OICA, Political Consultants Look At Impact Of Election On Child Advocacy

The Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy held a virtual online forum on Monday about the national election.

The OICA holds these virtual events weekly discussing a variety of topics and how it impacts child advocacy.

Monday though, the big topic was the national election and what could happen with the presidency, House and Senate.

Two national political consultants joined in on the call and provided analysis of how we got to this point and what could happen tomorrow.

Ed Goeas is the CEO of the Terrance Group, which is a Republican survey research team.

He says this election is very different from 2016 and national polls which showed Hillary Clinton up by about 3 points in the popular vote, were pretty accurate.

Goeas says state polls were further off and failed to account for a late Trump surge, which state polls have tried to correct.

He says this year the President will need to run the table in many key swing states where the race is tight.

And Goeas says if it wasn't for the COVID-19 pandemic, he feels President Trump would be slightly ahead because a majority of voters approve of his handling of the economy.

John Rowley, a democratic strategist from Nashville, was also on the call.

He says in his opinion, the most likely scenario is Democrats will keep control of the house and Republicans will either narrowly keep control of the senate or there will be a 50/50 tie.

"In the last cycle, pretty much every state that Trump won, the Republicans won the Senate seat. Every state Hillary won, the democrats won the senate seat," said Rowley.

Another big topic is turnout.

They both say Democrats hold an advantage with early voting.

Republicans hold the advantage of voting on election day.

"I hope however tomorrow night turns out,” said Goeas. “I hope we can gracefully and humbly get through the next couple of days without all the fiery rhetoric which does nothing but dig the whole deeper for us."