RED SCARE

Top Forecasters Reveal Predictions Hours Before Election

One forecaster said a key Senate contest means midterm results will be clear “before we all turn into pumpkins at midnight.”

Two top forecasters have made dire predictions for Republicans as Americans vote in the midterm elections.

Forecaster Larry Sabato and Dave Wasserman, an elections analyst for the Cook Political Report, appeared on CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront on Monday to share their predictions for shock blue victories in traditionally red states.

Sabato, the founder and director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, made the bold “Crystal Ball” prediction that Democrat James Talarico could take Texas’ Senate seat over Republican Ken Paxton, Texas’ attorney general.

Judging that Talarico had run a “brilliant campaign” against the tainted Paxton, Sabato said, “Everything that could go right for Talarico actually has gone right. And I would say that Paxton has so many problems in his past, and there’s a divided party there.”

Trump has thrown his support behind state Attorney General Paxton, who has previously faced criminal indictments and impeachment as well as his wife divorcing him on “biblical grounds.”

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Sabato claimed Talarico had helped bring Latino voters back to the Democrats, noting, “
I don’t think anybody in the beginning thought a Democrat was really gonna win, other than the handful of hardcore Democrats in Texas and elsewhere.”

Wasserman then told Burnett why he was predicting Democrat and Trump foe Abdul El-Sayed should beat Republican Mike Rogers in the Senate race in Michigan. El-Sayed would become the first Muslim ever elected to the U.S. Senate.

Noting that El-Sayed has been polling strongly for the past week, Wasserman predicted, “Michigan should go for a Democrat by 10 or 12 points in this environment. I suspect he’ll win by mid single digits. But there’s still an advantage for him, and it’s a big reason why I think we will probably know control of the Senate before we all turn into pumpkins at midnight.”

Sabato also called out “toss-up” Senate races including Ohio, where he noted, “It’s been so solidly Republican since Trump came on the scene, but Sherrod Brown, the Democratic nominee, has had a small but steady lead throughout the campaign.”

A New York Times poll conducted between Oct. 26 and Nov. 1 showed Brown leading Husted by 5 points, with 49 percent to his 44 percent.

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He added that Amy Acton, the Democratic candidate for Ohio governor, “has opened up an even larger region than Sherrod Brown. This could be the rarest of rare events, Democrats winning both a Senate seat and the governorship in the new Red Ohio.”

An Activote poll had Acton on 50.8 percent, pulling ahead of her Republican rival Vivek Ramaswamy on 49.2 percent.

Turning to the House, Wasserman has predicted Democrats could end up with between 230 and 240 seats in the 435-seat House of Representatives.

Burnett asked Wasserman if picking up anything less than 10 seats would “look like an underperformance” for Democrats.

“Look, anything less than 10 would be shocking, given how poor Trump’s approval ratings are in these competitive districts,” Wasserman said. “And a big theme here is that gerrymandering has not yielded the types of gains that Republicans were hoping for.”

Sabato predicted Democrats would win 239 House seats, insisting that he had not coordinated with Wasserman but “ended up at about the same place.”

“It will be a big shock to all of us if it turns out that Republicans somehow hold on to the House,” Sabato said. “But boy, I wouldn’t bet a nickel on that.”

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.

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