Live from Virginia Monday morning on The John Fredericks Show – weekdays on WNTW AM 820/ FM 92.7 – Richmond, WJFN FM 100.5 – Central Virginia, WMPH AM 1010 / FM 100.1 / FM 96.9 (7-9 PM) Hampton Roads, WBRG AM 1050 / FM 105.1 – Lynchburg/Roanoke and Weekdays 6-10 am and 24/7 Stream – host Fredericks welcomed Virginia Senator Joe Morrissey to the show to weigh in on election predictions in the state of Virginia and the presidential election.
Fredericks: Senator from Petersburg, Richmond Democrat Joe Morrissey, fighting Joe to make predictions. Fighting Joe. Senator, great to have you, man.
Morrissey: Good morning John. It’s a pleasure and honor to be on your show the day before election day.
Fredericks: All right. Well well, you know what talk is cheap as they say. Play the game. That’s what I’ve been telling everybody on Twitter that’s telling me about how Biden’s going to win and everything else. Play the game right? Tomorrow’s game day. Got a lot of early votes in setting records. I’m going to get straight to predictions.
Joe, you’re a Democratic state Senator in Virginia. But in making predictions, as they say, you follow the evidence. Give the predictions as you see them based on what you’ve seen on the ground. Let’s start with question number one. Let’s go globally. What do you make of the national polls and who’s going to win on Tuesday? Biden or Trump?
Morrissey: Okay. First of all, before I answer that let me just say this. It’s interesting what you just said. It’s game day tomorrow but you want to know something? What’s fascinating about it is 60 percent of the game has already been played. 93 million people have already voted. That’s like going into your beloved Tennessee Titan football game. You get your sandwich in front of you and you turn on the game and you find out that actually three quarters or more than a half was played the night before. So with that said, let me get to it.
Number one, you’re right. I look at things dispassionately when I make predictions and not what I want to see but where the facts are. National polls have Biden up 52 to 42. Disregard that. It makes no difference. It’s irrelevant. You need to consider the 12 battleground states. That’s it. That’s what matters. It doesn’t make any difference if Biden runs up huge numbers in California, Massachusetts, and Maryland. It doesn’t make any difference. Look at those 12 states. At the end of the day since you want me to get to it right now I thought we might build-up to it. Biden will be declared the president sometime in December. Okay? Let’s take it a little bit slower, can we?
Fredericks: Yeah sure go ahead.
Morrissey: All right. Let’s start with Virginia. Number one, the Wason Center poll had Biden up 12 to 15 points in Virginia. No way. That’s not going to happen. He is winning Virginia. It’s not a battleground state but he’s not going to win it by 12 to 15 points. He will win Virginia probably somewhere in the neighborhood of five to seven points. Now here’s what’s important for locally in Virginia is that we have close races.
Very close races in the second and the seventh with Luria and Scott Taylor. You’re closer to that situation. That’s not in my district. I haven’t been following as much so I’m going to back off. But the Freitas Spanberger race in the seventh, both have run good campaigns and incessant commercials that run non-stop. Spanberger wins narrowly. And why does she win narrowly? Because of this huge huge Henrico, Chesterfield vote that’s going to go for Biden.
She rides Biden’s coattails to a one to a two-point victory. Now let me weigh in on the mayor’s race in Richmond. The mayor is very very lucky. He has three people running against him. Three good candidates have been able to articulate their positions. The negative Stoney vote is being split up in three ways. Therefore that’s the advantage that Stoney has. And if he wins he wins five wards to four.
But let me just say this but for those three people running and splitting his votes, he would have gotten crushed. Remember in Richmond the mayor has got to win five wards. His chief opponent is Kim Gray. She will win first, second, third, and fourth. The mayor will win five, six, seven, and nine. The battleground ward is the eighth ward. It’s neck and neck right now and that determines the mayoral race. The eighth ward. So go ahead and ask me some questions.
Fredericks: Why don’t we go where we are now and then go forward. We got about six or seven minutes. You’re predicting Biden wins. I predict Trump. Trump is going to get re-elected Tuesday night. It’s not going to be close. Both of us think Mark Warner is going to win. Right?
Morrissey: Yeah of course.
Fredericks: Warner is going to win. You’re predicting Spanberger. I think Nick Freitas beats her. She doesn’t have the ground game she had. She doesn’t have the wave she had. She doesn’t have anything she had. She’s going to have to overcome Trump winning that district by three. Maybe she runs two ahead of Biden. She loses. Goodbye Abigail. Nice lady. Second district. Taylor blowout. This thing’s not even close.
I’m the only one that’s been saying this for three months. This second district is not even close. Taylor is going to beat her in Virginia Beach. He’s got an enormous vote turnout right now in Pocosin and in your county on the peninsula. She is going to win the city of Norfolk and Williamsburg. It isn’t enough. Scott Taylor wins the second. Trump wins it by five. Taylor wins it by six. I think he runs one ahead of Trump in this. That’s how confident I am of a Taylor victory. So Taylor’s gonna win that district.
Morrissey: I’m not disputing that John.
Fredericks: In the fifth district, look Trump is going to win the fifth district by 10 points. You just can’t overcome that. I don’t care what Bob Good’s issues are. How much money Dr. Webb has. It’s just not enough. You’re not going to get 10 percent of people to vote for Trump and then vote for the guy that’s going to probably vote to impeach him. Not going to happen. Bob Good wins that.
Morrissey: For the first time in the fighting fifth you’re gonna have a Democrat that wins. He’s one and done.
Fredericks: That’s not going to happen. Webb is not going to win that seat. And this is like the Democrats going to Texas thinking they’re going to win. Bob Good wins that seat. So we don’t see eye to eye on that. And so let’s get to the mayor’s race. Look I think you’re spot on with that. I mean I think it’s four to four and the battles the eight. And who the hell knows? I have no idea.
Morrissey: Right. I’ve talked to the people. And if you just gauge the enthusiasm level Gray wins. However, the mayor has been able to raise a lot of money. He’s been on TV. He’s completely changed the narrative about the statues to make him look like the civil rights leader of the sixties in 2020. That’s simply not the case.
Fredericks: Too funny.
Morrissey: Talking about taking the statues down, I’m mindful that he was absent in 2016 removing the statues. Absent in 2017. Absent in 2019 when his White vote evaporated in Richmond then he went all-in on race and black issues saying that I’m the guy that took down the statues. You’re the guy that created this. Like we say in Australia, a travesty. Gassing people when they were innocently collecting on Lee Circle. But, here’s again, three people are taking away the anti-Stoney vote. That’s the problem.
Fredericks: We are spot on there. I also agree with you 100 percent. In Virginia, it’s not 12. You said five to seven. I think it’s three to five. It’s splitting hairs. It’s somewhere around five just like it was last time. But I’ll tell you what is going to be interesting. Every poll, there are four of them. I call them the fake Triumphant. Roanoke fake poll. CNU fake poll. The Wason Center. ABC and Washington Post fake polls. And VCU fake polls. All fake polls. All four. All have Biden winning by 12. If Biden wins by four this is going to be the second time they were off by eight going into the final three days. There is a trend there.
Listen to the full show here:
https://youtu.be/5oK6Uoyf3gk
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Monday morning on The John Fredericks Show, host John Fredericks welcomed U.S. Senator from Virginia Joe Morrissey to the show to give his predictions for both local elections and the presidential election.
Photo “Joe Morrissey” by Cliff CC BY 2.0. Background Photo “Virginia Capitol” by Matheus Gonçalves CC BY-SA 2.0.
