Welcome to episode

of the Charles C.W. Cook podcast.

If you're listening to this, that means it's Monday and I'm in the Bahamas.

No, seriously, I am.

I'm firmly ensconced in the Lucan archipelago under the protection of Charles III,

keeping my distance from Cuba and awaiting a ship back to Florida

and to all I hold close and dear.

So, my predictions made publicly on the last episode were wrong.

I said that the GOP would likely take a net three Senate seats.

Instead, they've either lost one, which takes them to 49,

or stayed at 50, which keeps them in the minority because Kamala Harris is

the vice president and can break ties. I said that the GOP would likely win 30 seats in the house.

That didn't happen either. They're on track to win a majority, but it's looking as if it'll be around two.

My predictions about New York and Michigan were correct. My predictions about Florida were correct,

and in fact they understated the size of that wave. I was wrong about the House and the Senate for a few reasons.

I thought that the polls were broadly correct

and that even if they weren't, they were likely to understate Republican support.

Now, the polls, in one sense, were correct, but they didn't understate Republican support,

and the Republican support that there was didn't translate into seats in the way that many,

including myself, had assumed.

I was also wrong because I live in Florida and because there was clearly a disconnect

between the atmosphere here and the atmosphere in the country at large. There was a hilarious

...