Americans are going to be surprised on Election Night at how well the Romney/Ryan ticket performed at the polls, especially in Florida, Virginia, and North Carolina, Oliver McGee, a former transportation official in the Clinton administration told Newsmax TV.
McGee, a mechanical engineering professor at Howard University and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Transportation under former President Bill Clinton, is a former Democrat who now supports Mitt Romney.
Watch the exclusive interview here.
McGee said he sees a big win in the cards for the Republicans.
“We’re seeing probably a shift in the electorate,” he said. “If voters go into the polls, and gas prices are $3.50 and above, joblessness rate is at 7.5 percent or more and if they can go into that booth and close that curtain and find two or three people that they know very close to them that are stressed and pinched in their pocketbooks and wallets, they’re going to go opposite to what they may be saying to the pollsters and pundits and actually vote for Romney-Ryan.”
Polls, McGee said, are like “light posts or traffic lights.”
He said “they control the traffic flow of thinking. They kind of look at a little bit of a precursor of what behaviors that we make from voters. But the real poll that will test the real measure of how the electorate is actually feeling is going to take place three or four days before we go into November 6th. And we’re just about there now.
"And it’s going to be Gallup, Rasmussen, even those polls that kind of mesh through and smooth out all of the noise in the statistics that we’ve been seeing for months, and they’re going to give us an indicator of what likely voters are going to do.”
He continued, “But, ultimately, the best poll is the one that is actually coming out that night, November 6th, when people close the curtain and make their own independent decision. When the economy is really stressed, and that’s the number one issue right now, history has shown that a lot of jumping the aisle takes place. The party that is in place usually loses.”
“Voters usually go and jump the aisle to the party that’s not in place, particularly when they feel the pinch in the pocketbooks and wallets. And that’s a very private decision that voters do when they close that curtain and that’s what makes the democracy work. That’s what makes America work.”
He said there is a surprise in store for Americans on the night of Nov. 6.
“The fascinating thing about these great, dramatic elections that we’re having is when we watch it unfold the night of the election and all of the television outlets are showing the story as it unfolds as America decides, the next day we’re always writing about how surprised we were by what we saw. We’re going to be surprised on November 7th on how well Romney-Ryan is actually doing. They’re going to probably take Florida, take Virginia, take North Carolina. They’re going to win Ohio.”
With economic numbers improving in swing states such as Ohio, McGee said voters typically take into consideration not only what’s good for their state but also what’s good for the country.
“The good feeling that you see in the economic numbers in Ohio and other swing states is – take a look at the governors,” he said.
“Republican governors are turning the economy in those states around utilizing conservative low government, low tax Republican principles.
That’s why it’s working. But, voters will take a look when they’re looking at the presidential election and say, ‘Not only what’s good for me locally in my state but what’s good for the nation?’ They’ll look at the local ballot issues in both their pocketbooks for local issues because all politics is local.”
“But, at the federal level, they’re really looking at where the campaign is going in taking the country to the next step where they want to go for four years,” he continued. “And voters in these swing states are rationing saying, ‘We know what this four years has been so far. Do we want to go four more and has a plan been clearly defined for going four more to stay the course or go for more to jump ship and make an alternate choice?’ Voters are going to be jumping ship.
"They’re going to be going to Romney-Ryan in groves. The analysis of the night and the day is we’re going to be very, very surprised at what voters are doing. I like the American people when they go to the polls and vote because we are unpredictable. You can’t poll us because we are very, very independent in our decision making.”
McGee, who authored the book, “Jumping the Aisle,” which refers to his switch of party allegiance, said Romney will do better with minorities than expected.
“He is going to do much better than what the precursor data says,” he said. “More Hispanics are going to be breaking for him. He is doing a good campaign in carefully laying out his immigration policy; not too much, too strident. He’s going to have more of a black vote than people generally believe. And there are going to be some black voters who are going to stay home.”
He continued: “And there are going to be some Latino voters who are going to stay home. And that’s going to adjust the numbers that you will see coming in the post-election analysis of the Romney-Ryan outcome. In the aggregate, you’re going to see more of a positive direction of how Romney-Ryan fared out in the black and the Latino vote in the final analysis. If you look at the McCain-Obama election, Latinos broke at the last minute for McCain, particularly in those swing states. About two or three days before the election, they made a list minute break and that was a real difference in about three to six percent of the national vote.”
McGee concluded, “You’re going to have that similar type of behavior this time because the brown vote is very thoughtful, they’re business oriented, very conservative and they’re looking at really key issues in economic and immigration policy and they’re still deciding. That’s what makes their vote so unique in both of these states that we’re talking about here. We’re going to be seeing a shocking amount after the election on how Romney-Ryan took Florida, Virginia and North Carolina, Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin and Colorado and Nevada.”
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