Politics

CNN Analyst Tries To Explain Ted Cruz’s Widening Lead On Beto O’Rourke And Predicts A Cruz Victory

No featured image available

CNN devoted a segment to explaining why Democratic Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke is losing ground against Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas on “New Day” Wednesday and said Cruz is likely to be reelected.

“We have a new CNN poll among likely voters, we have this 7-point split right here — 52 percent to 45 percent. The question is, why is Cruz leading over O’Rourke by such a wide margin?” CNN senior political writer and analyst Harry Enten said.

“One reason why is that O’Rourke is, simply put, not getting his voters out. One way we can tell that is by looking at all registered voters, and we see actually that Cruz has only a 5-point lead among there, which means the people who are actually going to show up are less likely to support O’Rourke than Cruz.”

Enten cited a New York Times poll from September showing an 8-point margin for Cruz among likely voters and said lower Latino turnout will likely give Cruz a boost.

“Latino voters — who are a key voting bloc in Texas, who are supporting O’Rourke — they make up 27 percent of all voters. But among the likely electorate, those who are actually going to turn out, they only make up 18 percent. So that is a huge drop and that is hurting O’Rourke in the polls,” Enten said.

Enten also said O’Rourke is more likely to find die-hard supporters in New York City than in the state of Texas.

“I think Beto O’Rourke has more enthusiastic supporters in New York City than he probably does in Texas, based upon everything I have seen with the money coming in, versus what the actual polling numbers are showing,” he said.

Enten predicted Cruz would pull out a 4-point victory over O’Rourke in November, based on historical context and the way the race is trending.

“What we are showing, our forecast is actually a somewhat tighter race, which is a 4-point win for Ted Cruz,” he added.

“I actually think this might be on the lower end as some more polling comes in that reflects what the CNN poll was showing … indeed there’s another way we can look at this race, right? We can look at what the expert ratings are, including CNN, Inside Elections, Center For Politics, Cook Political Report — and what they show is that this race on average is leaning towards the GOP.”

“If this race holds where it is, Ted Cruz is going to probably win,” Enten concluded.

You can Follow Nick on Twitter