear
in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and numerous regional newspapers.
Before establishing North Star Opinion Research, Dr. Ayres served as senior executive assistant for budget and policy to South Carolina Governor Carroll Campbell. He has also served as a tenured member of the political science faculty at the University of South Carolina.
Dr. Ayres earned a B.A. from Davidson College, as well as an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. An active private pilot, he is a member of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. He is the Virginia State Racquetball champion in his undisclosed age division.
Kellyanne Conway
Kellyanne Conway is the founder and president of the polling company inc./WomanTrend. She has worked for such politicians as Dan Quayle and Fred Thompson and was a senior adviser and pollster for Newt Gingrich’s 2012 Presidential campaign. She is the co-author of "What Women Really Want: How American Women Are Quietly Erasing Political, Racial, Class, and Religious Lines to Change the Way We Live."
John Dickerson
John Dickerson is Slate magazine’s chief political correspondent and a political analyst for CBS News. He is also author of On Her Trail, a book about his mother and pioneering newswoman, the late Nancy Dickerson. He has written extensively about the 2008 campaign, the Obama presidency and the tumultuous 2010 campaign. He is also the author of an in-depth series of articles about risk-takers. Prior to joining Slate, Dickerson covered politics for twelve years for TIME magazine. The last four of those years, he was the magazine’s White House correspondent and previously, Capitol Hill correspondent. Dickerson has also written for The New York Times, The Washington Postand Men’s Vogue. At CBS News he has guest-hosted “Face the Nation” several times.
Ron Fournier
Ron Fournier is the first editor responsible for editorial strategy and execution for all of the National Journal Group products across all platforms: web, print, video, and live events. He also contributes to 2012 Decoded. Prior to joining National Journal, he worked at The Associated Press for 20 years, most recently as Washington bureau chief. Starting with a posting in Little Rock to cover
Bill Clinton’s second term as governor of Arkansas, Mr. Fournier moved to Washington to report on the Clinton White House. He has won numerous awards for his work, including the Society
of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi Award for coverage of the 2000 elections. He is a four-time winner of the prestigious White House Correspondents’ Association Merriman Smith Memorial Award. In 2005, Mr. Fournier co-wrote Applebee’s America, a New York Times best-seller that examined the shared attributes of successful political, business, and religious leaders.
Ron Kaufman
Ron Kaufman is a senior advisor to the Mitt Romney 2012 Presidential campaign.
Beth Reinhard
Beth Reinhard is a political correspondent for National Journal and also contributes to 2012 Decoded. Prior to joining National Journal in November, Reinhard was the political writer at The Miami Herald. She covered local, statewide and national campaigns and wrote a weekly column on politics for 11 years. She previously worked at The Palm Beach Post, Education Week and The Home News. Born and raised in Miami, Reinhard received her bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University.
Election 2012: Ron Kaufman, senior advisor to the Romney campaign, defends the Romney welfare ad targeted at Barack Obama, and Kaufman asserts that the Romney camp is not playing the race card.
Kellyanne Conway, founder and president of the polling company™ inc./WomanTrend, shares the scariest poll numbers that Obama and Romney must overcome in the election of 2012 if they hope to win the presidency in November.
Ron Kaufman, senior advisor to the Romney campaign, asserts why Mitt Romney is the leader for the Tea Party movement. According to Kaufman, Romney is "the right person at the right time" to avoid financial disaster and repair a deeply partisan Washington.