What’s Going To Happen Tonight And In The Days To Come
First, predictions. Real Clear Politics is calling the midterm elections taking place today a big win for Republicans. RCP has it as a 53-47 Republican-majority Senate (a 3-seat GOP gain), a 243-192 Republican-majority House (a 31-seat GOP gain), and a 30-20 GOP advantage in governorships (a 2-seat GOP gain).
But RCP doesn’t have Don Bolduc winning in New Hampshire, and I predict he will. Bolduc’s momentum is unmistakable, he caught a late surge of third-party money after being starved of support by GOP Senate caucus chair Mitch McConnell’s moneybags operation in retaliation for his refusal to vote to retain McConnell atop the party, and polling in New Hampshire has become erratic because Republicans just don’t answer the phone there.
That’s been an issue for this whole election cycle. In fact, it’s worse – pollsters are saying there’s a not-insignificant percentage, perhaps as much as 10 percent, of Republican voters who will actively lie and say they’re for the Democrat.
People are afraid to go on a list. That’s what the Democrats have done to the American electorate. But people still believe in the secret ballot, and Republican voters have never been more motivated than they are right now.
Don’t be surprised if there’s as much as a four-point shift from poll performance to ballot performance in GOP candidates’ favor when the votes are counted tonight.
And if that pans out, it won’t just be Bolduc outpacing the RCP expectations. You could see as many as 56 Republicans elected to the Senate, with Tiffany Smiley taking out Patty Murray in Washington and even Joe O’Dea knocking off Michael Bennet in Colorado.
And in the House, Republican political pros I’ve talked to are saying 243 GOP seats after tonight isn’t enough. I’ve heard predictions as high as 256 seats, which would be a 44-seat gain. And that’s a bigger deal than some of these other wave elections where Republicans were starting from well below 200 seats, much less the 212 they currently hold.
There are indications across the country that the Democrats are in deeper trouble than they thought, particularly in the inner cities.
Polling indicates that core Democrat constituencies, particularly in those inner cities, have gone very soft for them. The Hispanic vote looks to be well over 40 percent to the GOP, and more than that in states like Texas, Florida, Arizona and elsewhere, the Asian vote is also moving quickly Republican, and the GOP could be in line for as much as 20 percent of the black vote – with black men specifically shifting away from the Democrats.
The problem this causes is that Democrat GOTV efforts in urban communities which have monolithic minority populations usually generate a net 100 percent return, because, for example, black voters in inner cities will all vote Democrat. But if only 75 percent or 80 percent vote Democrat and 20-25 percent vote Republican, the net effect of a “souls to the polls” campaign will go from 100 percent to 50-60 percent.
And that can be devastating. It could well account for the slow black turnout in Philadelphia and other places.
All of which sounds like a political reorientation could be in the offing.
But here’s the darker side of the predictions I’m offering here: the Biden Justice Department has sent “election monitors” to 64 jurisdictions in 24 states, mostly in either swing districts or hard-core urban Democrat strongholds. And what comes from those deployments could be chaos.
The thing to understand about this election is that for the first time in 40 years the GOP is now capable of running a nationalized system of poll watchers. There was a court decree that had kept the party from doing so until 2020, and the system is now reportedly up and running.
So Team Biden is countering a true Republican election integrity operation by sending DOJ in to “watch the watchers,” so to speak. And what they’re going to do is allege “voter suppression” by Republican poll watchers in hopes of getting a new court decree.
Knowing this, some Republicans have smartly put a stop to it. For example…
Remember when Biden officials claimed, seemingly out of the blue, that it might take “days or weeks” before the full count is known?
That’s an utter lie, and the pushback was enormous to it. But what’s meant by it is that the Biden DOJ is going to be contesting every race they can with lawsuits and they’ll do everything they can to gum up the electoral results and the consequences, namely a peaceful transfer of power to a Republican majority.
There’s even talk of a reprise of the “red mirage” of 2020, when continued counting magically created Democrat victories. That’s unlikely, but even if it does happen it’ll only further erode public confidence in the electoral process and maybe even call Biden’s legitimacy as president into question with a majority of Americans currently unwilling to say the 2020 election was stolen.
That’s why they’ve been running out all the apocalyptic rhetoric about Republicans being a threat to “our democracy.” They’re laying the groundwork for an even more aggressive effort to subvert the orderly operation of our elections than was undertaken with those COVID emergency snap election rules in 2020. And it’s also why our man Warhammer is spot on by saying Republicans who’ll be taking charge of the House (and also, presumably, Senate) majority after tonight had better be brawlers rather than wimps.
What we hope is that this doesn’t turn out to be a kinetic election cycle; should that happen America will descend into disaster. But that’s going to depend on the Democrats and how they behave in the face of public rejection and electoral defeat. Because that is what’s coming, and it’s infinitely well deserved.
