In yet another great moment from the night of the November 5, 2024, presidential election, former Fox News Channel personality Chris Wallace, who now works at CNN, was visibly stunned and taken aback by the razor-close margin of the election in Virginia, a blue state where Vice President Kamala Harris was quite close to losing to former President Donald Trump.
Making the Virginia aspect of the election all the more shocking was that it wasn’t just rural counties in the Old Dominion where Trump did well, but it was the deep-blue D.C. suburbs where he picked up voters from 2020. That was very unexpected to most given the left leanings of the DC area.
Commenting on the state of things in Virginia, Wallace said, stunned, “It’s a surprisingly close race in Virginia, which has gone blue since 2008 and Obama, the last four cycles. And if you remember, Trump had a, in late October, had a rally there and people went, ‘What’s he doing in Virginia? That’s a blue state.’ He’s running a very close race.”
Responding, Wallace’s co-panelist, Dana Bash, noted that only half of the vote was in. Wallace replied back that the results of the election were far too close between the two for Kamala to be getting comfortable, particularly given how Trump had stolen votes away from the DC suburbs.
Earlier in the night, Wallace had said that Kamala would need a miracle to win the election, noting, “I got to say, I think that with the present conditions in the country — I mean, in conventional terms, it would be a miracle that Kamala Harris could win with that kind of headwind.”
Wallace added, commenting on how well she would have to do to win the election, “[I]f she is able to overcome those numbers and still win this election, then she has done a remarkable job of somehow separating herself — [and showing] that she’s part of the solution and not part of the problem.”
On the same note, CNN’s David Chalian said, “It’s a pretty dire mood in terms of the way people feel things are going in the United States. Nationally, only 7 percent of voters say they’re enthusiastic, 19 percent say they’re satisfied. Look at these numbers, 43 percent dissatisfied, 29 percent angry, 72 percent of the electorate nationally say they’re dissatisfied or angry.”
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And, when Dana Bash tried to claim that voters might be dissatisfied with the state of the economy, Wallace shot her down immediately. He said, “I think when you see current voters saying that by a three-to-one margin that they are dissatisfied with the country, or angry, dissatisfied or angry, I gotta say, I think that with the present conditions in the country. I mean in conventional terms, it would be a miracle that Kamala Harris could win with that kind of headwind,” he said.
Watch Wallace comment on the state of things in Virginia on election night, when it looked like Trump could win the longtime blue state, here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video