Jesse Watters said on The Five that he did not feel good about Republicans' midterm prospects, warning hours before polls closed that the party could lose the Senate. He said the race felt like a game he knew he was going to lose and that he was just trying not to get hurt.
The host, 48, said the Senate was very much in play and added that getting hurt would mean Republicans lose the chamber. He also said he did not think the party would get its $5,000 checks, a reference that underscored how bleak he thought the night looked before the vote was fully counted.
Watters said he had voted in the morning on Election Day and then spent the day collecting signs that left him uneasy. People at the polling station wanted photos with him, he said, and some told him their side had come out that morning. But the mood did not lift. He said a man behind the counter at a tire store told him he had to work all day and had not voted, and he said two white contractors at his house also had not voted yet.
That last detail became part of his explanation for why he was still worried. Watters said, if Trump was on the ballot, those men would have already voted. He was not making a broad national forecast so much as offering a live, personal read on turnout from the places he had visited that day, and he said those encounters did not make him more optimistic about the GOP.
His comments landed while some hotly contested states were still voting, which is what gave them their edge: they were a public expression of Republican anxiety before any results were known. had him on the air from 8-11pm on election night, so the audience was hearing that unease in real time. Whether that fear matched the final outcome is left unanswered by the moment itself, but Watters made clear that before the polls closed, he thought the Senate was the prize most at risk.
