Dick Morris: GOP Win Means 'Coup d'Etat' in DC Coming
Tuesday, November 4, 2014 04:18 PM
By: Sandy Fitzgerald
Republican Senate candidates have scored a "coup d'etat" in Tuesday's midterm elections, veteran political analyst Dick Morris told Newsmax TV, saying that it looks as if the GOP will win control of the Senate with "55 to 60 seats."
"The way I'm deriving that is that [Kentucky Republican Sen. Mitch] McConnell was polling constantly about six points ahead and he's now winning by 13 with half of the vote in," Morris said Tuesday. "Now, that could fade, but the point is that he's running about seven points better than he's polling."
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In other races, Virginia GOP candidate Ed Gillespie was polling about seven points behind; but with about 40 percent of the vote in, he had pulled about eight points ahead of incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, Morris said.
"The way off-year elections work is once you establish the direction of the trend and you establish roughly its amount, it sweeps the table and goes through all of the states," said Morris. "So based on this, which is based on two or three states really just Kentucky, the Republicans are going to win all of the seats that are contested, including New Hampshire or North Carolina, Georgia, very probably Alaska, Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana – although that won't be apparent tonight – Arkansas and then there are other seats for which they might contest."
Further, said Morris, "We might win Virginia, and [Democratic Sen. Al] Franken might be in danger in Minnesota." In addition, he said, New Mexico Democratic Sen. Tom Udall may be in jeopardy in his reelection bid, and "Oregon might be in reach."
And by the night's end, Morris said, "it is not inconceivable that we could leave tonight with 60 votes," in the Senate.
If Gillespie is a surprise in Virginia, said Morris "there are going to be plenty of surprises."
But, as he warned Newsmax TV's J.D. Hayworth, "don't take me to the bank," in the "history of tracking polls and midterm elections, they have decided, determined that the polls are always wrong but they're always wrong by the same amount in the same direction no matter which state you're in."
As it is not a presidential candidates' race, the races can be "very subject to last-minute changes," Morris warned.
But once the direction of the change is established, "it's pretty easy to calculate what's going on," he said. "the giveaway is that if Mitch McConnell is carrying Kentucky by double digits when the polling only showed him six ahead at best, then you've got a chain, a thing of plus three, plus four, plus five, plus six for the Republican Party. Once you're at six points, you've long since left behind New Hampshire and North Carolina and you're looking ahead to some of these other states, Virginia, New Mexico, Oregon, and Minnesota."
Earlier on Tuesday, Morris told Newsmax TV that midterm polls tend to understate the voting trend, and, if that held true, Republicans would be looking at greater gains than expected.
"There is a new analysis that was published by a prominent political scientist, in which he went through the polling in midterm elections going back several decades, and what he found was that the polls are always wrong — that they always understate the trend that's at work during the election," Morris told Hayworth.
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"They're usually understated by a margin of two to three points, and it's always consistent," he explained.
"They're either constantly understating what the Republican's going to do or overstating what the Republican is going to do by two to three points in each state and that's because the turnout among [voters] in off year elections is very vulnerable to a lack of enthusiasm," he said.
"It's because the commitments to each candidate is a lot less fierce than the commitment would be to a presidential nominee," he contends.
"Also, you have more upscale voters who are more likely to change their minds and be fluid and the result is that you really cannot take those poll numbers to the bank," he added
Because of these variables, Morris says that the question to ask is "which side is going to get the momentum?"
"Clearly, the Republicans have the momentum going into this election so while a narrow, literalistic reading of the polling data would suggest the Republicans gain seven or eight seats on net, it's possible that they could even do better than that," he contends.
For example, he says that the polling in the Kentucky Senate race between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes "was tight a few weeks ago, but lately it's been giving McConnell a six or seven point lead and that's likely to carry through."
In Florida, the veteran political analyst says that former Gov. Charlie Crist, who switched from the Republican to Democrat party may actually "be benefiting from voters who are turned off with all political parties and regard him, because of his flip flopping, and say as a Republican turned Democrat, as someone who's not necessarily captive of any one political party, and that may account for some of his popularity."
In Kansas, Morris told Ed Berliner on "MidPoint" that the Sunflower State "might go independent, which is to say Democrat."
However, he added that "there's a good chance of a Republican sweep today," and that "voters and analysts are underestimating the impact of a Republican victory."
"They're seeing it in terms of a conventional switch in the majority status from Democrat to Republican," he explained. "It's much more significant than that."
"Republicans will win the majority, they may win it with a few seats to spare, but the impact will be in affect a coup d'etat in which essentially the power will transfer from Obama to the Republican Party," he said.
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Morris contends that "the Republicans will be able to use the House and the Senate to pass an extensive agenda of stuff the country really wants."
Such power will allow Republicans to "pass a series of bills on a wide variety of subjects including corporate tax reform, the Keystone Pipeline, immigration with securing the border, a whole range of legislation, healthcare reform that will be very dynamic and very exciting and can give the Republicans an agenda for the 2016 election," he added.
In addition, "Obama will be in the position of marching to the Republican beat while vetoing the bill. That will also put Hillary Clinton in a very tough position because she has to buy into Obama's vetoes and run on them or risk losing the support of much of the party."
"This is going to be a transfer of momentum from the Democrats to the Republicans," he said.
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/GOP-Midterms-2014-Senate/2014/11/04/id/605166/
