Imus Behaves Himself While Talking About the Midterms with Pollster Scott Rasmussen

In an effort to gauge the accuracy of Scott Rasmussen’s work as president and CEO of Rasmussen Reports, Imus wondered what his “batting average” was in the 2008 presidential election.

“We said Barack Obama would win the presidency by a 52 to 46 margin,” Rasmussen said. “We were off. He won 53 to 46.” But in Imus’s cynical view, Rasmussen’s prediction was one thing, and one thing only: wrong.

This year, Rasmussen believes the Republicans will take about 55 seats in the House of Representatives on November 2, which is 15 more than they need to gain control. “It would be a huge surprise if the Republicans don’t get the House,” Rasmussen said. “As for the Senate—it’s just the opposite.”

Republicans will likely remain in the minority there; they would need to win five of the six toss-up races to become the majority, something Rasmussen does not see happening because those races are in “some pretty friendly Democratic places” like California, Colorado, and Illinois.

Rasmussen, the author of Mad as Hell, about the Tea Party, sees two forces coming into play this election year. First, white working class Democrats, the type who voted for Hillary Clinton over Obama in 2008, are tending to vote Republican this year. Second, voters are merely voting against the party in power, as they did in 2006 and 2008.

“This is not going to be a good Election Day for the Republicans,” Rasmussen said. “Just a bad day for the Democrats.”

He thinks it will be a good day for the Tea Party people, even if some of their highest profile candidates, like Christine O’Donnell in Deleware, do not win; others, like Rand Paul in Kentucky and Marco Rubio in Florida, are projected to do much better.

It will be interesting, in Rasmussen’s view, to see how the rest of Washington reacts to the Tea Party candidates who get elected. “It’s possible that the two major parties could adopt some of the Tea Party agenda and move things forward,” he said. “It’s also possible they could ignore it, and increase the level of anger out there.”

Voters are angry because they never get the spending cuts they vote for, Rasmussen told Imus, and they don’t think anybody in Washington is listening to them. “Seven out of ten Americans believe that government and big business tend to work together against the rest of us,” Rasmussen said. “That kind of cynicism is driving a lot of this.”

Rasmussen warned Republican against mocking Obama’s “hope and change” mantra going forward, because it’s exactly what voters want, even if it is rarely what they get. “Voters have come to realize that if we have to rely on the politicians for the change, then there is no hope,” he said. “But if we can unleash the wisdom of the American people and change the dynamics a little bit, then there’s no limits to what we can do.”

And thus the Tea Party was born, spawning candidates like Sharron Angle in Nevada, who currently leads Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in the polls. “This is a great case of both sides being rejected,” Rasmussen observed. “A majority of voters believe that Sharron Angle’s views are outside the mainstream. A majority believe that Harry Reid’s views are outside the mainstream.”

The projected Republican takeover of the House would be the third consecutive time a President came into office with Congress on their side, only to lose one or both Houses in the midterm elections two years later. Imus, however, was working on a record of his own.

“I was good during this conversation,” he told his guest. “I only said ‘erection’ instead of ‘election’ once.”

One small step for man, one giant leap for Imus.

-Julie Kanfer