13. Karl Rove’s math
In the days ahead of the 2006 midterms, many of the early signs indicated that the Democrats would secure a majority in the House, largely based on opposition to the Iraq War. But Karl Rove, President George W. Bush’s political guru, was unmoved.
Appearing on NPR, Rove insisted, “I'm looking at all these, [NPR host] Robert [Siegel], and adding them up, and I add up to a Republican Senate and Republican House. You may end up with a different math, but you're entitled to your math, I'm entitled to the math.”
Democrats took the House, and Nancy Pelosi became the first woman to be elected speaker of the House. Democrats also took the Senate, and Nevada Sen. Harry Reid became the majority leader.
Famously, Bush later referred to the result of the election as a “thumping” for him and the rest of the GOP.
12. Dick Morris’ Romney landslide
In 2012, conservative pundit Dick Morris confidently predicted that then-President Barack Obama would lose in a “landslide” to Republican nominee Mitt Romney. Obama was ahead in most national polls at the time, but Morris argued in an appearance on Fox News’ “Hannity” that there was “zilch, zone, zip nada” chance that Obama would be reelected.
Obama won reelection in November 2012, winning 51% of the popular vote and 26 states plus Washington, D.C., securing 332 of the 270 electoral votes he needed to win.
11. Hugh Hewitt’s Romney win
Conservative columnist and radio host Hugh Hewitt, who recently rage-quit The Washington Post after a confrontation with the paper’s liberal columnists, was also on the Romney train. Hewitt even wrote a book early in the 2012 cycle entitled, “A Mormon In The White House?” speculating on a potential Romney victory. (If Romney had won, he would have been the first Mormon president.)
In National Review, Hewitt predicted that Romney would win Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Obama won all six states.
10. Kathleen Parker: America will be “fine” under Trump
In 2016, Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker said the United States would be “fine” if either Donald Trump or Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Four years later, nearly a quarter of a million people were dead due to COVID-19 while unemployment was over 6%, and Supreme Court justices who would later overturn Roe v. Wade were installed on the Supreme Court.
9. Arizona Gov. Kari Lake?
Kari Lake, running for governor in Arizona in 2022, told reporters she would not only win that year’s election but also be the media’s “worst frickin’ nightmare for eight years.” Lake lost her election—even though she has denied she lost for years—and is currently trailing Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego in this year’s Senate election.
8. Erick Erickson and Sen. Herschel Walker
Conservative pundit and radio host Erick Erickson confidently predicted in 2022 that Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker would soundly defeat Sen. Raphael Warnock, and by enough of a margin that a runoff election would be unnecessary.
Instead the Walker-Warnock race resulted in Warnock coming out ahead of Walker in November, triggering a runoff race the next month. In that one-on-one contest, Warnock won reelection with 51.4% of the vote.
7-3. The 2022 red wave that wasn’t
Ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, the right convinced itself that a “red wave” would wipe out Democrats in the House. Instead, what occurred was more akin to a red trickle. While Republicans took a majority in the House, they flipped just 10 seats on net—far from the enormous victory the right expected. And since then, that majority has eroded, and Kevin McCarthy was ousted as speaker after an internal revolt. Republicans now hold a single-digit majority and are barely holding on.
Some notable punditry about the faux red wave:
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Former Vice President Mike Pence: “The Red Wave is coming!”
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McCarthy saw a red wave and large majorities on the way, and said so over and over.
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Dick Morris (again!) said there would be a massive shift in power in favor of the GOP (and predicted a Senate boost that also failed to manifest).
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For Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a wave was not enough: While campaigning with Republican candidates, Cruz insisted a “red tsunami” would soon show up.
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Tucker Carlson, then a host at Fox News, took a break from racist rants and promised his viewers that Democrats were about to get “crushed.”
2. Condi vs. Hillary, according to Dick Morris
Dick Morris (yet again!) went all out ahead of the 2008 election, writing a book in 2005 that predicted both party’s nominees as “Hillary (Clinton) vs. Condi (Condoleezza Rice).
While Clinton did run in that cycle’s Democratic presidential primary, she lost to Obama. And in the 19 years since Morris’ prediction, Rice has never run for political office.
Special mention: Mark Halperin’s good news for John McCain
Journalist Mark Halperin is not openly conservative (though he has worked for right-wing network Newsmax), but before he left NBC News in a storm of sexual harassment allegations, he left a mark on the prediction game.
Throughout the 2008 campaign cycle, Halperin reliably found “good news” for Republican Sen. John McCain. The height of this came as Obama criticized McCain for not remembering how many homes he owned (as thousands of Americans were losing their homes in the foreclosure crisis). Halperin thought this would be a good moment … for McCain.
It was not. McCain lost to Obama by nearly 10 million votes.
1. The Wall Street Journal and Trump’s graceful concession
Ahead of the 2020 election, former Trump chief of staff Mick Mulvaney wrote an opinion column in The Wall Street Journal that said if he lost, Trump would “concede gracefully.”
Not only did Trump infamously not accept his loss to Biden, but also Trump litigated the matter in court, has constantly whined about the topic since, and urged his supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol building, leading to his second impeachment.
It would be difficult for any person or institution to get a prediction as wrong as Mulvaney’s column, but the right has shown that if anyone is up to the task, they are.
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