About the Author

Douglas E. Schoen has been one of the most influential Democratic campaign consultants for over thirty years. A founding partner and principal strategist for Penn Schoen Berland, he is widely recognized as one of the coinventors of overnight polling. His political clients include New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and Indiana governor Evan Bayh, and his corporate clients include the former AOL Time Warner, Procter & Gamble, and AT&T. Internationally, he has worked for the heads of states of over fifteen countries. He is the author of multiple books and his newest, The Nixon Effect, was published in 2016. Schoen is a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and various other newspaper and online publications, as well as Fox News. Evan Roth Smith is a political strategist and communications consultant based in New York City. He has worked for political and private-sector clients in all fifty states and more than a dozen countries, including the United Kingdom, South Africa, Israel, Turkey, and Japan. Smith has advised Democratic, Republican, and Independent campaigns, as well as mayoral, presidential, and prime-ministerial candidates around the world. Shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Smith traveled extensively throughout Europe and the former Soviet Union, conducting interviews with senior diplomats, academics, and politicians in Kiev, Istanbul, Stockholm, Tallinn, Chisinau, Zurich, and Tbilisi, which he provided exclusively for Putin's Master Plan. Smith is a graduate of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.