The Truth with Lisa Boothe: Blue Wave or GOP Comeback? Matt Whitlock's Shocking Election Day Predictions

Lisa Boothe (0:05)

Welcome to The Truth with Lisa Boothe, where we get to the heart of the issues that matter to you. Today, we are talking about the elections, because it is election day. I hope everyone has gone out to vote, because look, this could be a tough election cycle for Republicans, but we don't know how tough. There's been a lot of doom and gloom in the media, but we've seen a lot of polling misses, particularly in states like Iowa. You go back to 2024, the Des Moines Register, which is supposed to be the gold standard of polls, got the presidential election wrong by 16 points. You can go back to 2020, when there was a tough Senate race in Iowa.

Joni Ernst in the polls, it looked like the race was in the margin of error. She went on to win it by 6.6 points. So will that happen this election cycle? We don't know. We know that poll stores have been wrong, but we also know that a midterm election for the party in charge tends to be a tough election. Since World War II and all but two midterm elections, the party in charge has lost an average of 26 House seats and around three to four Senate seats.

But given all that, we don't know what's going to happen. So I'm going to have my friend Matt Whitlock on the show. He is a senior vice president with CRC advisors. He is also the host of the 10-minute drill. He has worked in politics for a very long time. I trust his judgment. So we're going to lean on him, see what his gut's telling him. What does he thinks going to happen tonight? Also, what's the impact of that? What does it mean if Democrats take back the House and the Senate? What does it mean for 2028 with the presidential election? We're going to dig into all of it and there's a lot to dig into. So stay tuned for Matt Whitlock.

Well, Matt, it's great to have you on the show. I know that you are a father, but you recently, you and your wife just had a newborn. So you guys are, you're probably very tired.

Matt Whitlock (1:53)

Yeah. Having a baby in October of election year is not something that I would recommend to anybody who's got planning capabilities on that front, but it's still been a wonderful part of the journey. Thank you for that.

Lisa Boothe (2:04)

And then you have how many, two others or what's the-

Matt Whitlock (2:07)

Two others. Two others. We got two boys, four-year-old boy, two-year-old boy, and now a almost month old little girl.

Lisa Boothe (2:16)

She will be well-protected then.

Matt Whitlock (2:18)

She will be. She will be. She already is.

Lisa Boothe (2:20)

Yeah. Precious. Well, I appreciate you joining us, given those circumstances.

Matt Whitlock (2:25)

Absolutely. So excited to get to catch up with you on this crazy historic day.

Lisa Boothe (2:30)

I know, and that's the thing is it's trying to figure out what will happen tonight and also what does it all mean. I think we know just based off of history, that the party in charge in a midterm election, you typically lose House seats, probably Senate as well. We know that Democrats, at least looking at the Senate, they're defending more Senate seats, or Republicans are defending more Senate seats than Democrats, and then you have tiny margins in both the House and the Senate. So giving all of that, we know we're going to lose seats. It's just the question is how much and how tough of a night is it going to be?

What's your gut telling you? How are you feeling about tonight as people are heading out to the polls?

Matt Whitlock (3:16)

So I think that there's a lot of things going on right now that make this cycle really interesting. I think that there's some components that lend towards a 2006 wave, which is really just things like the president's approval rating, the fact that we're in a war, very similar to what we were in 2006 But there's also some really big differences that I think trend away from this being that wave tsunami environment that a lot of media is suggesting and pointing towards. And some of the biggest of those are really the fact that Democrats are historically unpopular. They are 25 points less popular than they were in 2006 And they're almost 10 points less popular than they were in 2018

2018, I think, could end up being the closer model because it's described as a wave year because Democrats did win 45 House seats. But somehow at the same time, we won three Senate seats. And so it just goes to show that the way that environment overall can impact congressional races in the House and Senate, it's so different than it used to be because every state is its own media market, its own kind of ecosystem of politics that can be so different, which is why we're looking at a situation where we could win, potentially in a state, Republicans could win in a state, potentially Michigan and Maine and lose in pretty ruby red states like Kansas and Texas. It's just really based on individual candidates and how campaigns are run to try and turn out the correct voters.