Graham predicts Democrats will lose Senate; McConnell says we’ll see

After Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declined Wednesday to predict which party will win the Senate majority, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) expressed confidence Republicans will flip the chamber.

During an Wednesday evening appearance on Fox News, Graham told host Jesse Watters that a “tidal wave is coming,” predicting Republican Adam Laxalt will emerge victorious in Nevada’s Senate race on Thursday and Georgia Republican Senate nominee Herschel Walker will win the state’s Dec. 6 runoff, which would give Republicans the majority.

Results are expected to trickle out this week in the two highly competitive seats Democrats are defending that have yet to be called — Arizona and Nevada — and if the parties split those races, Georgia will become the pinnacle race for Senate control.

Asked how he felt about the results earlier Wednesday, McConnell told a reporter for ABC News, “I don’t deal in feelings. The question is, they’ve got to count the votes and then we’ll figure out where we are.”

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) has a narrow lead over Walker, a former NFL star who won Georgia’s primary after receiving former President Trump’s backing, but both are projected to fall just short of reaching a majority, which is required by Georgia state law to win outright on Election Day.

Now, the two nominees will face off again on Dec. 6.

“Warnock doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell if we’ll get behind Herschel Walker,” Graham told Watters, repeatedly encouraging viewers to visit Walker’s website, noting Warnock’s large fundraising hauls.

“If you’re an incumbent and you come up short the first time, you’re not gonna win the second time if the opponent has a chance to get their message out,” Graham added.

But his confidence didn’t stop at Georgia, suggesting that Laxalt, Nevada’s former attorney general who became the state’s GOP Senate nominee, will emerge victorious in his race against incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D).

Laxalt currently leads by 2.7 percentage points, but more than 20 percent of the estimated vote has yet to be counted.

“Nevada is going to go Republican tomorrow,” Graham told Watters.

Mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day in the state will be counted as long as they arrive by Saturday, and election officials in Nevada’s most populous county indicated they expect vote counting there will stretch into next week.

Graham expressed less optimism about the chances of the Trump-backed Senate nominee in Arizona, Blake Masters, although Graham said Masters could still pull off a victory against incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.).

Either way, Graham said Democrats are “going to lose the Senate by Dec. 6.”