US Midterm Elections take place tomorrow

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

The Hard Shoulder, with Ciara Kelly and Shane Colman, on Newstalk, with Ciara.

Ciara Kelly (0:10)

Candidates across the US are making their final campaign push today, ahead of tomorrow's crucial midterm elections. We're joined by Mark Little, tech entrepreneur, journalist and author of The Last Good Day on the Internet, and of course, former Washington editor for RT back in the day. Mark, are we kind of agreed that the House is pretty much definitely going to go Democrat? I suppose the key stumbling issue at this stage is whether the Democrats can also get control of the Senate.

Mark Little (0:45)

Yeah, and it's kind of a remarkable shame because I think Democrats are holding their breath and they can't just stand what is not a last-minute shock to the polls because even the latest polls are saying that they have an edge in the sort of five or six states that they really need to win those Senate seats. Remember, they have 47 seats. They need to get to 51, like a net gain of four to have control and maybe one more to avoid any difficulties they might have. And they've got one state they're defending, which is Michigan, which is turning out to be a bit more of a battle than they thought about keeping it. But at the same time, the polls are kind of remarkable. I mean, you're seeing leases established for Democratic Senate candidates in places where you just wouldn't expect them to have any chance, like Kansas, which hasn't elected a Democratic Senator, I think since 1932

Texas hasn't elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1988 And these are places where Donald Trump was knocking up 15, 20% leads in the last presidential election. So the scale of that shift in opinion polls is quite dramatic. But at the same time, because so many of these seats are knife edge, the margin of error of 4% could be the difference between whether Democrats get that Senate control or whether they've got this long dark night of this old that goes on for days and they're just battling over that last seat.

Ciara Kelly (2:02)

You mentioned six races. Are they as far as we were talking to Republicans overseas last week and they mentioned six. They mentioned Alaska, Ohio, Michigan, Maine, Texas and Kansas. Are they your six or are there other ones in play?

Mark Little (2:18)

The one that I'm watching right now is South Carolina because that's a remarkable state because that was where we think I think you might see a huge amount of the red tide receding because we're hearing a lot about the blue wave of Democrats doing very well, getting new voters out for them. But it's in places like South Carolina that two things happen. First is that just Republicans sit at home. Now, they've got a particularly lackluster candidate there, Darlene Graham, who replaced her brother, Lindsey, who was a senator for South Carolina. So there may be an apathy there that brings that back into play. I mean, Trump won that state by 18 points last time around in the presidential election. And secondly, black voters in South Carolina and actually in other places like Mississippi, which might put that in play, black voters I think will be critical because turnout among black voters last time around the presidential election was down. Many young black men actually went for Trump. So I think black voters will have a critical element in those places to put other states in play like South Carolina, which are just beyond that list that you just repeated there.

Ciara Kelly (3:19)

Just sticking with that list for a second, Mark, the candidate or the representative from Republicans overseas we spoke to, he was pretty much saying he thought Alaska and Ohio would go to the Democrats. But his contention, I was curious to get your take on it, was that Michigan, Maine and Texas, that the Democratic candidates were quite radical. And he thought ultimately that would play against the Democrats in Michigan, Maine and Texas. Would you agree with that?

Mark Little (3:47)

Yeah, there's a logic to that. But remember, we were talking about three different elections. I think there's three different reasons why those states might be in play for Republicans. I mean, the first one in Alaska, for example, where the Alaska Democratic Party are now caught up in this row, where they seem to be guilty of a dirty trick, where they've two Dan Sullivans, one running for the Republican, and one guy just happened to be on the ballot paper as well. And there's a feeling that Democrats have had a really bad few days now there because they're seen to be engaged in dirty tricks.