Larry Sabato
speaker
57 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard May 2025
last heard 10 Nov
Larry Sabato’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Nov 2025 with 1.
Appearances
It would be nearly impossible to predict that Republicans would hold the House, although we've just published an analysis in the crystal ball from some distinguished political scientists who have used another measure that has been ignored for the most part. What does the public think will happen? Which party do they believe will hold on?
Well, it's early, but even the early predictions often have been right from the public. And they seem to think Republicans will hang on to both the House and Senate. I don't buy it. Some of my colleagues do. I think the odds are substantial that Democrats will carry the House. We don't know the margin. We can't even guesstimate the margin. I think it could go up to around 20 seats.
If it's an anti-Trump landslide, obviously higher than that, more than that, as it was in 2018. But the Senate, there's a tiny chance Democrats could take control. But look at the map. You know, the normal balance in the Senate, if you look at the map, according to the red and blue divisions that exist in America today, is about 53 Republicans and 47 Democrats.
So Democrats really do have to be riding something of a wave, probably in two elections, to take control of the Senate again, because the normal majority is about what they have right now, 53-47 for the Republicans. That's because of the system the founders set up, which I published a book, A More Perfect Constitution, 23 Changes to the Constitution.
Not one of them has happened since I published a book in 2007. It's been very hurtful to me personally, but I don't think the Senate should be structured the way it is. When you have four senators from two Dakotas And I've spent some time in both Dakotas, and you can't tell them apart. I'm sorry. There's no reason why they should have four senators.
But with enough red states, small rural states, the Republicans have to try to lose the Senate. Now, gubernatorially, there is a real chance for democratic breakthrough, but they also have to hold close states, competitive states that they have, like Michigan and Arizona and so on.
But they could score some surprising victories there as off-year elections when people are just, as I think they will be, dead sick of Trump and the Trump appeasers or Trump acolytes or Trump minions that are in office.
I rage about a lot of things, but mainly it's my age. Probably because I watch more TV news than I ever have before.
It's okay. It's really social media more than it is TV. TV funnels what's selling on social media, I think, more than the reverse. That makes me rage. There's nothing we can do about social media. I wish we could. I gave up on flying cars, but we were promised a time machine, and we still don't have one because I'd like to go back and make it impossible to create social media.
I don't know how I'd do it, but I would try to do that in addition to preventing assassinations and lots of other terrible things. We can't survive for the long term the way we are now. We really can't. And I wish people would focus on that. I know it's hard.
As Scott was saying earlier, it's very difficult to get people to care about democracy enough to make it an issue or the issue in an election. I completely agree that that is true for now. It ought not to be true after January 6th.
Maybe the Democratic Party would do better just rerunning the films of January 6th instead of the crap they put out there on TV ads, the clever TV ads that pay the consultants enormous fees. Just remind people what was at stake and what could have happened.
And in the recesses of his mind, you're not going to tell me that he isn't thinking of ways to continue his regime, either with him or with somebody that he trusts, a member of his family or maybe J.D. Vance, I don't know, in four years. And I'm even worried about 2026. What can his CISA do? The organization in DHS that looks at cybersecurity and they know how the system works.
And if you have an honest head of CISA, they make it work better and they make sure that foreign influences are not guiding our elections. But if you have someone who has bad motives and who is listening to the devils in the Oval Office, then it is possible to tilt even a midterm election. We all need to watch everything carefully. We have to. It's a matter of our survival as a republic.
That was a long answer. I got to it.
Okay. But it's a podcast, you know.
Thank you very much. And you got me raging. I hope you're happy. There you go.
Showing 41–57 of 57 · page 3 of 3
← Previous