Opinion: Larry Kudlow Says Voters, Not Polls, Will Decide the Midterms, and Predicts the GOP Holds the Senate
On election eve he argues the Times/Siena poll undercuts itself on late deciders and white liberal respondents, and says a booming economy and a message-driven Trump keep the Senate Republican. His forecast is his own.
This is a summary of an opinion column on Fox Business by Larry Kudlow. The views are his, not RightNewsRightNow's.
The argument. "Polls don't vote. Only voters vote," Kudlow writes, and he says he is tired of the press treating polls as results. He says Republicans will hold the Senate, and that the generic House race will be "razor thin, one way or another."
The poll he disputes. He points to the new Times/Siena survey, which he says puts Democrats ahead by 11 points in the Michigan Senate race, 7 in Texas, 6 in Maine, and 5 each in Ohio and Kansas. He questions the Michigan number because Rep. Haley Stevens endorsed Republican Mike Rogers, which he argues pulls "a third to half of the party" from Abdul El-Sayed, and says a former Michigan Democratic Party chair has told people to stay home.
What he says the poll admits. Kudlow notes the same article says Republicans are winning late deciders by 9 points in seven battleground states, and that white liberals were about 30% likelier to take the survey than white Republicans. Both points are in our earlier coverage of the final poll and of the Times and Post response-rate admissions. He mocks the idea that Maine's Susan Collins would lose.
The case for Republicans. He says the economy is booming, most Americans prefer free-market capitalism to "state-run socialism," and most like their private health care and do not want to pay for entitlements for illegal immigrants. He credits Trump with campaigning "super humanly" and mostly on message, and concedes gasoline prices are "uncomfortably high."
What we have not checked. The poll figures, the claim about the former party chair and the economic statements are Kudlow's. Other Fox opinion writers published the opposite forecast today. Doug Schoen and Carly Cooperman argue Democrats have the advantage, so the range of views is wide. He says he is "not making any predictions" and then makes one.